Editor’s Note: Sunshine Request makes no claim as to the veracity of any statements or information contained in any of the requests, or public records, we receive.
11/16/23. Editor’s Note to Sender: The submission above has been marked as “Completed”. As it is written, it’s unclear what specific public record the sender would like to receive, or to what specific government agency the request should be sent.
This also seems more like an informational question about a property for the government to answer.
Additionally — Due to the personal nature of the information written in the Message of the request, we would recommend that the sender instead reaches out directly to the appropriate Government entity for assistance with the request, or, check to see if the responsive info is already publicly available on the entity’s website.
Just to give you a bit of info. about our website for the future:
“Sunshine Laws”, “Sunshine Requests”, and “Sunshine information” are all terms typically used to refer to a public records request or public records laws (in some states like Florida and Missouri, for example). Our website, although named “Sunshine Request”, is not an official government agency or affiliate thereof. The name of our site was inspired by a quote from Louis Brandeis.
Sunshine Request is an anonymous, free community project built by our small 3-person team in Asheville, North Carolina to submit public records requests. We allow users to anonymously submit requests for our Team to fulfill, and we don’t require any personal info to be submitted in order to process requests. We cannot verify who submits a request to our site, or how / if any responsive records may be used (by anyone other than our team). We do not send the results of requests directly to individua
ls, and we publish the results of all completed requests on our website. This also means that we do not communicate directly with indi viduals about the requests on our site. Once a request has begun processing on our site, we do not edit or cancel its fulfillment process. If you’d like to make a records request in the future, please use the “Submit Request” form on the homepage of our website.
Sunshine Request will not fulfill the following types of requests:
☀️ Requests that are incomplete, non-specific, or vague.
While we do proofread requests we receive for general spelling and clarity, we may choose not to fulfill the request if it is incomplete, or it is unclear what specific information the requester hopes to receive. In this case, the sender may rewrite and resubmit the request.
It’s the requester’s responsibility to write the request in a manner that clearly specifies a record that is being requested, and to what government entity it should be sent.
☀️ Requests that are only informational questions, and requests that are not addressed to government entities.
Sunshine Request is a site built to make requests for public records to the government — Public records are recorded information such as documents, government emails, and data sets.
In the interest of preserving our team’s time to focus on the high volume of requests on our site, as well to respect the staff time of government entities fulfilling records requests, Sunshine Request will no longer fulfill “requests” that are just informational type questions for government entities to answer.
We also will not fulfill requests made to non-government entities.
It’s the requester’s responsibility to write the request in a manner that clearly specifies a record that is being requested, and to what government entity it should be sent.
☀️ Please be specific:
It is important that what you are requesting is specific and reasonable, and is an actionable records request. Please specify the exact type of records you’d like to receive, rather than any “possible” or “potential” info that could be searched. Remember that the larger your request, the more time it usually takes to fulfill. Specificity will often help reduce the amount of time needed to process the request.
It is important that a request has a clearly written and complete Subject and Message, and also specifies the Government Entity (or entities), City and/or County, and State to which the request should be sent. If applicable, please also include any responsive timelines for the info that should be requested.
While we do proofread requests we receive for general spelling and clarity, we may choose not to fulfill the request if it is incomplete, or it is unclear what specific info the requester hopes to receive, or if it violates our policies.
Before submitting a request, please take a moment to review our tips for How to write and make a successful request. If you have additional questions about our site or how to make requests, please check out our FAQs or Policies page.
☀️ Code of Conduct: Please do not use Sunshine Request or any of the results of public records requests to harass government entities / employees, businesses, private citizens / individuals, or otherwise.
☀️ Please note that we cannot pay any fees / associated costs related to any of the requests on our site. If it is not possible for a Government Agency to process our request without incurring fees, then it is the responsibility of that Agency to let us know what the potential costs may be — at which point we will ask that they cease processing the request. We will mark the request as “Completed” on our site, and the sender can contact the Government Agency directly, should they wish to further pursue a request.
Thank you for using Sunshine Request!