Why has Michigan's Flock contract collected $0?

Michigan has a statewide purchasing contract with Flock Safety. MA250000000832, on the books since June 3, 2025, estimated at $2,626,000.00 when the state signed it. It exists so any city, county, township or school district in Michigan can buy plate readers off it without running its own bid, and when one does, Flock reports the sale and pays the state 1% of it.

I asked the office that runs it for those reports and those fees. This issue is what came back.

Housekeeping: Gmail files this under Promotions. Dragging one issue over to Primary fixes it for good.

In this issue:

1 - The $324,000 nobody owed a fee on

2 - The 2 quarters nobody filed

3 - How the state knows what it knows

4 - 4 days, $0, and every question answered

5 - Free records, and what I am filing next

Filed Thursday afternoon. Records Monday. No charge, nothing redacted, and the only thing denied was a record that does not exist, which they certified.

Inside it is an email from Flock’s account executive to the state’s MiDEAL inbox, October 7, 2025:

"Our spend report for July-Sept was $324,000.00. Please let us know how to pay, thank you!"

October 31, he is back. He has sent it to accounting, and can somebody send the link where he enters a credit card. There is no link anywhere in the file.

November 3 he tries a third angle. Flock did sell to the Michigan Department of Corrections, he writes, but he does not see Corrections on the MiDEAL member list. Please advise. The reply is a single sentence: the Dept of Corrections is a State of Michigan agency. So we would not have any fees due? 13 minutes later:

"If your only sales were a state department then no."

Chain ends.

Section 42 of the contract puts the fee at 1% of sales to MiDEAL members and other states, then carves out sales to the State of Michigan itself. So on that quarter, $3,240 if a city had bought it. $0 because a state prison system did.

Last week I asked the state to put the running total in writing. Her answer, verbatim. The capitals are hers, and so is the bold:

"Sales to any State of Michigan agency, are NOT MiDeal sales. Fees would not apply. Again, Flock has reported ZERO MiDeal sales and there have been ZERO fees ever charged to, due, or paid by Flock."

She italicized "any," too.

Section 42 also says the report is due within 30 calendar days from the last day of each calendar quarter. Every quarter. Sales or no sales.

5 quarters have gone by. The whole file:

Apr-Jun 2025, "No sales."
Jul-Sep 2025, $324,000.00.
Oct-Dec 2025, nothing.
Jan-Mar 2026, "no sales in the quarter."
Apr-Jun 2026, nothing.

I asked whether there was reporting for the quarters in between and for the quarter after. The answer came back as a single word. "No."

So 2 of the 5 required reports were never filed, and the quarter directly after the $324,000 one is one of them.

The state does chase it. One of the records they gave me is a May 12, 2026 email from the MiDEAL desk, subject line "REPORTING DUE NOW." Flock answered that one inside 4 minutes.

I want to be careful about what the zero proves.

The mechanism is: the state emails the vendor, the vendor emails back a dollar figure or the words "no sales," and the state writes it down. Nothing in Section 42 audits it. Nothing cross-checks it against what cities actually bought. 2 quarters the vendor did not email back at all, and the way I know that is the state telling me so.

So when I say no Michigan city has ever bought a Flock camera through the state contract, what I actually have is that Flock says so and Michigan has no way to check. Nobody is lying here as far as I can tell. The only number on file is the one the vendor typed.

The Mackinac Center counted more than 125 Michigan cities and counties running Flock or something like it. Every one of them bought some other way. A contract built specifically so they would not have to run their own bid has, on its own paperwork, moved nothing to a single one of them.

I say that is worth a look. Whether it is actually a problem, I do not know. All I have got is the paper.

I keep a scorecard on every records office I deal with. 15 requests, 9 agencies, 3 states. 2 offices score 5s (highest possible) straight across, Colorado State Patrol and this one. Colorado took 35 days and $203.06. This one took 4 days and cost nothing.

When I wrote back with 3 follow-up questions, the coordinator answered all 3 in writing in 2 hours and 42 minutes, point by point, and attached a record I did not know to ask for.

For scale, I have paid out $1,136.07 to other agencies this year and I am still waiting on most of it. This file was free.

The next request goes to the Michigan Department of Corrections. Nobody here has ever FOIA’d them, and on Flock’s own reporting they are the only Michigan buyer this contract has. I want the purchase order.

The Michigan public records pack is still free at the FOIA page. Costs nothing, no email needed, and the signup box is right there if these are worth getting. Everything already released lives in the file room.

The where-do-we-file-next vote from last issue is still open on that same page. Results once the count is worth printing.

Every request in these issues comes out of pocket. Chipping in here pays for the next one.

- Mags