Call Kurtis: State Department Responds to CBS13 Request More Than 5 Years Later

WEST SACRAMENTO (CBS13) —  A very official-looking envelope from the United States Department of State was on my desk here at CBS13 when I got to work today. I opened it up to see it was a response to my request for information from July of 2010. I couldn't immediately recall the story, but then remembered it was tied to Jean and Mike Black of Elk Grove. Both applied for passports and as required, submitted their original birth certificates. Jean got her passport, but her original birth certificate was nowhere to be found. The Department of State admitted it lost it.

READ: State Department Letter

In researching the story, we contacted the Department of State asking just how many birth certificates the agency lost between 2005 and 2010. They could not provide us with that answer before we aired our story in September of 2010.

Five-and-a-half years later, this letter date stamped December 22, 2015 arrived from Jonathan Rolbin who has the impressive title of Director of Office of Legal Affairs and Law Enforcement Liaison Bureau of Consular Affairs Passport Service. It begins saying, "We apologize for the delay in responding to your request." The letter gives no explanation for the delay.

According to the letter, "5,652 birth certificates associated with passport applications were documented as lost." Although the agency says, "Of the 85,855,976 applications received in calendar years 2005-2010, .007% of birth certificates associated with a passport application was documented as lost."

Alas, we have our answer.

The letter wraps up saying, "We hope that Passport Services has been of service to you in this matter."

If only we could've included this information in our story we aired in September of 2010.

At that time we reported, the Department of State told us, "If a birth certificate is lost during the processing of a passport application, we offer the customer complimentary credit monitoring for one year and reimburse for the expect of replacing the birth certificate".