If they can’t afford to provide the service, then they can’t afford to provide the service. In this case, they simply can’t afford to video anything that would require redaction for FOIA requests. Stanwood joining with Camano Island or Marrysville, it’s still a rural area that can’t afford it.

winners bell SFX

I seem to recall FOIA provides pathways for overloaded clerks in situations where there's mass requests. But, it only grants an extended period in which to respond (eg, 14 days instead of 48hrs). But, you can take escalate with the State government like you can with denied requests.

This is tinted with my knowledge of my Locaal (long a), and the areas I've made FOIA requests with.

And, turns out if you want to affect change- you have to make the bureaucrats care- Not the officials.

I really don't know, it's a difficult question. In this case I agree with most people here on HN that these sorts of mass surveillance tools are not desirable but the reason why is not "because the city is too small to handle FOIA requests".

For another example, some rural localities want to restrict drone usage, but actually enforcing that is expensive and difficult. What's the solution? I really don't know.

Have less laws then.

You literally can't be a high touch, high jackboot, administrative state unless you have enough wealth to skim off it to run your enforcing operation.

There's a reason that places with less wealth to dip into are either more hands off or go full speed trap town to pay for it all.

Even big cities (and companies!) do this all the time.

“Oh, sorry, we are dealing with unusually high wait times. The current wait time is 8 hours” type stuff.

Malicious compliance isn’t just for individuals!