Postal Service Charges Iowa City $831,000 for Freedom of Information Request

Contributed by: AllGov on July 29, 2011.

Officials in Sioux City, Iowa, have been told by the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) that they can find out how the decision was made to move a mail processing facility to another town.

As long as Sioux City forks over more than $800,000.

Once the Postal Service decided to relocate the mail processing and distribution center to Sioux Falls—which could cost Sioux City more than 100 jobs—local leaders filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to obtain all documents relating to the decision. The Postal Service responded that such a request would cost $831,143.16.

“When I first saw it, I thought it was a Nigerian email scam,” City Manager Paul Eckert told the Sioux City Journal. “This is a shocking number. I would never have imagined this, especially given the difficulty they are placing on this community.”

A USPS executive in Washington, DC, confirmed the amount, adding: “The FOIA permits agencies to charge fair and equitable fees to recover the costs of furnishing records to the public.”

-Noel Brinkerhoff

City Outraged at Postal Service’s $831K Estimate for Document Search (by Lynn Zerschling, Sioux City Journal)

Originally posted on AllGov…

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