An Omaha father has launched a legal challenge against Nebraska’s health agency after receiving a public records estimate that projected a 50-year wait and a cost of nearly $1 million to fulfill a request regarding a controversial disability funding tool.
Curt Safranek, co-founder of the Disability Alliance of Nebraska, initiated the records request after the state’s InterRAI assessment tool reduced Medicaid funding for his 24-year-old son, Will, who lives with autism and an intellectual disability. Seeking to understand the implementation and background of the assessment tool, Safranek filed a public records request in September for email correspondence between state health officials and Alvarez & Marsal, a contractor hired to review the rollout.
According to the lawsuit, the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services responded with an estimate of $976,262 to locate and review the requested emails. The agency projected that the records would not be ready until September 29, 2076, and demanded an upfront deposit of $97,626 before beginning the process.
Safranek expressed immediate disbelief upon seeing the figures, noting that he initially believed he had misread the correspondence. Based on the projected timeline, Safranek would be 105 years old by the time the documents were delivered.
The initial cost breakdown provided by the agency included $644,360 allocated for an attorney to search for the records, $271,655 for a paralegal to gather and redact documents, and $60,247 for an administrative programs officer to manage record migration.
In response to the prohibitive figures, Safranek subsequently narrowed his request to cover only emails sent between January 1 and September 29, 2026. The agency adjusted its figures in response, cutting the estimate to $474,383, reducing the projected wait time to 25 years, and requiring a reduced deposit of $47,438. Safranek questioned the methodology behind the revised figures, noting that the costs and timelines appeared to have been halved through a simple formula rather than a precise calculation.
Filing the lawsuit on Monday in response to the agency’s actions, Safranek alleges that the department violated the Nebraska Public Records Act, which mandates that state agencies provide reasonable estimates when fulfilling public records requests. The legal action asks a judge to compel the department to issue an accurate and reasonable estimate or release the records immediately. The lawsuit names both the agency and records custodian Thomas Skutt, characterizing the provided estimates as legally insufficient and invalid.
The dispute highlights ongoing tensions regarding public transparency and records fees in Nebraska. State lawmakers enacted legislation in 2024 prohibiting state agencies from charging special service fees for attorneys and non-attorneys who review records solely to determine what information may be withheld from release.
Emphasizing the necessity of transparency for families navigating state care systems, Safranek noted that public records remain a critical tool for accountability. He stated that access to these documents is the primary avenue families have to secure answers and hold administrative bodies responsible for decisions affecting their relatives.
