The “we don’t discuss it as an issue of policy” is what is known as a Glomar response. An examples is “The requested records, if any, are exempt from disclosure”.
That’s a totally different response than, “The requested records are exempt from disclosure” or “There are no records responsive to your request”.
They are only allowed to give the Glomar response if a record’s EXISTENCE is exempt from disclosure. The existence of receipts, UIPA requests, etc are not exempt from disclosure.
When I later asked for the same records that Terri K had asked for and been denied, I was told that the records didn’t exist. Two different requests, two different answers - neither of them a Glomar response, because the existence of the records is not exempt from disclosure. That means that the records existed when Terri K asked for them; they had been destroyed by the time I asked for them.
I read through a lot of the material you pointed me toward months ago, and came to the conclusion that the Hawaii DOH was simply a bureaucratic mess. To me, two different wordings of the responses does not necessarily mean they destroyed records, but that the ship is not run very well over there. I’d need more evidence that the COLB was amended or records destroyed than what you’ve so far cited.
The PDF on the DOH site of rules was dated 1955, with amendment in 1961, and has handwritten notations on it - not my idea of a definitive current document. This contains the rule that allows anyone a noncertified COLB. The question we discussed last time was whether the 1961 rules were superceded by 338-18 from 2001. I’m no lawyer, but I’d bet that’s what the DOH would argue. 338-18 gives the director very wide latitude to decide what to release.