If you were to file a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request today and specify that you are seeking documents in electronic format, there’s a good chance that request won’t cost you anything.

That’s because the fees public agencies can pass on to requesters cannot exceed what it costs to fulfill that request. While you can be charged a per-page copying fee, capped at 25 cents per page, for paper records, there are usually no fees associated with copying electronic records (though there are exceptions to that rule if retrieving them requires specialized software or expertise).

But those aren’t the only types of fees public agencies can charge requesters. In many states, public agencies can also charge requesters a fee for the time employees spend searching for records, often to the tune of hundreds if not thousands of dollars.

Currently, Connecticut’s courts and the Freedom of Information Commission (FOIC) have interpreted the state’s FOIA law in a way that prevents agencies from charging requesters those types of fees. But that may soon change.

There’s been a recent spate of FOIC cases involving public agencies providing invoices to requesters and asking them to pay before the requests are processed. In one case, the Department of Economic and Community Development (DECD) quoted a requester over $40,000 to fulfill a request. The fee included both a per-page copying fee for electronic records and an hourly fee for the amount of time employees spend searching for records.

In every single case they have ruled on, the FOIC has rejected agency fee schemes. But those rulings have since been appealed.

Should those appeals succeed, advocates and other requestors fear fundamental changes to their ability to use the law. Exorbitant fees could be weaponized against requesters who agency employees don’t like, be used to prevent the release of sensitive information, or limit the amount of information requesters can afford to obtain.

 Records Fees Across the Northeast

Recent data suggests Connecticut has some of the lowest FOIA fees in the country.

According to a 2023 survey of state FOIA fees conducted by MuckRock, a platform that offers tools for filing and streamlining records requests, the median cost of records requests filed in Connecticut through their platform between 2018 and 2023 was $25. Connecticut was one of three states in New England with a median cost below $50. Connecticut tied New Hampshire for the lowest cost in the region. Rhode Island—which does allow public agencies to charge requestors an hourly search fee—had the next lowest median fee, at $48.

Massachusetts and Vermont had the highest median fees, at $150 and $133, respectively.

Across the nation, median fees ranged from $2 in Washington to $431 in Idaho. According to MuckRock’s survey, requesters using their platforms were charged fees roughly 16 percent of the time.

How public records request fees are structured differs on a state-by-state basis. Where Connecticut stands out is in the FOIC’s interpretation that the law disallows the cost of time public agency employees spend searching for and reviewing responsive records to be passed on to requesters.

In Rhode Island, the first hour a public agency employee spends searching for records is free. After that, requesters are charged $15 per hour. (Though a bill recently filed in Rhode Island would make all electronically-stored records available without charge). In Maine, the first two hours a public agency employee spends searching for records are free. After that, requesters pay $25 per hour. New York allows state agencies to charge an hourly rate equal to the lowest level employee involved in a request after two hours of work, but only for time spent copying—not reviewing—records.

Other states in the region have more complicated fee schemes.

Massachusetts has different rules for when state agencies and municipalities can charge fees. State agencies can charge up to $25 per hour, but not more than the hourly rate for the lowest paid employee who worked on the request, for requests that take more than 4 hours of work. The fee cannot be assessed for any time spent segregating—reviewing records to determine whether they should be redacted—or redacting records, unless it is required by law or without approval from an agency supervisor of records.

Municipalities with a population of more than 20,000 can charge fees at the same rates, but not for the first two hours of work. Municipalities with a population of under 20,0000 can charge for the first two hours of work. 

In 2024, New Hampshire enacted a law specifically allowing public agencies to charge hourly fees for requests for electronic records. The law allows agencies to charge up to $1 per communication for all requests to which more than 250 communications are responsive. Fee waivers are available for the media and for indigent people. 

Unlike many states, including Connecticut, Vermont’s public records law stipulates that an agency can agree to create a public record but also allows them to charge for doing so. Requesters can be made to pay hourly fees if state employees spend more than 30 minutes complying with a request, if the agency agrees to create a public record, or if they provide a public record in a nonstandard format and it takes longer than 30 minutes to produce.

Vermont’s public records law tasks the Secretary of State with setting the fee schedule, both for copying fees for physical copies of records and media, and for how much public agency staff can charge for their time performing various request-related task.

Under the current schedule, staff can charge 33 cents per minute after the first 30 minutes for time spent physically duplicating records. Senior-level staff and IT specialists can charge 57 cents per minute for time extracting data from databases and other tasks needed to either comply with a request or create a new public record.

All other staff time is charged at 45 cents per minute, or roughly 27 dollars per hour. 

And requests do cost more in those states with hourly fees.

