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RECORDS
From Page 1A
versity of Michigan is to share
knowledge and to share infor-
mation, and it's something that
we take very seriously here," she
said.
REQUEST FOR PCARD
TRANSACTIONS
In April, the Daily submitted
a FOIA request for records of
PCard transactions of all Uni-
versity of Michigan-Ann Arbor
employees during fiscal year
2010.
Out of roughly 42,000 Univer-
sity faculty and staff, about 6,100
possess a PCard, according to
Rowan Miranda, associate vice
president for finance. The cards
can be used like credit cards, and
employees use them to pay for
travel, research expenses or sup-
plies for departments. Most Uni-
versity employees with a PCard
have a spending limit of $5,000,
and total PCard expenses for the
University average $105 million
to $115 million per year, accord-
ing to Miranda.
The University implemented
the PCard system, which stores
expense reports electronically,
in 1995 to better track employee
spending and reduce the cost of
small-dollar purchases.
"The modern business prac-
tice is to use PCards because the
cost of processingthe transaction
when used appropriately can be
so much less," Miranda said.
Upon receiving a phone call
from Sellinger that the Daily's
request for PCard transactions
would cost thousands of dollars,
the Daily narrowed the request
to employees in the Office of the
President and upper level admin-
istrators including: University
Provost Philip Hanlon, Athletic
Director Dave Brandon, Execu-
tive Vice President for Medical
Affairs Ora Pescovitz, Executive
Vice President and Chief Finan-
cial Officer Timothy Slottow, Vice
President for Development Jerry
May, Vice President for Research
Stephen Forrest, Vice Presi-
dent and General Counsel Suel-
lyn Scarnecchia, Vice President
for Student Affairs E. Royster
Harper and Executive Director of
Research Communications David
Lampe.,
On May 27, the FOIA Office
responded that the information
would cost $1,800.
Asubsequentattempttonarrow
the request to University Presi-
dent Mary Sue Coleman - instead
of her entire office - and six of the
nine aforementioned administra-
tors yielded an $870 fee.
An appeal submitted to Gary
Krenz, special counsel to Uni-
versity President Mary Sue Cole-
man, to lower the cost of the
PCard FOIA request is pending.
Under section 15.234 of the
Michigan Freedom of Informa-
tion Act, institutions may only
charge for the cost of producing
records, which often means the
cost of printing and mailing doc-
uments. However, a public body
may charge a fee in order to pay
an employee to review content -
such as students' transcripts or
private information like Social
Security numbers - that may be
exempt from the law. The law
states that public bodies may only
impose a fee if a request "would
result in unreasonably high costs
to the public body because of the
nature of the request."
In this case, Lisa Mikalonis, an
intellectual property and media
attorney based in Southfield,
Mich., said the Daily's request is
"more of a usual request which
arguably would fall under the
that part of the definition where
(the Daily) shouldn't have been
charged anything at all."
To gauge whether the cost of
retrieving PCard data at the Uni-
versity of Michigan was reason-
able, the DailysentFOIArequests
over the past three months to
each Big Ten school asking for
all PCard transactions of univer-
sity employees who possessed a
PCard in fiscal year 2010. North-
western University and Penn-
sylvania State University are
exempt from FOIA laws because
Northwestern is a private school
and Penn State is protected by
Pennsylvania's Right-to-Know
law, which doesn't require uni-
versities to grant public access of
their information.
Of the schools that responded,
Ohio State University, University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
and University of Nebraska-
Lincoln sent the records free
of charge. Purdue University
requested $500 for the six months
of data it had on file. Michigan
State University requested $200
for 10 hours of labor to compile
records of more than 140,000
transactions. The University of
Iowa requested $181.50 for three
hours of labor to gather records
for more than 2,500 employees
who totaled 275,000 PCard trans-
actions.
Each state has different open
records laws with various fee
regulations, but LoMonte said it
doesn't make sense that the Uni-
versity of Michigan would charge
thousands of dollars to retrieve
the same information other uni-
versities offered for free or at a
lower cost.
"If Michigan is like most
schools, that data is all comput-
erized, and it's the kind of thing
that ought to be retrievable by a
skilled IT person in a matter of
hours and not days or weeks," he
said.
