PRINT VERSION: Attorney General Opinion No. 25-IB57

OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE STATE OF DELAWARE

 Attorney General Opinion No. 25-IB57

 December 1, 2025

 VIA EMAIL

Sherry Pearson

togbs19950@outlook.com

RE:     FOIA Petition Regarding the Town of Greenwood

Dear Ms. Pearson:

We write in response to your correspondence alleging that the Town of Greenwood violated Delaware’s Freedom of Information Act, 29 Del. C. §§ 10001-10008 (“FOIA”).  We treat these submissions as a petition for a determination pursuant to 29 Del. C. § 10005 of whether a violation of FOIA has occurred or is about to occur.  As discussed more fully herein, we determine that the Town violated FOIA by failing to meet its burden regarding the completeness of its responses to two requests. The remainder of the claims do not constitute violations of FOIA.

BACKGROUND

You state that you filed seven FOIA requests with the Town of Greenwood.  The Petition makes four separate FOIA claims, alleging the Town violated FOIA by: (1) failing to timely respond to several FOIA requests; (2) providing inaccurate responses and noting some were incomplete; (3) failing to redact the personal information of the requesting parties from the Town’s FOIA log when it produced the log to a separate requesting party; and (4) failing to properly train its FOIA coordinator.

The Town, through its legal counsel, replied to the Petition and included the affidavit of its acting Town Manager who attested to having firsthand knowledge of the representations in the Response and to her belief that the Response was true and correct.  The Town acknowledges that the responses to the requests were made after the statutory deadline, on the sixteenth business day, because the FOIA coordinator did not realize that requests were submitted to an email address no longer in active use.  Upon discovery of the error, the Town states that the FOIA coordinator promptly reviewed and responded to the requests.  The Town states that the allegation about the inaccuracy of the FOIA responses is not sufficiently specific to allow the Town to respond.  Regarding the production of the FOIA log, the Town asserts there is no requirement in FOIA for redacting the contact information of the requesting parties.  The Town argues that because the General Assembly believed contact information was important for a public body to maintain, that information is produced as a part of the log.  Regarding the FOIA coordinator’s training, the Town points out that no training requirement exists in FOIA as a prerequisite to becoming a FOIA coordinator, and nonetheless, the acting Town Manager has undergone FOIA training, most recently on October 1, 2025.

DISCUSSION

Delaware’s FOIA law “was enacted to ensure governmental accountability by providing Delaware’s citizens access to open meetings and meeting records of governmental or public bodies, as well as access to the public records of those entities.”[1]  FOIA requires that citizens be provided reasonable access to and reasonable facilities for the copying of public records.^[2]  The public body has the burden of proof to justify its denial of access to records and to otherwise demonstrate compliance with FOIA.^[3]  In certain circumstances, a sworn affidavit may be required to meet that burden.[4]

The Petition first alleges that the responses to several requests were received beyond the fifteen business days required by the statute. The claims regarding timeliness are moot, as the Petition acknowledges responses have been received.[5]

The Petition’s second allegation – that the responses were inaccurate – is nonspecific, but notations were made on the requests enclosed with the Petition, including two requests noted as incomplete.  The first request sought all legal bills submitted to the Town from May 1, 2025 to September 19, 2025.  The Petition included a copy of the provided report of legal billing from the Town, but you alleged that the “report is incomplete.”[6]  For the second request seeking copies of account registers for each bank account owned by the Town from June 1, 2025 to September 19, 2025, this request also was noted as “incomplete.”[7]  As the Town did not address those claims, we find a violation in this regard and recommend that the Town review its responses to these requests and, to the extent appropriate under FOIA, supplement those responses with additional records or information, if any.

The third claim in the Petition objecting to your contact information appearing in a FOIA log provided to another individual in response to a separate request is not appropriate for consideration in this Opinion.  A citizen who is not the requesting party lacks standing to object to the Town’s response to a separate citizen’s FOIA request.[8]  To the extent you believe the Town violated another law in producing your contact information, such a matter would fall outside the scope of this Office’s authority through the petition process, which is limited to determining violations of the FOIA statute.[9]

The fourth allegation, which argues that the FOIA coordinator lacked the appropriate training for the position, is also not a FOIA violation.  No such training requirements for FOIA coordinators are present in the statute; rather, Section 10007 requires the Attorney General to hold an annual training session for FOIA coordinators.  FOIA coordinators are encouraged to attend, but a mandate to attend this training, or any other training, is not part of the statute.

CONCLUSION

For the reasons set forth above, we conclude that the Town violated FOIA by failing to meet its burden regarding the completeness of its responses to two requests. The remainder of the claims do not constitute violations of FOIA.

Very truly yours,

/s/ Dorey L. Cole

__________________________

Dorey L. Cole

Deputy Attorney General

Approved:

/s/ Patricia A. Davis

__________________________

Patricia A. Davis

State Solicitor

cc:       James P. Sharp, Town Solicitor

[1]           Judicial Watch, Inc. v. Univ. of Del., 267 A.3d 996, 1004 (Del. 2021).

[2]           29 Del. C. § 10003(a).

[3]           29 Del. C. § 10005(c).

[4]            Judicial Watch, Inc.,267 A.3d at 1008-1012.

[5]           See, e.g., Flowers v. Office of the Governor, 167 A.3d 530, 546 (Del. Super. 2017); Chem. Indus. Council of Del., Inc. v. State Coastal Zone Indus. Control Bd., 1994 WL 274295, at *13 (Del. Ch. May 19, 1994); Del. Op. Att’y Gen. 18-IB30, 2018 WL 3118433, at *2 (Jun. 7, 2018); Del. Op. Att’y Gen. 17-IB35, 2017 WL 3426275, n. 3 (July 31, 2017) (citing The Library, Inc. v. AFG Enter., Inc., 1998 WL 474159, at *2 (Del. Ch. July 27, 1998)).

[6]           Petition, p. 2.

[7]           Id., p. 32.

[8]           Del. Op. Att’y Gen. 19-IB65, 2019 WL 6047162, at *2 (Oct. 28, 2019) (determining that “the right to petition the Attorney General is also inherently limited to the ‘citizen denied access.’”).

[9]           29 Del. C. § 10005(e).

 

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