Inside Investigator submitted identical public records requests to the governors’ offices of all six states in New England, plus New York. Those requests sought a week of email communication sent or received by either the governor or their chief of staff.

Maine quoted Inside Investigator $50 for the estimated four hours it would take staff to review the documents. They also estimate review of the records could take 3 to 4 months.

Rhode Island quoted Inside Investigator $135 for the estimated nine hours it would take staff to review the 137 responsive documents they identified. 

Both states require requesters to prepay those fees before agencies begin reviewing records, which means fees can exceed initial estimates. That means, at the stage where they’re writing checks for requests, requesters also aren’t sure whether the documents they’ll receive are what they’re actually looking for. That makes language in requests where states charge hourly fees all the more important—more on that later.

Connecticut officials have acknowledged the request but have not yet provided any further updates. Unlike the other states Inside Investigator submitted requests to, there is no real time limit on how long agencies have to respond to FOIA requests. But responsive documents will, in all likelihood, be provided free of charge.

Inside Investigator has filed hundreds of records requests over the course of the past four years and has only been charged a handful of times, either for media storage devices or the cost to run specialized reports.

Fees CT FOIA Allows

Connecticut, like many states, allows some charges for records. Requesters can be charged for the cost of physical copies of records, or the cost of digital storage devices on which media is loaded. They can also be charged hourly fees if records must be formatted, programmed, or if a specialist contractor must be called in to access records.

FOIA’s text specifically allows:

• Up to a 25 cent per-page copying fee for physical copies of records produced by state agencies
• Up to a 50 cent per-page copying fee for physical copies of records produced by municipalities
• “An amount equal to the hourly salary attributed to all agency employees engaged in providing the requested computer-stored public record, including their time performing the formatting or programming functions necessary to provide the copy as requested, but not including search or retrieval costs”
• Search and retrieval costs may be charged only if “computer time charges incurred by the agency in providing the requested computer-stored public record where another agency or contractor provides the agency with computer storage and retrieval services.”
• The cost an agency incurs in engaging an “outside professional electronic copying service” if it is necessary to respond to request
• The cost of storage devices or media, i.e., a flash drive or CD onto which responsive records are loaded

The law also allows agencies to require requesters to prepay fees of $10 or more. Fees may be waived if a requester is indigent, an elected official requesting records in their official capacity,  if the records are exempt from disclosure, or if a public agency decides a request “benefits the general welfare.”

Notably, FOIA specifically prohibits agencies that charge an hourly fee for formatting or programming records from charging for search and retrieval costs, except in specific circumstances.

Connecticut courts have upheld both the idea that the types of fees agencies can charge are limited to those enumerated in statute and that agencies may not pass on search and retrieval costs to requesters.

In 2002, the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled in the Hartford Courant’s favor in a case where the Department of Public Safety (DPS) (now the Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection, DESPP) attempted to charge a reporter a per-record copying fee based on a different portion of state statute.

Jack Dolan, the Courant’s reporter, sought “a digital copy of all the fields of information typically produced on a Bureau of Identification rap sheet for every adult within the database” in electronic format, on either a tape or CD. 

Under FOIA’s fee requirements, Dolan agreed to pay for the cost of extracting the requested records from the Connecticut State Police Bureau of Identification database.

The Department of Public Safety quoted him $20.3 million dollars, an amount reached by multiplying the number of responsive records by a $25 per search fee. A state statute related to the database lays out what amount DPS may charge for various types of searches.

Dolan then filed a complaint with the commission, arguing the fee amount should be determined by FOIA, and limited by FOIA’s requirement that fees not exceed the cost to a public agency of producing them, not the DPS statute.

The FOIC ruled against Dolan, citing language in FOIA that states “[e]xcept as otherwise provided by state statute, the cost for providing a copy of” computer-stored data must comply with FOIA’s language on allowable fees and finding that the DPS statute was an exemption to FOIA.

On appeal, the trial court ruled against Dolan but on different grounds, finding Dolan’s request asked DPS to create a record that didn’t exist and was therefore outside the scope of FOIA because it does not require agencies to create new records.

But the Connecticut Supreme Court disagreed, finding not only that the trial court was incorrect in ruling DPS’s search required creating a new record but also that FOIA’s fee structure applied.

In part, the court’s ruling noted that, were they to rule otherwise, the exorbitant fee DPS was requiring would effectively deny access to the records being sought and limit FOIA.

“Were we to hold otherwise, the fee for the plaintiff’s request would be $20,375,000, a result that would have the practical effect of denying the plaintiff access to records that, by statute, must be made available to the public.” the decision stated. “Such a result would be inconsistent both with the act’s broad policy favoring the disclosure of information and with the well established canon of statutory construction ‘that those who promulgate statutes or rules do not intend to promulgate statutes or rules that lead to absurd consequences or bizarre results.’”

