FOIA

Records requests must be made in writing and be directed to the public body. The written request may be submitted in person, by mail, by telefax, email or any other delivery method available to the public body. A Freedom of Information request form is available for your convenience below or upon request at the front office of Village Hall.

FOIA Request Form

Online FOIA Request Form

The Freedom of Information statute dictates a specific schedule for copying fees. For black and white, letter or legal sized copies, the first 50 pages are free, and the charges for additional pages may not exceed 15 cents per page.

For color or abnormal sized copies, the municipality may charge the actual cost of copying.

Charges for electronic copies are limited to the actual cost of the recording medium (tape, CD, disk, etc.).

The municipality may not charge more than $1 for certifying a record. Under P.A. 97-0579 (5 ILCS 140/6) Sec. 6. (f) The law allows public bodies to charge an additional amount when responding to a Commercial FOIA Request. Specifically, a public body now may charge up to $10 for each hour spent by personnel in searching for and retrieving a requested record, except that no fees shall be charged for the first eight hours. If a public body imposes any of these new fees for a commercial request, it must provide the requester with an accounting of all fees, costs, and personnel hours in connection with the FOIA request for public records.

All written requests shall be responded to within five (5) working days (5 ILCS/140/3) following the date the request is received, except in the instance when the request is for commercial purposes.

Within 21 working days of receiving a request for commercial purposes the Village of Forest View will:
1.    Provide a reasonable estimate of time needed to comply with the request along with an estimate of the fees which the requestor will be charged
2.    Deny the request pursuant to a statutory exemption
3.    Notify the requestor if the request is unduly burdensome and allow the requestor to revise the request to manageable proportions
4.    Provide the requested records

The five (5) day count begins the day after the receipt of the FOIA request by the FOIA Officer. The requester may be notified of a five (5) day extension (working days) if the files are voluminous, at different locations, or if other reasons make it impossible to assemble and mail the request out within the normal five (5) day period.

Information provided or denied under FOIA, must conform to the legal requirements under the ACT. Certain documents may be exempt from disclosure pursuant to specific section in the Freedom of Information Act.

When a public body denies a request for public records, that body must, within five (5) working days, or within any extended compliance period provided for in the Act, notify the person who made the request, by letter, of the decision to deny the request. The letter must explain the reasons for the denial.

Any person denied access to inspect or copy any public record for any reason may appeal the denial by sending a written notice of appeal to the Public Access Counselor at the following address:

Sara Pratt, Public Access Counselor
Office of the Attorney General
500 S. 2nd Street
Springfield, IL 62706
Phone: 877-299-3642
Fax: 217-782-1396
E-mail: publicaccess@atg.state.il.us

P.A. 97-0579 under Section 2(g) of the Illinois Freedom of Information Act 5 ILCS 140-2(g) a public body may consider a person to be a “recurrent requester” and may take additional time to respond to a new FOIA request if the person has submitted to the same public body:

• A minimum of 50 requests for records in the 12 months immediately preceding a FOIA request;
• A minimum of 15 requests for records within the 30-day period immediately preceding a FOIA request; or
• A minimum of 7 requests for records within the 7-day period immediately preceding a FOIA request.

Within 5 business days after receiving a FOIA request from a recurrent requester, a public body shall notify the requester:

• That the public body is treating the request as a request from a recurrent requester;
• Why the public body is treating the request as a request from a recurrent requester;
• That the public body will send an initial response within 21 business days after receipt
• That the public body may assert the responses listed below.

A public body shall respond to a FOIA request from a recurrent requester within 21 business days after receipt by:

• Providing an estimate of the time required by the public body to provide the records requested and an estimate of the fees to be charged, which the public body may require the person to pay in full before copying the requested documents;
• Denying the request pursuant to one or more of the exemptions set out in this Act;
• Notifying the requester that the request is unduly burdensome and extending an opportunity to the requester to attempt to reduce the request to manageable proportions; or
• Providing the records requested.

Unless the records are exempt from disclosure, a public body shall comply with a FOIA request within a reasonable period considering the size and complexity of the request.

A “voluminous request” is: A request that: (i) includes more than 5 individual requests for more than 5 different categories of records or a combination of individual requests that total requests for more than 5 different categories of records in a period of 20 business days; or (ii) requires the compilation of more than 500 letter or legal-sized pages of public records unless a single requested record exceeds 500 pages.

We have an entire list of records available. Each department has the ability to satisfy requests within the allocated amount of time.