At the University, the FOIA
Office charges for requests if
more than two hours of labor are
required to obtain the informa-
tion. The office calculates charg-
es of requests based on what it
would cost to pay the hourly sal-
ary of the lowest-paid employee
capable or authorized to find the
requested material.
Section 15.234 of the Freedom
of Information Act states that
a public body must identify the
nature of "unreasonably high
costs" - meaning that a body
must provide a cost breakdown if
it imposes a fee. The Daily asked
for a cost breakdown of the $870
fee on Sept. 15, 2611 and did not
receive the estimate until Nov. 11,
2011.
The cost breakdown to gener-
ate PCard transactions indicated
that it would cost $72.50 per hour
to retrieve PCard transactions
for Coleman and $346.63 per
hour for Pescovitz.
In an interview Tuesday, Sell-
inger explained that the cost is so
high because, due to privacy con-
cerns, each administrator named
in the request would have to
review his or her PCard transac-
tions and redact any information
for individuals whose identities
could be revealed in the PCard
statement.
"It is our obligation to make
sure we don't provide informa-
tion that we shouldn't," she said.
Despite the disparity in fees
charged by the Big Ten schools,
Doyle said the University of
Michigandoesn'tusecosttodeter
requests, and fees are always
"very carefully calculated." She
added that the sheer number of
people at the University makes
it difficult to keep costs down for
large requests like PCards trans-
actions for all employees.
"I thinkthe thingthathappens
here that other institutions don't
experience is the large number of
people that are involved around
the University when you give a
request like that," she said. "We
just have a larger population of
people with PCards."
REQUEST FOR
PARKING TICKETS
On Sept. 16, 2011 the FOIA
Office notified the Daily via a
written letter that it would cost
$1,240 to respond to a Sept. 11,
2011 request for the number of
parking tickets given out by the
DepartmentofPublic Safetyeach
day from Sept. 1, 2010 to Sept. 1,
2011. When the Daily inquired
about the expense, Sellinger
responded that parking ticket
reports are stored in separate
computer files for each day, and
$1,240 is what it would cost to
pay one person to download
every file in one year.
An appeal submitted to Krenz
to lower or waive the cost of the
FOIA request was denied last
month.
University Department of
Public Safety spokeswoman
Diane Brown confirmed it would
take several hours to look up
parking ticket data because the
information is stored by day and
not month or year. She explained
that the system doesn't pose
record-keepingproblems for DPS
officers because the city of Ann
Arbor handles disputes and pay-
ments of parking tickets.
However, LoMonte pointed
out that parking ticket reports
are the kind of data a school
should be able to generate in a
matter of minutes or "with the
push of a few buttons."
"If the institution is well-man-
aged, they ought to be able to put
their hands on their own records
easily, and if they can't - if vari-
ous obvious records are kept in a
disorganized way or non-search-
able way - you really have to ask
yourself if that university has
management problems," LoMon-
te said.
University spokesman Rick
Fitzgerald said some data at the
University can be accessed in a
few minutes with a computer,
while other records are still kept
on paper.
"There's an enormous range of
how information is stored, and I
can well imagine that that's the
case in any large decentralized
institution like the University of
Michigan," he said.
After requesting similar park-
ing ticket information from the
10 other Big Ten schools subject
to open records requests, eight
of the schools sent the informa-
tion at no cost. Of those, three
sent the monthly - instead of
daily - breakdown of parking
tickets. The only other school
to charge a fee was MSU, which
charged $250 to provide a daily
breakdown for how many of the
115,684 tickets given last year
were handed out by the Michigan
State Police Department.
Upon submitting a FOIA
request to the city of Ann Arbor
for the number of parking tickets
administered by the Ann Arbor
Police Department in the same
time period, the city provided
data for 90,925 tickets at no cost.
An Oct. 6 response to a sepa-
rate FOIA request to the Univer-
sity's FOIA Office indicated that
DPS issued 43,078 parking tick-
ets from Sept. 1, 2010 to Sept. 1,
2011.
When comparing MSU's cost
to the University of Michigan,
Mikalonas, the attorney, said
both schools could be following
the state's FOIA guidelines and
calculate different fees. How-
ever, she said it's suspicious that
the University would charge
hundreds of dollars more when
it gave out fewer tickets than
MSU.
