Nationally known First Amendment attorney Marc Randazza is calling out Mott Community College over a nearly $29 million bill his client received in response to a request for public information.

“A client of mine made a public records request of a community college in Flint Michigan that has an annual revenue of $95 million,” Randazza posted to X on Tuesday. “To respond to her public records request … they want $29 million.”

The April Fools Day post was no joke, with Randazza attaching a screen shot of the letter received in response to the request from Leo Powers, assistant to Mott Community College’s general counsel.

“The College’s good faith estimate of the cost to the College to comply with your request … is $28,904,844.60,” the letter read. “The cost is based on an estimated 600,000 hours of staff time at $48.17 per hour to search for, retrieve, review, examine, and separate exempt material from any non-exempt, to generate report, review, redact exempt materials to review non-exempt material to determine student status.”

Powers detailed an additional 32 hours at $48.17 to redact exempt materials and create electronic copies, 6 hours at $70 for department review, and 20 hours at $44.23, also for department review.

“Therefore, since the cost of complying with your request exceeds $50, the College is permitted to require that a good faith deposit be made before the College begins gathering the material,” Powers wrote. “Therefore, upon receipt of your deposit of $14,452,422.00, we will begin gathering the material.”

Randazza posted screen shots of the original request, as well.

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The requested information included the GPA for the top 10% of students, GPA eligibility for the Phi Theta Kappa international college honor society, percentage of students meeting that eligibility, and information on how the data is compiled.

Randazza’s client also requested “any lists, student counts, or documentation regarding PTK-eligible members generated and provided to PTK or PTK chapter advisors at this campus,” as well as communications and records regarding the honor society at Mott since 2012.

Several folks online questioned whether the April 1 response was legit, prompting Randazza to post a copy of a letter from Acting Associate of Vice President of Human Resources Kristi Dawley detailing what the attorney described as the “same shit in December.”

Dawley alleged in the Dec. 11 email the estimate was calculated using “the hourly wage of the lowest paid College employee capable of performing the foregoing work needed to comply with your request.”

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Folks online were not impressed with Mott’s response, with one X user calculating “this is 300 people working 40 hours a week for an entire year.”

Jarrett Skorup, vice president of communications for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, noted the center’s legal foundation “does pro bono work fighting for open government and has successfully sued dozens of public entities in Michigan, many for FOIA violations.”

Others offered their own creative solutions.

“I would file a new FOIA request for the spreadsheet used to calculate that ‘good faith’ estimate,” David Gaw posted to X. “Cost to produce should equal zero, because they already did the calculation, and need only email it.”

“Or just sue the school and make this part of discovery,” another user posted. “It would certainly be cheaper for her.”

The ordeal isn’t the first time Mott has faced scrutiny over questionable leadership decisions.

Earlier this month, MLive exposed that former Mott President Beverly Walker-Griffea was paid more than $78,000 in 2022 and 2023 to commute to work in Flint from Virginia, despite a contract that required her “to reside within twenty (20) miles of the nearest college district boundary.”

The expense, which included airfare, hotels, car rentals, and per diem payments for meals, was in addition to her roughly $400,000 annual compensation, among the highest among community college presidents in the Great Lakes State.

“I’ve never come across a situation where a president spends most of their time working remotely in any kind of university setting, whether it’s a community college, a four-year undergraduate liberal arts school or an R1 research institution,” James Finkelstein, who has studied college president employment for two decades as a professor at George Mason University, told the news site. “Never heard of it anywhere.”

Michigan taxpayers contributed more than $18 million to MCC in the current fiscal year, according to the Senate Fiscal Agency.

Despite the controversial payments, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer heaped praise on Walker-Griffea’s “record of leadership and excellence” at Mott when she named her director of her new Michigan Department of Lifelong Education, Advancement, and Potential in May 2024, pointing to how the school’s first woman and Black president was “instrumental in the transformation of MCC.”

While a MiLEAP official described Walker-Griffea’s arrangement at Mott as a “cost-saving measure” and insisted MiLEAP is not paying for her to commute from Virginia, the unidentified official would not answer whether Walker-Griffea works remotely for MiLEAP.

“She lives in Michigan” the source said.

“Three months of Walker-Giffea’s MiLEAP schedule obtained by MLive through a Freedom of Information Act request show more than 30 days in that period marked with designations such as ‘no in-person appointments,’ ‘virtual meetings only,’ and ‘do not schedule,’” according to the news site. “In two instances, such designations were placed on five consecutive days.”

Walker-Griffea is registered to vote at an apartment in Genoa Township off Interstate 96, which MLive notes is “roughly midway between Lansing and Detroit Metro Airport.”