PORT ORANGE — If a city employee works more than 15 minutes to provide a public record, some cities add a charge above the 15 cents per page copying rate.
Other cities add a charge after 30 minutes.
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Florida’s Sunshine Law requires open access to government records, as well as open meetings. However, some fees are allowed for public records.
“Basically, the law allows agencies to charge an extensive-use fee when the nature of the request requires extensive work by a clerical person,” said Adria Harper, director of the First Amendment Foundation, a Tallahassee-based Sunshine Law watchdog group.
Local governments that want to enact an extensive-use charge must base the fee on the actual cost to produce the record.
“They can’t be generating revenue with public records requests,” Harper said.
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