Michigan's Freedom of Information Act law dates to 1976, a time when local governments mostly used paper maps to plan and coordinate information about local geography. Paper maps are ordinary records, which can easily be described and easily copied, and the law at the time treated them just like any other pieces of paper.

Act 462 of 1996, the Enhanced Access to Public Records Act, recognized the expenses that local governments were going through to digitize their tax and assessment records and to prepare accurate base maps that could be produced and manipulated digitally. It allowed for agencies to set forth a schedule of fees that was different from (and higher than) the FOIA law's standard set of fees. 

Instead of simply charging for the time that a clerk would take to produce a report, it was possible to charge "reasonable fees" associated with recovering the operating expenses "directly related to the public body's provision of enhanced access."

Governments and agencies put forth policies surrounding fees and access, like this 1998 policy document from Washtenaw County. It included costs like "Aerial Photo Digital Files $250 per reproducible tile." If these records had been available under FOIA, the only allowable cost would be the cost of reproduction, and not the cost associated with production of the "enhanced" file.

The implication for FOIA requests

Agencies are allowed to charge reasonable fees for access to information from geographic information systems, but the statute does not specify a maximum set price. If a county or municipality has an expensive operations budget for its public records management, its fees for access to records may be high. From the statute:

"(c) "Operating expenses" includes, but is not limited to, a public body's direct cost of creating, compiling, storing, maintaining, processing, upgrading, or enhancing information or data in a form available for enhanced access, including the cost of computer hardware and software, system development, employee time, and the actual cost of supplying the information or record in the form requested by the purchaser."

As always, though, governments have some leeway for setting fees if the request is in the public interest. The policy of Washtenaw County spells out examples where fees may be waived, including cases where information is related to public health and safety, for non-profit research purposes, to explain the rights or obligations of individuals, or when the fees would get in the way of other public policy goals.

If you want to minimize the costs of getting geographic data from government, you should keep these considerations in mind. If there's a question, ask first to see the agency's policy for enhanced access, and see how the fees are structured. You may find that one part of a government body has an internal need and use for a particular portion of the GIS system, and thus by directing your question at them and not the front desk you may find someone who both understands your question and understands how giving you a map will help further their mission.

Links

Here are links to some of the area municipalities and agencies that have mapping programs that include digital map files.

• Ann Arbor: AAGIS includes "a central data resource serving all citywide application needs for land records management, geographic data processing, infrastructure management, and map production." Some, but not all, of these map layers are also available on the City of Ann Arbor data catalog.
• Washtenaw County: The Washtenaw County map store lets you purchase maps online from a set of previously selected common requests. If you are looking for a custom map, go to the Washtenaw County GIS department, which can produce custom maps. The online mapping tool MapWashtenaw has a number of layers available, but you can't export the maps you create except as image files like PDF or GIF.

Edward Vielmetti writes the FOIA Friday column for AnnArbor.com. Contact him at edwardvielmetti@annarbor.com.