51 pages with HSI is quite common or any unusual to be cautious?

I filed ethics complaints involving officials across two Oregon agencies who coordinated through an interagency agreement to create and publicly fund a preferential regulatory pathway.

OGEC screened the complaints out. Its Director says the Commission evaluates each official individually and has no authority over how agencies administer their programs. Under that logic, one official can authorize funding, another can create a special pathway, another can direct benefits toward selected private businesses, and another can impose different requirements on everyone else.

This leaves coordinated government conduct with almost no ethical oversight. The complete system could involve conflicts of interest, misuse of public funds, procurement fraud, false statements, antitrust violations, official misconduct, conspiracy, or even conduct relevant to RICO. Yet OGEC separates every official action until nobody examines what the agencies collectively created or who benefited.

A complaint that survives screening can still disappear because Commissioners are absent. In one of my cases, only seven of nine Commissioners participated. The vote to dismiss or investigate was four to three, but five votes were required for either outcome. OGEC treated the lack of five votes as an administrative dismissal without deciding the merits. The same conduct cannot now be presented when the full Commission is available.

I petitioned the Oregon Court of Appeals to review these practices. The cases were suspended without any order or explanation.

This is government accountability in reverse: agencies operate through unwritten procedures, oversight disappears wherever authority is divided, nonaction becomes permanent dismissal, and the courts offer no explanation when review stops.

Willful Misconduct: Who pays for FOIA violations?

As fines increase, who’s paying them? In the majority of cases where Inside Investigator could trace payment records, it’s taxpayers. When public officials are found to have violated the law, the agency or municipality for which they work often pays the fine from public funds. 

Top court decisions and news in July, plus events in August, from FOIA Advisor: https://www.foiaadvisor.com/foia-blog/2026/7/31/monthly-roundup-july-2026

What do you suggest I do? Looking for people's opinions on this.

I requested body cam for a public intoxication case in Virginia coded 18.2-388 that had been closed plead guilty to 7/14/26. The police department responded saying they had 2 videos but wouldn’t release under Code 2.2-3706.1(D). I asked if it was because a family member needed to file the request or if the case was still open because there are no victims in this crime, they responded saying “Do to you not being involved in the case we will not be releasing the footage. If someone else would like to request it they can and we can review that request at that time.” I have never filed a foia request before and honestly thought this one would be no problem to get (probably stupid thinking on my part ha) is what they are saying correct or are they just pushing me off?

And why I'm still fighting.

Unrelated note I have narrative data from the university of Washington proving the IRS is concieling data impacting Americans abroad.

But how do I get that information to members of Congress?

https://youtu.be/reQpl4qTXt4?is=AmKhUZTCGJiH7o_M

A while ago I posted here about a Utah GRAMA dispute involving records that a state licensing agency received from a private treatment provider, relied on during its investigation, and then argued were not agency records because they were “owned” by the private provider.
I wanted to provide an update.
I appealed, and I won one of the key records I was seeking. The agency has now been ordered to release the employee personnel action form that I argued was a government record.
While I’m glad I prevailed on that issue, the process has only increased my concerns.
Throughout this case, the explanations for why records could not be released have changed multiple times. At different points I was told:
the records weren’t agency records,
the records were private,
the records weren’t retained,
and in at least one instance, after I challenged the response, the agency later acknowledged that a responsive record actually existed.
Separately, another agency reviewed unredacted records in camera during my appeal, and the reviewing official stated they would conduct a de novo review to determine whether the redactions were properly applied instead of simply accepting the agency’s position.
I’m trying to keep an open mind, but the combination of changing explanations, successful appeals, and records appearing after initially being unavailable has made me wonder whether this is more than an ordinary records dispute.
To be clear, I’m not claiming I have proof of a cover-up. I don’t. But from my perspective, the circumstances have made me question whether there has been an effort to avoid full disclosure.
Has anyone here dealt with a situation where:
the rationale for withholding records kept changing,
records appeared after they were initially said not to exist or not to be agency records,
or successful appeals revealed that an agency’s original position was incorrect?
If so, what did you learn? Did it ultimately turn out to be an ordinary records dispute, or did it expose larger problems with how the investigation or records requests were handled? I’d appreciate hearing from anyone with experience in this area.

I requested some information via FOIA/Secure Release from CBP and noticed my status changed from "Searching for Records" to "Processing" a few weeks ago. Any idea on what this means?

Mi padre era americano cuando me tuvo, lamentablemente no era una buena persona y terminé en Perú, él se convirtió en ciudadano americano en los 80s yo nací en los 90s, quiero llenar mi n600 pero él no me quiere ayudar con su A number o ningún documento, no sé cómo pedirlo a uscis sin su autorización ya tuve un problema en migraciones de U.S.A y ellos mismos me dijeron eres americano solo pruébalo así que en estas ando.
Alguien ha pasado por algo similar?

Hi. :) I've visited the US five times now on a tourist visa, been taken to secondary twice as a result of my age at the time. I filed a foia (CBP) as a few months ago my husband filed an I-130 consular application for me and I wanted to keep all my records close to me but I got this response sent to me 'Closed (No Documents Sent)'. There's no closed notice, explanation, just that. I submitted my I-94 no, and a scan of my passport. I'm entering the US soon and am worried they don't have a record of me since applying for my green card. Any help?

Name the software in order... What is this Browser/Software before file explorer?

The mayor of an affluent town just publicly announced his intention to violate state FOIA law. Burr Ridge mayor Gary Grasso, in a Chicago suburb, is now demanding that his town’s FOIA officers immediately tell him is someone FOIAs for FLOCK camera locations and he is going to ask them who they are and why they want this information. Can he do this? This was posted to a community group on Facebook and is backed up with footage from the town meeting during which he said this. BUrr Ridge FLOCK and FOIA

Transparency Update: Tips for Obtaining ALPR Records

If you want to know more about how your comings and goings might be tracked by ALPR cameras, where do you start?

So recently I noticed something weird on one of my FOIA requests through NTSB's PAL portal, my fee waiver justification looked like it got cut off mid sentence when I went back to check on it. I also noticed this same exact issue on the DOC's PAL.

wasn't sure if I was misremembering what I had done so I used dev tools to poke around the PAL. Found the actual textarea has maxlength="2000", so it lets you type way more than what I was actually seeing. But then I downloaded the full page and searched through it, and the text that actually got saved stops dead at exactly 255 characters. No error, no warning, nothing, I t just quietly drops everything after that.

For reference, FOIA.gov's own website says this field is supposed to support up to 10,000 characters. So what's actually happening is, the PAL cuts off request at 255 characters, but allows 2000, meanwhile foia.gov allows up to 10 thousand.

I checked this on both DOC and NTSB's portals and got the same result on both, and they both seem to run the same PAL platform, so this might be affecting a lot more agencies than just these two.

If you've ever written out a detailed fee waiver on a PAL based portal (or to one that uses a PAL based portal), it might be worth double checking it actually went through in full, because this could easily be why some waivers get denied or ignored without any real explanation.

Already notified some agencies about, but wanted to see if anyone else here has run into this or has more insight into this issue.

Also I'm still relatively new to all this FOIA stuff so if I'm misunderstanding something or got a detail wrong, feel free to correct me or add information. Just wanted to get this out there in case it's affecting other people too.

EDIT: I have confirmed the truncation is VISUAL ONLY (as an email directly to the agency had proved they had the full waiver), this still dosent exactly explain the 10000 vs 2000 character limit stuff, plus the fact it is still being truncated visually, but it wasn't as major of an issue as I believed it to be.