And this is the evidence that bad things are going on, somehow. The records group got the copies faster than if Ancestry.com hadn't gotten involved, and didn't have to pay for the.
https://www.reclaimtherecords.org/freedom-of-information-req...
and
https://us11.campaign-archive.com/?u=5f700fdc65a51d3813e67da...
The short version: we had many onerous requirements put upon us by the New York State Department of Health when we tried to get the records through FOIL, only ONE of which was a crazy-inflated $152,000 price tag that had nothing to do with the actual cost of digitizing the microfiche. The state made up the price. This is illegal under FOIL’s requirement that a requestor pay only the actual costs of digitization. In the links above, you can read the story of how we on our own calculated the actual costs, and provided multiple price comparisons from commercial firms and from the National Archives (NARA), which were a tiny fraction of that inflated estimate.
Getting the records for free after a seventeen month long fight was unexpectedly awesome. But apparently-preferential treatment by government agencies for commercial entities instead of non-profit or individual records requestors is really disturbing. We’re trying to figure out what happened and why. And that’s where this lawsuit, for copies of agency e-mails and contracts and meeting notes and such, is important.
A couple of years ago, I was trying to get some public records from the University of North Carolina. I submitted a request by email, as their website said I could. They responded a week later and said they needed a letter. I sent a letter. They responded to the letter and said that the letter needed to include my cell phone number and email address to process the request. (There was no mention of this before. Records could have easily been mailed to me at my address, and they already had my email address from the aforementioned email incident.) So, I provided the info. I heard nothing for months. I asked for a status update. They said the request was "delayed." I heard nothing for months. I followed up, told them they were in violation of North Carolina state law, and that if they weren't going to provide the records, I'd pursue legal action. Boom, got the records within a couple of days. Like magic.
Also, during my years as a state employee, I noticed that one of the few things that could get the lumbering bureaucracy moving (as an entity, there were plenty of hard-working well-meaning employees) was a threat of a lawsuit or a fine handed down by the feds. The institutional terror around that sort of thing was almost comical at times.
New York government entities are required to use preferred source vendors (usually workshops for disabled people) for certain items when an item or service is available, including scanning. Preferred source vendors aren’t competitively bid and must be used by law.
When I was in school, paper copies of fiche from the state archives cost like $1-1.50 per fiche.
If you do some googling you can find various descriptions of issues, including cost, associated with that in the context of scanning.
https://www.reclaimtherecords.org/records-request/22/
Teaser: “Welcome to the single stupidest lawsuit that our organization has ever had to file.
Alternately, we could subtitle this story let’s all gather round and watch the NYC Department of Records light taxpayer money on fire!”
I was even moved to donate, even though I have no US ancestry ("Donation Confirmation Thank you for supporting Reclaim The Records!")
I am not a lawyer and I might be making it all up.
I did not read the article because of this.
The internet slanders many based on only suspicion.
I suspect that we are not alone in the universe. I suspect that Elvis might still be alive. But I have no proof.
Get some proof.
I'm not going to write some article stating Elvis is still alive and pass it off as fact.
They are trying to get some proof. That's the purpose of the lawsuit. You should try reading the articles from now on.
I'm not going to read articles where someone has made something up.
You may as well start preparing for the forthcoming zombie apocalypse.
For all they know ancestry didn't even ask the state to do the work but did it for them for free, and then after doing the work themselves gave it to these guys (not required).
So no cost estimate needed, no fight about cost needed.
You've got one group demanding detailed costs estimates, demanding names of vendors (the government probably doesn't even have yet because they've not bid it yet).
You've got ancestry who shows up, willing to work for free, willing to give images back, with past experience.
Do we seriously want government to turn group #2 away and battle away with group #1?
Or do we want govt to let group #2 do the work, no battle on price needed, then give the items to group #1. After exercising some common sense, the government is now going to be sued by these guys.
