Public Records Requests Agencies Cannot Wave Off
The Must Exist™ method — FOIA and Chapter 119 requests for residents, journalists, researchers, and nonprofit staff
The FOIA Engineering Playbook →
Three ready-to-file request templates and the rule-first method behind them. Every agency stall named, with the written answer to it. No cost, no upsell inside the file, licensed CC BY so you can teach from it.
Must Exist Autopsy — the live class →
Sixty minutes on Zoom, twenty-five seats, fifty-nine dollars. We put one failed request on screen, work out why the agency answered with a fee quote, rebuild it, and read the reply out loud. Every other Thursday at 1:00 PM Eastern.
Must Exist Campaign →
Ninety days, three rule-anchored requests drafted and filed against the agency you name, every stall answered in writing, delivered as one organized file.
This is not legal advice. Consult a licensed attorney.
Where did this method come from?
Every campaign these outlets covered ran the same play. Read what the institution wrote down. Work out what its own rules obligated it to do. Then ask for exactly that, in writing, and make the answer public.
A Festivus pole in the state capitol rotunda. A formal request to pull the Bible under Florida's own book-removal statute. Arabic In God We Trust signs offered to Texas schools under a law that had just mandated the motto.
None of those were arguments. Each one was a test of whether an institution would follow the rule it had written for itself. The coverage is what happened when the answer was no.
Same method. Different subject. It is pointed at license plate readers now.
WHY MOST REQUESTS FAIL
Most people write a records request the way they write an email. Broad, polite, and easy to answer with nothing.
You ask the police department for everything about the camera contract. Back comes a fee estimate for eleven thousand dollars, or a letter saying the request is too broad to process.
Nobody lied to you. You asked for a topic, and agencies do not keep files by topic. They keep whatever their own written rules told them to create.
There is no drawer labeled "the camera program." There is a signed contract in purchasing. A use policy in the chief's office. An audit log sitting inside a vendor system. Each one exists because some rule said to make it.
Must Exist starts there. Find the rule the agency wrote for itself. Read it for the paper it promises. Then ask for that paper by name, and quote the rule that says it should exist.
A request built that way is cheap to fill and hard to brush off. You are not asking for a favor. You are asking whether the agency did the thing it wrote down.
THE METHOD TRAVELS
Plate cameras are the worked example in everything we publish. The paper trail is unusually clean, and the programs are new enough that the policies still say what somebody promised.
But none of this is really about cameras.
Any time a government body writes down a rule for itself, that rule makes paper. The paper is what you ask for.
A school district adopts a book removal process.
What does the form look like when somebody follows it, and who signed the one for the book that came off the shelf?
A city sets a purchasing threshold.
What does the sole-source justification say for the contract that landed just under it?
A department publishes a body camera retention schedule.
What happened to the footage from the day in question, and under which schedule item?
An official blocks residents on a government social media account.
What is the written policy, and what does the moderation log show?
A board has to notice its meetings a set number of days ahead.
What do the notice records show for the meeting where the vote happened?
Same four steps every time. Different rule, different paper.
TAKE THE PLAYBOOK
The whole method is written down, and it costs nothing.
The FOIA Engineering Playbook runs six pages. Three request templates you can adapt and file this week. How to pull a retention schedule before you draft, which is the step almost nobody takes and the one that turns "no such record" into a conversation. How to find the custodian who actually holds the file, because filing with the wrong office is the quietest way a good request dies.
And every stall an agency will try, named, with the paragraph you send back. The fee estimate that arrives large and vague. The exemption claimed as a category instead of a citation. The silence.
Every statute in it was checked against the actual text, not a summary. The citations are Florida's Chapter 119, and there is a section showing you how to swap in your own state.
It carries a Creative Commons license. Copy it, hand it to your newsroom, teach a workshop from it. Credit the source and you are inside the license.
WATCH IT, OR HAND IT OVER
Some people want to see it done once before they try it themselves.
