Michigan's Freedom of Information Act, at MCL 15.231 and following, provides that all persons are entitled to full and complete information about a public body's fulfillment of its statutory functions and about the inner working of government in general. The Attorney General's guidance sets out the mechanism: on giving a public body's freedom of information coordinator a written request that describes a public record sufficiently to enable the body to find it, a person has the right to inspect, copy or receive copies, and the body may charge a fee to cover the cost of processing. No particular form is needed, because a written request means a writing that asks for information, including one sent by fax, email or other electronic means, but the description has to be good enough to let the body locate the record, and the office advises including specific search terms and a date range, which narrows the search and keeps the cost down.
Who must answer is a long list. Michigan has over 10,000 public bodies subject to the Act, covering state executive branch officers, employees, agencies, departments, divisions, bureaus, boards, commissions, councils and authorities, though not the governor or lieutenant governor or their executive offices; legislative branch agencies, boards, commissions and councils; counties, cities, townships, villages, intercounty, intercity and regional bodies, school districts, special districts and municipal corporations and their component boards and departments; and any other body created by state or local authority or primarily funded through it. The judiciary is excluded, including the office of the county clerk and its staff when acting as clerk to the circuit court. A request goes to the specific body that holds the records. For Michigan records held locally, see the Michigan county pages.
- Five business days: the response period from the legal date of receipt, extendable once by written notice for ten further business days.
- Lowest paid capable employee: labor is charged at that person's hourly wage whether or not they do the work, in fifteen minute increments rounded down.
- Ten cents a sheet: duplication is capped at actual incremental cost and no more than ten cents a sheet for letter or legal paper, using the most economical method.
- Deposits: where the estimated fee exceeds $50 the body may require a good faith deposit of up to half before it starts work.
Written by SearchSystems.net from Michigan's own systems: the Michigan Attorney General freedom of information page, the Attorney General's freedom of information procedures and guidelines, the Attorney General's written public summary of its procedures and guidelines, Act 442 of 1976, the Freedom of Information Act, on the Michigan Legislature site, MCL 15.235, response, denial and extension, MCL 15.240, appeal, civil action, fees and damages, each read on October 14, 2026 by the SearchSystems editorial team.
The deadline, and the single extension
On the legal date of receipt of a request, a public body has five business days to respond, and where it needs more time it may send a written notice extending the response period by ten further business days. That is one extension, not a rolling series, and the extension notice must give its reasons and the date by which the body will grant, deny or split the request. The legal date of receipt is later than the sending date: under MCL 15.235(1) a request sent by fax, email or other electronic transmission is not received until one business day after it is sent, and one that lands in the body's spam or junk folder is not received until a day after the body first becomes aware of it.
Silence is a decision. A failure to respond within the five days counts as a final determination to deny where it was willful and intentional, or where the request used the words freedom of information, information, FOIA or copy, or a recognizable misspelling of them, in its first 250 words, in the subject line or on the envelope, which is why the word FOIA belongs in every subject line. A written denial must explain the exemption relied on, or certify that the record does not exist under the name given or any other name reasonably known to the body, describe anything separated or deleted, explain the right to appeal to the head of the body or to seek judicial review, and give notice of the right to attorney fees and damages if a court later orders disclosure, and it must be signed by the person designated as responsible for the denial.
How Michigan calculates a fee
Michigan allows more cost recovery than many states but hedges it carefully. Under MCL 15.234 a public body may charge for the labor of searching for, locating and examining records, the labor of reviewing them and separating exempt from non exempt material, the labor of duplication or publication, the cost of copies, and mailing. The two labor categories at the front of that list carry a condition: a fee for search, examination, review and separation may be charged only where failing to charge would result in unreasonably high costs to the public body, and the body must specifically identify the nature of those unreasonably high costs.
The Attorney General's published procedures and guidelines then show how the arithmetic is done, and they are a useful benchmark for testing any Michigan invoice. Labor is calculated at the hourly wage of the lowest paid employee capable of doing that work, whether or not that person is available or actually does it; time is estimated and charged in fifteen minute increments with partial increments rounded down; the wage comes from payroll records for the applicable financial year; and up to 50 percent of the hourly wage may be added toward fringe benefits, capped at the actual cost of those benefits.
