By Ryan Michaels | The Mane Mirror
Government transparency is supposed to be a right.
Not a privilege.
Not a luxury.
Not something reserved only for people who can afford thousands—or tens of thousands—of dollars to access records about government decisions that directly affect their lives.
But my experience with the Maine Department of Health and Human Services tells a very different story.
It tells a story of delay, shifting explanations, escalating costs, procedural games, and a public records process that appears to function less like a path to accountability and more like a wall built to keep citizens out.
It Started With a Simple Question
I filed a Freedom of Access Act request seeking records related to DHHS and the Division of Administrative Hearings placing OCFS investigative appeals on administrative hold while prioritizing MaineCare appeals.
This was not a personal vendetta.
It was a basic transparency question.
Who made the decision?
When was it made?
What was the rationale?
Were affected families notified?
Were there internal emails, directives, policies, or meeting notes explaining why one group of appeals was delayed while another category was prioritized?
These are exactly the kinds of questions public records laws are supposed to answer.
At first, DHHS told me the request would cost $0 and would take approximately four weeks to complete.
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(Image Description: Original August 1, 2025 FOAA response estimating the request would cost $0 and would take approximately four weeks to complete.)
Four weeks.
No cost.
A straightforward public records request about a public agency decision.
Then four weeks passed.
Then another month.
Then another.
Instead of receiving records, I was left chasing answers.
Then the Price Changed
Months later, after the original deadline had already come and gone, DHHS finally responded.
But instead of producing the requested records, the Department dramatically changed the estimate.
The same request that had originally been estimated at $0 now required 20 hours of staff time, $450 in fees, and an additional two-month processing timeline after payment.
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(Image Description: Invoice issued for FOAA Request #1400 demanding $450 before processing would continue.)
The Department later explained that additional responsive records had been located and therefore the request would now require substantially more time and money.
They also denied my request for a fee waiver.
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(Image Description: Letter denying the fee waiver request and explaining that additional responsive records had increased the estimated time and cost.)
That naturally raises an important question.
If the Department initially believed this request required less than two hours of work, what changed?
Why did a request that was supposedly free suddenly require hundreds of dollars?
And why did that explanation only arrive after the original deadline had already expired?
Those questions remain unanswered.
Then Came the $50,875 Wall
A second FOAA request sought broader records involving DHHS, OCFS, internal communications, and records relating to me.
The Department initially estimated approximately 90.9 hours and $2,272.50.
Then the estimate changed again.
This time it didn’t increase slightly.
It exploded.
The Department informed me that approximately 15,282 potentially responsive emails had been identified.
The new estimate?
2,037 staff hours.
$50,875.
Nine to twelve additional months after payment.
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(Image Description: Invoice for FOAA Request #1401 totaling $50,875.)
Think about that.
A citizen asks for public records.
The response is a bill larger than many people’s annual income.
Whether the estimate accurately reflected the amount of work required or not, the practical effect was unmistakable.
The records became financially inaccessible.
Eventually, both requests were administratively closed after DHHS stated that it had not received a response regarding payment or narrowing the requests.
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(Image Description: Administrative abandonment letter stating that FOAA Request #1400 was considered abandoned after 77 business days without further response.)
The pattern became difficult to ignore.
The request begins.
A deadline is promised.
The deadline passes.
The estimate changes.
The cost increases.
The process stretches out for months.
Then the request ends without the records ever being produced.
And Then I Had to FOAA My Own Presence
The story did not end there.
Recently, I filed additional FOAA requests seeking something far simpler.
I requested records documenting my visits to DHHS offices and the documents I personally hand-delivered.
Not thousands of emails.
Not years of internal communications.
Simply records showing:
- that I was physically present;
- what documents I delivered;
- whether those documents were logged;
- whether they were scanned;
- and whether they were retained.
In other words, I had to file public records requests simply to prove that I had been where I said I had been and had delivered what I said I delivered.
Some records were produced.
Others, according to the Department, did not exist or could not be located for specific requested dates.
Yet I maintained my own contemporaneous evidence.
I documented deliveries myself.
I retained copies.
I even documented occasions when staff refused to acknowledge receipt.
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(Image Description: Personal copy of a hand-delivered document noting that the DHHS building manager refused to sign for receipt, along with Ryan Michaels’ contemporaneous written documentation of the delivery.)
That image represents something much larger than one piece of paper.
It illustrates the position I found myself in.
I no longer trusted that my interactions with the Department would be documented.
So I began documenting them myself.
Not because I wanted to.
Because I felt I had to.
A citizen should not have to become his own archivist.
His own records custodian.
His own witness.
His own chain of custody.
Simply to prove that he walked into a government office and handed over paperwork.
The Pattern Is the Story
This article is not about one FOAA request.
It is about a pattern.
When I asked why Administrative Appeals were placed on hold…
the request started free…
became delayed…
became billable…
and ultimately ended without producing the requested records.
When I sought broader records,
the price became more than $50,000.
When I sought records proving I visited DHHS offices and personally delivered documents,
I found myself relying on my own evidence to document interactions that I believed should already have been documented by the agency itself.
At every stage, the burden shifted back to me.
Pay more.
Wait longer.
Narrow your request.
Prove your delivery.
Document your own interactions.
The public records process is supposed to reduce uncertainty.
Instead, in my experience, it often created more of it.
Why This Matters
People should care about this regardless of who I am.
Because this is ultimately about transparency.
Public records laws exist because government answers to the public.
If public records become prohibitively expensive…
If deadlines come and go without records…
If requests are repeatedly revised after months of waiting…
If citizens must rely on their own documentation to establish basic interactions…
then it is fair to ask whether the system is functioning as intended.
A right that costs $50,875 to exercise is beyond the reach of most people.
Transparency delayed can become transparency denied.
And when citizens lose meaningful access to public records…
they do not merely lose access to documents.
They lose access to accountability.
They lose access to truth.
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