In Oregon government, there are the wise, the not so wise and everything in between. And one thing that binds them all and can expose them all is Oregon’s public records law.

Write an email. Send a text. Draft a report. Create a chart. With some exceptions, if it’s the work of a school board, state government or another government body, it’s a public record. The public can get it, and learn more of what’s going on and what’s going on behind the decisions.

But as useful as Oregon’s public records laws could be, the laws can be a mess to get right. The toughest questions can be how much to charge. Many government agencies will fulfill simple requests for free. Anything more than that and it can get expensive.

For instance, last year a member of the Central Oregon Peacekeepers, a social justice organization, requested emails related to a clash between Trump supporters and Black Lives Matter activists at Pilot Butte Neighborhood Park in 2020 and other records of the Bend Police Department.

The city wanted $3,600 for the records. It took the city 65 hours of staff time to track the records down. The Peacekeepers asked for a waiver, arguing their request was in the public interest. The city’s counter offer: We will cut the price by 25% and please narrow your request. The issue remains unresolved.

Oregon’s Public Record Advisory Council is trying to help the state navigate to an improved way of calculating what to charge. Last week it heard from people who handle public records requests from larger state agencies, the Oregon Health Authority, the Department of Human Services, the Oregon State Police and the Department of Corrections. There were some common themes, though, they were not the official positions of state government or the agencies.

A suggestion for changing the law has been to do away with fees. They can be like a wall blocking the public from public information. Laura Heathcock, who works in the central records section for the Oregon State Police, said fees are important. They can be the only tool she has to convince people they should refine a large request.

State agencies don’t have uniform means of storing records or even uniform means within a state agency. Even capturing relevant emails is not so simple as a keyword search. The searches will bring up many irrelevant emails, many emails that need to have information that needs to be redacted. The work involved in going through and translating emails into a PDF format is also time-consuming and intensive. The state doesn’t have a standardized program to automate it.

The state does offer partial and total fee waivers for some requests made in the “public interest.” And fees are sometimes waived for nonprofits and journalists. Cheré LeFore, Public Records Unit Manager, Department of Human Services, says the state’s chart for determining if someone should get a waiver needs to be simplified. It can be difficult to apply. One question state records workers encounter is determining who should be considered a journalist. Only traditional media organizations? What about people who say they are freelance journalists?

And then there is determining what to charge for. Jeanne Windham, the public records coordinator for the Oregon Health Authority, doesn’t charge unless a request takes more than 10 hours. She does not charge for searching and gathering records. She does charge for preparing and redacting records. Other state agencies do it differently.

What’s a reasonable fee system for public records? We don’t know, yet. But a one-size-fits-all policy for government bodies from those with thousands of employees to those with a few seems doomed to flounder. That is, without more state money spent to keep the costs of public records reasonable for the public.