Must Exist Autopsy is sixty minutes on Zoom. Twenty-five seats, fifty-nine dollars. We put one real request that failed on screen and work out why the agency answered with a fee quote. Then we rebuild it in front of you and read the reply out loud. Every other Thursday at one in the afternoon, Eastern. Bring your denial letter.
Some people have a deadline instead.
Must Exist Campaign runs ninety days. Three rule-anchored requests drafted and filed against the agency you name. Every citation checked against the statute. Every stall answered in writing. What comes back is one organized file your editor, your counsel, or your council can actually read.
THE OTHER SIDE
Institutions hire us too.
The same reading that makes a records request hard to deflect will tell an agency where its own paperwork gives way. A policy promising a quarterly review nobody performs. A decision with nothing on file showing how it was reached. Authority somebody has been exercising for years with no written delegation saying they may.
We find those before a requester does. That work runs through counsel, it stays confidential, and it is the quieter half of the practice.
Both halves are the same knowledge pointed in opposite directions. Thirty years of filing is where it came from.
Counsel: records work as billable work product inside a matter runs through Sufficient to Show.
START HERE
Read the rule your agency wrote for itself. Ask them for the paper it should have produced.
That is the whole method. The playbook walks you through it, and it is free.
Stop tweeting at the surveillance state.
Start filing against it.
About Chaz Stevens
SYSTEM STRESS-TESTER
REVOLT was built by someone who has stress-tested public systems in real-world conditions. That experience informs a disciplined approach to governance diagnostics.
Understanding how institutional vulnerabilities are discovered allows us to help organizations correct them before external scrutiny escalates.
This is adversarial literacy applied to institutional resilience.
As Read In
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a public records request?
It is a written demand for a government record, made under a state public records law or the federal Freedom of Information Act. Any member of the public may file one. You do not need a lawyer, a reason, or standing, and in most states you do not have to say why you want it.
Why do most public records requests fail?
Because they ask for a topic instead of a record. Agencies do not keep files by subject. They keep whatever their own written rules told them to create. A request for everything about a contract invites a fee estimate. A request for a named document, cited to the rule that requires it, does not.
What is the Must Exist method?
Find the written rule an agency adopted for itself. Work out what paper that rule produces when somebody follows it. Ask for that paper by name and cite the rule. The request comes out narrow enough to be cheap and specific enough that a custodian cannot answer it with a shrug.
Is the FOIA Engineering Playbook really free?
Yes. There is no cost, no trial, and no upsell inside the file. It carries a Creative Commons Attribution license, so you may copy it, teach from it, or translate it as long as you credit the source.
Does this only work for Flock and license plate reader records?
No. Plate cameras are the worked example because the paper trail is unusually clear. The method applies to any decision an agency made under a rule it wrote down, from purchasing to personnel to permitting.
Does the method work outside Florida?
Yes. Every state has a public records or freedom of information statute, and all of them work better when you name a record instead of a topic. The templates cite Florida Chapter 119, and you swap in your own state. The playbook shows you where.
What if the agency says no records exist?
That is a real answer and often the important one. A policy promising quarterly supervisor review, paired with a certification that no review records exist, tells you the review never happened. The playbook covers how to get that certification in writing rather than as a shrug.
Can you file the requests for me?
Yes, through the Must Exist Campaign. Three rule-anchored requests are drafted, filed, and tracked against an agency you name over ninety days, with every stall answered in writing. Most people should start with the free playbook instead.
No. Everything here is records practice, which is paperwork rather than law. Chaz Stevens is not a lawyer. Where a question turns on your own facts or your own state, that is the point to involve counsel licensed where you live.
Does REVOLT also work for institutions?
Yes. A separate governance diagnostics practice helps agencies, boards, and nonprofits find where their documentation and decision authority break down under scrutiny. It is the same knowledge pointed the other way, and it is why the records side is worth taking seriously.