***This Request for Review applies the FOIA law a little bit differently in that we believe the violation exists irrelevant of whether someone visits the Attorney General’s website for FOIA instructions/information or submits a FOIA request to the AG’s office. The AG’s office encourages the public to turn to the Public Access Counselor’s Office when there are FOIA and OMA issues. Our request was sent to the PAC Office Sunday, January 21, 2024. As of Sunday, January 28, 2024, there has been no response from the Public Access Counselor’s office, nor has the AG’s website changed.***
Dear PAC Office,
We wish to request a review of the Illinois Office of the Attorney General on the grounds of a 5 ILCS 140/4(b) violation, in which such a discovery should not need a FOIA request to be submitted to trigger the right to report the past and future violation(s) to your office and have such a complaint properly reviewed by your office.
Based on evidence recently sent to us (screenshot attached), there is allegedly at least one additional FOIA Officer with the AG’s FOIA department, Matthew C. Rogina. Currently, the website lists only Elizabeth Ptacek’ name with the title “FOIA Officer” in a directory format.
Therefore, it stands to reason that for whatever reason(s) Mr. Rogina felt obligation to be recognized as a “FOIA Officer” via an email address belonging to the GovQA domain brings into clear focus yet another reason why Section 4b of the FOIA law is so crucial in this era and cannot continue to be treated as “small stuff” not to be concerned about.
Without proof anywhere on the AG’s website correlating Mr. Rogina to the role of FOIA Officer, this opens the door to legitimate questions on why such an oversight(?) has been allowed to stay present within the AG’s office…let alone your division of the AG’s office being presented to the public at large as a logical entity to report this violation to.
In addition, the existence of the violation is not reliant on whether or not a FOIA requester ever visited the web page to begin with, as there is no such qualification in the statute.
In other words, our request is preventative in nature and scope as it relates to an untold number of direct FOIA violations and a likely violation when we file a FOIA request this upcoming week. We request you inquire as to how many legally appointed and trained FOIA Officers are there in the Office of the Attorney General and what are their names? (screenshot of search results attached)
If we are in error and Elizabeth Ptacek is truly the only FOIA Officer, then of course the website should remain the same and no violation should be recorded.
However, if there is more than one FOIA Officer, surely your office is exactly the right place to ask for help in resolving this matter in a quick and clear manner, including ensuring that a record of the violation and what corrective actions were taken should it be discovered that Mr. Rogina has, in fact, been a legally appointed and trained FOIA Officer of the AG’s office.
We thank you for your consideration and the work that you do for the people of Illinois.
Regards,
FOIA Request Team
MyCivilDuty.com
Exhibit 1 – Screenshot of the bottom of an email sent in response to a FOIA request January 2024.
Exhibit 2 – A screenshot of the search results on the AG’s website using his name taken Sunday, January 21, 2024. This search result does not associate the title of “FOIA Officer” with Mr. Rogina, rather the result is due to Tim Orwig being properly listed as a FOIA Officer. Therefore, if this document did not exist on the AG’s website, there would be zero evidence that a “Matthew C. Rogina” was an employee of the AG’s office in any capacity whatsoever.”
***In other words, this situation creates a need for an Artificial Inquiry via a formal FOIA request just to clarify whether someone is falsely claiming to be a FOIA Officer for the Attorney General’s office compared to likelihood their website just not being in compliance with the FOIA law for who knows how long.
One option represents a FOIA violation that can be easily corrected and maintained, especially with the help of the PAC Office Counselors.
The other option represents a path towards the hypothesis that the AG’s office is having an “identity” crisis of some type.
Either way, this question does not represent a need to challenge the law as being unreasonable or unreachable.
Instead, it represents an opportunity for the Attorney General’s Office to set an example of how straight-forward and unencumbered some corrective actions need to be, such as making sure their web presence is in compliance with laws it has been tasked to enforce and endorse.
This is why our next step is to FOIA request a list of all certified FOIA Officer’s with the AG’s office and publish the results.***