"A $1,000 discrepancy, to me,
suggests that somebody was
makingthe calculation incorrect-
ly because I can't imagine that
those two departments would be
that different in terms of their
hourly wages for the lowest-paid
employee to find the amount of...
parkingtickets (given each day),"
Mikalonis said.
A COST TO
COMPUTE A COST
In addition to the PCard trans-
actions and parking ticket data
requests, the Daily submitted a
request on Nov. 13 asking for all
reports and/or documents that
mention the Native American
Graves Protection and Repatria-
tion Act from March 26, 2010 to
the present. In a phone conver-
sation last month, Sellinger said
the request was so large that
the office may have to charge
a deposit in order to calculate
the cost estimate of the FOIA
response.
In an interview this week,
Sellinger said it would take more
than two hours to contact every
University employee encom-
passed in the request and pro-
duce a cost estimate.
"When a request is that broad,
it's difficult for us to proceed if
the time to prepare the cost esti-
mate exceeds the time that we
would normally charge," Sell-
inger said.
But LoMonte and Mikalonis
said charging a deposit to calcu-
late an estimate is not permitted
under the law.
"They're supposed to charge
you only for directly respond-
ing to the request, not for some
incidental or tangential cost,"
LoMonte said.
However, the University typi-
cally requires a requester to pay
half the fee of a FOIA cost before
the office starts to collect data,
which Mikalonis said complies
with the law.
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to be. I need 50 percent of public institutions don't mind
e before I then go through sharing information, they often
charge expensive fees because
they don't want to be bothered.
THE HIGH-COST "In today's economy, public
FOIA TREND bodies are very understaffed,"
she said. "So you're asking some-
2010, the University body to stop what they're doing
ed $7,878 from FOIA and respond, and that cduld be
st fees as well as $11,841 another basis for comingup with
09 and $22,184 in 2008, what are arguably unreasonably
ding to the 2010 University fees to deter you - not neces-
report. sarily because they don't want
Monte explained that it public - but because they just
Is cannot legally make a don't want totake the time to get
off FOIA requests, and you that information."
annot use large fees as a Additionally, LoMonte said
o deter requests. However, though the media often acts
oesn't mean it doesn't hap- in the public's interest when
requesting records, many insti-
e definitely see from time tutions get away with charging
ne that there are schools exorbitant fees because few news
are marking up the cost organizations have the money to
rossly overestimating the challenge fees or denials of open
1 cost for what we think records requests in court.
Aerrent motives," LoMonte "Government agencies have
They just don't like people figured out that they can get a
g into their business, and way with a lot of concealment
ing a jackpot fee is a way knowing that the odds of being
lying their request without challenged are in their favor,"
ng a request in function, if LoMonte said.
word." However, there are instances
yle emphasized in an inter- of professional and student jour-
Tuesday that this is not nalists challenging institutions
ase with the University of of higher education about their
gan. open records requests. In Octo-
s never our goal to deter a ber, a student journalist at The
request because we really Campus Ledger - the student
it extremely essential," newspaper of Johnson Coun-
said. "It's that democratic try Community College - and
of FOIA that we hold kind the Student Press Law Center
red in our office. " brought a lawsuit against the
:he 436 requests to the Uni-- Kansas college for charging the
y last year, 111 came from newspaper $47,426 to obtain
edia, 105 came from private e-mails exchanged between two
es and 55 came from attor- administrators during a seven-
Personal records - includ- month period. The school also
nployment agreements and estimated it would cost $9,745.96
ensation information for to obtain just one day of e-mails.
tic Department officials - Last week, the former student
been the most requested journalist won the lawsuit, and
nents since 2007, according the cost for the records was low-
report. ered to $450.
an interview with The In LoMonte's opinion, the
gan Daily on Tuesday, Uni- media has to "really need the
y President Mary Sue Cole- record" to be motivated enough
aid the University tries to to take an institution to court
y with as many requests as over a denial or fee.
le. "There are very few news
e make a very sincere effort organizations that are willing
se, ultimately, I believe to spend tens of thousands of
'e need to be as transparent dollars chasing public records
can," Coleman said. "There in this economy," LoMonte said.
me things that either we "That's just the sad reality."
have records or we can't
y with, but we try to com- - Daily News Editor
cause we don't have things Joseph Lichterman
trying to hide. This is contributed to this report.
