Full Disclosure: Search for Mound housing info turns into comedy of errors

My saga begins way, way back in April, when I came across a 2013 list of "troubled" public housing authorities nationwide.

Only one Minnesota agency was on the list: the Mound Housing and Redevelopment Authority. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development gave it the label of "substandard management."

That sounded intriguing. I might have been able to find out more through a phone call. But I was eager, in my new role as a columnist devoted to open government, to use the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to get to the bottom of the trouble in Mound.

On April 14, I filed a request on HUD's website for records and unwittingly set off on a seven-month journey of frustration. I eventually did find out what ailed the Mound HRA, but more important, I got an education in what ails FOIA, the nearly 50-year-old law that gives the public access to government records.

Enough people are up in arms about the federal government's interminable delays, denials and excessive use of Sharpies in response to FOIA requests that a bipartisan bill to reform the law may actually move through Congress. I hope that happens, but I'm not sure it would fix the comedy of errors that I experienced.

HUD responded April 30 with a letter denying my request for expedited handling. It was addressed to "Ms. Donaldson."

I settled in for a long wait.

And call I did. Week after week. I tried to be nice, but it was hard.

I learned that HUD's FOIA staff spent a significant amount of time removing the names of some people from documents because the law requires withholding data that would "constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy."

I found out later that these records were public meeting minutes, which are also posted, unedited, on the Mound HRA's home page.

I also found out later that my documents were lost when HUD workers moved stacks of papers between the basement and 10th floor of some building in Washington.

No number of calls to the FOIA office seemed to make any difference, despite promise after promise that the documents would be in the mail in days.

The following Monday, I got a call from HUD Deputy Assistant Secretary Jerry Brown. He had my seen my blog and apologized profusely. "You shouldn't have had to wait this long," Brown said. The average turnaround time is about two weeks, and there was nothing complex about my request.

Less than an hour later, 468 pages of records arrived in my inbox. More than 265 of them were blank, all information redacted as "confidential" financial data save for the Wells Fargo letterhead.

What was left enabled me to piece together what happened.

Mound's public housing consists of a 50-unit apartment complex called Indian Knoll Manor. Back in 2012, as many as four to eight of those units were vacant, even though there was a waiting list of prospective tenants. The city was also refusing to rent to anyone who wasn't elderly, which HUD called a "discriminatory" practice.

The city and the organization that manages the building have since filled the units, and Mound is no longer on the "troubled" list.

Another FOIA requester had to wait the better part of two years for HUD to follow through, according to the agency's annual FOIA report. I guess I should feel lucky. But I don't.