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How much for a public record?

issue (of records requests) by charging a high price to fill those requests, so maybe that’s something to look at in the future.”

In years past, some custodians even charged requesters for the time it took them to pore over records looking for things to black out, until the state Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that this was not an allowable cost. But custodians are still finding ways to demand huge sums from people seeking public information.

In Fond du Lac, the $1,000 that citizen requester Brennan paid to obtain records regarding a proposed (and subsequently approved) park development project using public funds yielded a 2019 email from a city council member advising others involved in this process, “Please keep that we are in talks on this on the down low. Stakeholders should be the only people who know that these conversations are happening.”

Officials who behave this way should not be able to escape accountability by making the cost of locating the records that prove their perfidy unaffordable.

Gov. Tony Evers, in his proposed executive budget, calls for raising the threshold at which custodians can charge location fees to $100. Adjusted for inflation, $50 in 1981 is nearly $150 today.

This welcome measure deserves bipartisan support, as it protects the ability of all citizens to obtain public records. But the Legislature should go further, and consider ending location fees altogether. Their use invites abuse and creates a disincentive for custodians to efficiently maintain and retrieve records.

If a government office actually must spend $7,000 of staff time to locate records, perhaps it needs a better filing system.

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