District government lawyers have long found ingenious ways to delay or reject Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests—your request got lost, your request violated personnel privacy, your request produced no relevant documents. Within the past week, District of Columbia Public School (DCPS) lawyers found a new excuse to add to the canon: They’ve run out of paper. DCPS General Counsel Veleter Mazyck asserts that her office does indeed have paper but that supplies are “extremely low” due to the high volume of FOIA requests and litigation her office handles and the fact that the fiscal year is almost up. Four weeks ago, Mazyck replenished the paper supply with her own money. But, she says, the extra reams were quickly depleted. “I think it’s a shame we have to talk about paper in the paper as an issue,” Mazyck says. —Jason Cherkis