No employee may work overtime for a request or have overtime wages included. Duplication is charged at the actual total incremental cost, excluding labor, calculated per sheet and not exceeding ten cents a sheet for letter or legal size paper, with the body required to use the most economical means available, including double sided printing where that saves money and is available. And where a requester inspects original records, the labor of monitoring the inspection is chargeable, but not for the first hour.
Deposits, itemization and abandonment
Where the estimated fee runs beyond $50, the body may require a good faith deposit before it starts processing, and that deposit may not exceed half the total estimated fee. The written notice says whether a deposit is required and gives a best efforts estimate of the time needed to finish the work, which is not binding but must be made in good faith and aimed at being reasonably accurate. The Attorney General's practice illustrates the pattern: it charges where processing a request takes more than two hours, issues the detailed itemization the statute requires, may ask for a deposit first, begins work when the deposit arrives, and releases the non exempt records on payment of the final balance.
Section 15.234 also deals with what happens next if the money does not arrive, covering an increased estimated fee deposit, the treatment of a deposit as a fee, and the failure to pay or appeal a deposit, after which a request is treated as abandoned. A requester who disputes a fee should therefore appeal it rather than simply not paying.
Appealing a fee or a denial
Michigan gives two routes and they can both be used. The first is an administrative appeal to the head of the public body, and the Attorney General's written summary gives the one piece of drafting advice that matters: the appeal must specifically state the word appeal and must identify the basis on which the fee should be reduced or the disclosure decision reversed. Under MCL 15.240(2) the head of the body then has ten business days to reverse the denial, uphold it in writing, or reverse it in part, with one extension of up to ten business days in unusual circumstances; where the head is a board or commission, the appeal counts as received only at its next regularly scheduled meeting.
The second is court. A civil action to compel disclosure goes to the circuit court for the county where the record or an office of the body is located, or to the Court of Claims where a state public body is involved, and must be started within 180 days of the final determination to deny. The court decides the matter de novo, the burden is on the public body to sustain its denial, the judge may read the disputed record in private, the case is expedited in every way, and disobeying the order is contempt.
A requester who prevails is awarded reasonable attorney fees, costs and disbursements. Where the court finds the body arbitrarily and capriciously violated the Act by refusing or delaying disclosure, it must order a civil fine of $1,000 paid to the state and award the requester punitive damages of $1,000 on top of any actual damages, assessed against the public body rather than any individual.
Where the Attorney General cannot help
The office that publishes the best guidance on the Act is also the one that cannot advise on it. The Attorney General states that anyone with specific questions about how the statute applies to their situation needs to consult a private attorney, because MCL 14.32 does not permit the office to give legal advice or opinions to private individuals. What it does provide is the statute, its own freedom of information handbook, its procedures and guidelines, the written public summary of those guidelines, and an online payment route for invoices.
Every public body is required to publish its own procedures and guidelines and a written public summary of them, which is the document to read before arguing with any Michigan agency about what it may charge.
Reading a Michigan response
The first thing to check is the date, because five business days is short and the only lawful extension is one written notice of ten further business days. The second is the itemization, which the statute requires in detail and which should show the wage rate used, the increments charged and the sheet count. Three figures in that itemization are worth testing: labor billed at more than the lowest paid capable employee's wage, copies billed above ten cents a sheet for ordinary paper, and search or review labor charged without the body identifying the unreasonably high costs that justify it.
The third is the appeal, which must use the word appeal and say why, and which preserves the option of a circuit court action where the burden will be on the body rather than on the requester.
Questions about public records requests in Michigan
Related Michigan records
Michigan's other public records guides on this site are the Michigan background check guide for the State Police criminal history service, the Michigan court records guide for the trial court clerks, the Michigan arrest records guide for what a booking makes public, and the Michigan county pages for every county office.