The flip side of FOIA: Mountains of paper, small government staffs and — for some — an attitude problem

By Courtney Kueppers, Chicago Tribune, Apr. 9, 2021

Inside a nondescript warehouse on Chicago’s Southwest Side, rows of white-and-blue boxes sit below flickering fluorescent lights, holding a vast number of documents belonging to Cook County government.

One agency alone, the assessor’s office, has about 12,000 boxes here. Each is stuffed with roughly 40 pounds of paper, things like property assessment appeals from 2009 or certificates of error issued in 2014.

Nearly every weekday, an assessor’s office employee drives to the warehouse, signs in at the front desk, then gets to work searching for the boxes that contain records people have requested under the Freedom of Information Act.

Read more here.