MAJOR
From Page 1A
centration and a professor of
philosophy and women's studies,
said the program aims to equip
students with the analytical
skills necessary to combat cur-
rent global issues.
"(The goal of the program is)
to learn how to understand and
describe what's going on with
these phenomena of politics and
economics in relation to what do
we want the world to be like,"
Anderson said.
She said the concentration
emphasizes a combination of
qualitative and quantitative rea-
soning - skills that can prepare
students for success in the com-
petitive job market.
Due to the necessary faculty
supervision for advising and
limited resources, the number of
students accepted to the concen-
tration will be capped at 20 stu-
dents next semester, according
to Anderson.
Anderson said the concentra-
tion will be a good fit for "people
who want to combine their pas-
sion for making the world better
with very solid empirical under-
standing of (global issues)."
She said similar programs
have proven to be popular among
students at other universities,
such as the University of Penn-
sylvania, University of Arizona,
Duke University, University of
North Carolina and Yale Univer-
sity.
Economics Prof. Jim Adams
said he is excited about the
collaboration because he is
interested in interdisciplinary
concentrations. He said the care-
ful and reflective analytical tools
provided by the curriculum will
provide students with a variety
of career paths ranging from
education to legal practice.
"The program takes the best
of the verbally rigorous training
of the LSA with the best of the
quantitative training of the LSA
and puts it together in a dyna-
mite package," Adams said.
He added that the PPE pro-
gram is expected to be a chal-
lenging concentration.
"There are a lot of hurdles
that students will have to jump
to navigate this program suc-
cessfully," Adams said. "It will
require a lot of initiative on the
part of the student."
LSA sophomore Phillip
Schermer, who said he is inter-
ested in applying to the program,
said he views 'the smaller sized
concentration as a way to per-
sonalize a much larger school.
"When students have oppor-
tunities where they can work
in smaller groups with people
with similar interests, they feel a
deeper connection to the Univer-
sity," Schermer said.
He added that unlike double
or triple majors, the PPE pro-
gram frees up credits to explore
other fields. Schermer also said
he likes that the concentration
consolidates multiple ranges of
study and interests.
"I don't know if I want to go
into law or business, and (the
PPE concentration) sets me up
to do both," Schermer said. "This
allows me to follow my career
interest, and it allows me to take
other interesting classes in the
University."
DRIVERS
From Page 1A
According to the study, the
rates of teenagers with driver's
licenses have decreased at every
age. In 1983, 80 percent of 18 year
olds held driver's licenses, and in
2008, the number was 65 per-
cent.
Sixteen-year-olds are also less
likely to have a license today than
they were 25 years ago. In 2008,
31 percent of 16 year olds had a
license, compared to 46 percent
in 1983, according to the study.
Young adults under age 30 are
also less likely to be on the road
today, as the study indicates a
10-percent drop in the number
of drivers in their 20s and a 5
percent drop in drivers who are
in their 30s compared to 1983
levels.
Another main finding of the
study, according to Sivak, is that
senior citizens are becoming less
likely to relinquish their licenses
as they grow older.
"We think that this reflects the
fact that the elderly are less likely
to give up their mobility now than
they were 25 years ago," Sivak
wrote.
Fred Woodhams, a spokesman
for the Michigan Department of
State, confirmed that an increas-
ing number of senior citizens are
continuingto stay on the roads, as
America's population continues
to age.
"We recognize that people
are living longer lives and living
(more) active lives," Woodhams
said.
He added that senior drivers
seem to be "very safe drivers"
since they tend to use their seat
belts often and are not likely to
drive drunk or be overly aggres-
sive behind the wheel.
Senior citizens account for 16.5
percent of Michigan drivers, but
only represent 8 percent of driv-
ers involved in crashes, according
the Woodhams.
However, Woodhams acknowl-
edged that senior drivers do tend
to raise public concern.
"The issue of senior drivers
is (one) we get a lot of questions
about, especially from families,"
he said. "We encourage people to
be aware of their abilities."
Sivak echoed Woodham's sen-
timents, adding that the shift in
age of America's drivers could
have serious implications for the
number of vehicles purchased
and environmental consequences
of transportation in the future.
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