Although you make a good point regarding the fee's to be potentially unattainable by some, there is a great deal of overhead to perform a records request. I would suggest you investigate the process further before pledging support against this initiative.

One item that you neglected to reference is the liability a government agency has to meet strict guidelines to produce such a request. There are citizens who have figured out they can profit by the strict guidelines by overwhelming public records departments with a barrage of requests. The City of Othello is one such example. They were targeted by an individual who understood the process and retribution of the timeliness to produce a public record request. They had filed for bankruptcy due to the fines that were incurred due to the lack of personnel to meet the demand. The citizen who made the request has also targeted other communities with limited staffing and has profited substantially.

The Public Records Act is a necessity in a free society. It would be an appropriate rebuttal of SB 6576 not as an inconvenience and potential of gouging the consumer as you have noted but that instead it should be modernized. This act was passed well before modern computer systems were used in public institutions. It was also passed when information was not as vast as it is today and increment in the future. Today electronic records in addition to hard (paper) copies need to be searched. This includes email, disparate databases and electronic file systems. Most institutions have not been funded to keep up with the incremental demands of information that was not an issue in 1972.

The appropriate focus of this issue is to amend the Public Records Act. If it is necessary to request a fee, an amendment could address this in addition to modernizing the records storage and retrieval process in which the fees could subsidize. This should not be a burden on the tax base as a minority of citizens request records. It is a service and should be funded as a per use basis.