Oakland County school spars with local man over $14,000 FOIA request

An Oakland County man is threatening to sue his local school district for overcharging him when he made an open records request. The district says the $14,000 fee is a reasonable price for a broad and wide-ranging document search.

Adam Piazza filed a records request on Dec. 10 under Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act, seeking information on a range of questions including how the district spends its sinking fund revenue.

Officials at Lake Orion Community Schools, which serves about 2,450 students, say they followed the law in complying with the request, which reaches multiple departments and even organizations outside the district.

Piazza asked for 26 different things, some of which were complex, Mark Snyder, director of communications and marketing at Lake Orion Community Schools, told Michigan Capitol Confidential in an email. The district claimed a 15-day extension to address the request.

Government offices estimate the charge for complying with an open records request by using the hourly cost of the lowest-paid employee who can find the documents. A FOIA officer and the assistant superintendent of business and finance determine which department stored which records and who could find them, said Snyder. The FOIA coordinator then redacts sensitive information.

In some cases, such as when the request involves a technological issue or requires an employee to redact certain items, only highly paid employees can access the information sought. The increase in the minimum wage from $12.48 to $13.73 per hour on Jan. 1, 2026 also bumped up the cost of compliance.

One part of Piazza’s request asked for any internal memoranda, emails or correspondence between administrators regarding sinking fund, or bonded debt, from planning expenditures or projects. Gathering those emails from multiple administrators “is a not a simple keyword search,” Snyder told Capcon. “There are thousands of emails to manually review for potential matching records.”

The request also asked for variances on construction and bid process records. Some are maintained by construction companies, which bill their hourly rates to fulfill the request.

“[T]his fee estimate is significantly larger than most other FOIA estimates the district shares because the requested scope by the submitter was also much larger than the district usually receives in a FOIA request,” Snyder wrote.

Piazza countered that the district views him as “a small fish in a giant pond” and said it needs to be more forthcoming about what he believes is overspending.

“When it’s not their money, they don’t care,” Piazza told Michigan Capitol Confidential in a phone interview... “At the end of the day, let a judge look at it and decide.”

At the center of the disagreement is a large bond issue the district obtained for construction and maintenance.

On Nov. 6, 2018, the district sought and voters approved a $160 million bond. Seven years later, in 2025, the school returned to taxpayers asking for a $272 million bond. Voters rejected that request by 65 votes.

Piazza appealed the district’s fee request, and the Board of Education denied his appeal unanimously on January 28, 2026. He said he is reviewing legal options in his effort.

“I’m not trying to win or lose,” Piazza said. “Tell me if I’m wrong.”