2/16/11 - The Hamburg Township Board of Trustees faced two separate issues involving Freedom of Information Act requests at its regular meeting Tuesday night. One was a complaint from resident Mary Ann Lamkin, who had requested the daily logs of a Hamburg police officer from last year. The request had been denied because the township did not have the logs. Lamkin asked the board last night to explain the lack of any logs from that day, and the board explained that the township uses the county’s OSSI system to keep records, and that Lamkin would have to submit a request to the county to get the logs. Lamkin told WHMI afterward that this should have been explained to her when the original request was denied. The other issue involved former township clerk Matt Skiba, who claimed that the fees charged by the township for a FOIA request he had filed were excessive, and that he had been supplied with and charged for documents he did not want. Township Clerk Jim Nielson defended the FOIA fee structure at the meeting and pointed out that the biggest charge Skiba complained about, a $119 hourly charge for administration fees, was actually a typo on an invoice. The actual fee is $19 per hour, and this is what Skiba had been charged. Nielson added that if Skiba felt that he had been given an excess of documents, the township board would review that claim and he would be reimbursed immediately. Skiba was recalled by voters in the fall of 2009 and is currently involved in legal action against current and former board members. (TD)