The three state universities with labor studies departments subject to Freedom Of Information Act requests from the Mackinac Center For Public Policy in Michigan haven’t made a final decision about what to do about the conservative-leaning think tank’s desire to read up on emails about the Wisconsin labor battles and MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow.
According to official responses to the FOIAs sent by the universities and shared with TPM by Mackinac, lawyers at Wayne State University and the University of Michigan have asked for 10 more days to decide how to proceed with the requests. Michigan State is still within the original 5-day window to respond, because they received their FOIA several days after the other schools.
Under FOIA rules, government agencies have five business days to respond to an FOIA and can take ten more days after that to announce their final response. Each school has taken that time, meaning it will be several more days before we know how they’ll respond to the requests faculty have called extraordinary.
Wayne State — which altered the website of its Labor Studies Center — confirmed that it has taken the 10 additional days to come up with a response to the FOIA, but declined to comment about the deliberations or what the eventual response might be.
TPM has reached out to Michigan State and the University of Michigan for comment. In recent days, both schools have not responded to requests for comment about their thinking on the FOIAs from TPM.
Late updates: The University of Michigan has responded to TPM’s inquiry. “We’re still looking to see if we have the responsive documents to the request,” said Rick Fitzgerald, a spokesperson for the university.
A spokesperson for Michigan State said the school will “continue to process their request the way all open-record requests are – by the procedures outlined in the Michigan Freedom of Information Act.”
Correction: TPM originally reported Michigan State also requested a 10 day extension to respond to the Mackinac FOIA. In fact, MSU is still within the original 5-day response window allowed by law because they received their FOIA several days after Wayne and the University of Michigan. This post has been updated.