The FOIC has also repeatedly held that public agencies should not be able to pass on the costs of complying with FOIA outside the finite list of allowable fees laid out in the law, such as reviewing and redacting records, because they are part of an agency’s duties under FOIA.

“Rather, the Commission believes that review and redaction of public records are part of an agency’s duty to promptly disclose all non-exempt records under the FOI Act.” the commission wrote in a decision finding the Department of Economic and Community Development (DECD) could not charge requester Adam Osmond over $40,000 for electronic copies of records.

The commission cited a 2020 Superior Court ruling in which DESPP appealed a ruling and fine against them from the FOIC, finding the agency had failed to address a FOIA request from the Connecticut State Police Union (CSPU).

In its ruling, the FOIC found that DESPP had ignored a request from the CSPU, involving an alleged investigation of an officer that the union had not been properly notified of under its contract. CSPU filed the request on September 26, 2017, and DESPP turned over a fraction of responsive records the day an FOIC hearing was held on March 6, 2018.

The FOIC ruled that DESPP officials had unreasonably delayed responding to the request and fined the commissioner $100. In appealing the decision, DESPP admonished the FOIC for finding that the agency’s FOIA duties are “primary” duties of the agencies, on par with its other functions.

“An agency’s FOIA duty is a statutory duty or command. As such, it is not second class to any other statutory duty or command.” the court found in its ruling in the FOIC’s favor.

But the Department of Economic Community Development (DECD) and the attorney general’s office, which is both representing DECD and bringing its own appeal of the FOIC’s rejection of hourly search fees, disagree that the list of explicitly allowable fees in statute is exhaustive and that they can’t pass on costs associated with time spent searching for documents to requesters.

FOIC Cases

In August 2025, the FOIC ruled that DECD could not charge Osmond $41,943.25 for records he was seeking in connection with requests connected to discovery in a whistleblower case he brought against DECD, where he was formerly employed. 

Osmond’s requests specifically sought requests in electronic format. But DECD’s quote was based on a 25-cent per page fee for the 167,773 records they identified.

Loretta Boggan, a paralegal specialist with DECD, told Osmond that because the estimate was over $10, he would have to prepay before they began processing the request. She added that the agency would provide “partial production of copies for partial payment” if Osmond did not want to pay the full amount.

At an FOIC hearing on a complaint Osmond filed over the high invoice, hearing officer Paula Pearlman questioned Boggan about the agency’s fee policies.

Asked about how DECD makes individualized determinations about waiving fees on a request by request basis, Boggan replied, “As I recall the law says that things that are for the public good need to be released without charge. If I were the grownup in charge of this particular project, I would question if, out of the hundreds of thousands of pages that we’ve given Adam already, if the public good was being served with adding another 70,000 pages to them.” 

Pearlman also asked Boggan where FOIA says agencies can charge for electronic copies of records. Boggan replied that there was discussion of the “fact that we’re in a digital age now and there’s a certain amount of work and resources” that go into producing electronic records. 

Boggan further stated during the hearing that the attorney general’s office, which represents all state agencies in legal matters, had provided instructions for the fee.

Osmond also filed a separate FOIC complaint against the attorney general’s office over a $2,000 fee he was quoted for records that were “most, (or, more likely, all)” electronic, according to an email sent by assistant attorney general John Langmaid, who also is involved in the DECD case.

That fee was based on the estimated time it would take the attorney general’s office staff, Langmaid included, to review the request. Langmaid quoted Osmond 30 hours to review records, at his hourly rate of $67.71, and potentially other employees who might be involved with the request.

“The primary agency expense associated with satisfying your FOI request for computer-stored public records is employee time engaged in providing the records, CGS 1-212(b)(1).” Langmaid wrote in an email to Osmond.

After the FOIC ruled DECD could not charge Osmond a copying fee for electronic records, the agency sent him a second invoice, this one for $16,644.14, billing him for an hourly rate for various employees who had spent time working on the request.

In both cases, the attorney’s general office argued that the fees both they and DECD were charging were allowed under FOIA. 

In a post-hearing brief, DECD characterized their invoice as a “retainer” and stated that “[a] retainer estimate is not a bill, and cannot violate the FOI Act.” Their appeal of the FOIC’s decision does not lay out so clear a case of what fees should be allowed as the attorney general’s office appeal.

That complaint argues not only that FOIA’s list of fees is not exhaustive, but that FOIA’s per-page copying fees actually cover a variety of costs besides the physical goods involved in making a copy, including the hourly time of employees spent reviewing records. 

In the attorney general’s appeal of the FOIC’s finding against their invoice and in Osmond’s favor, they argue that while FOIA’s statutory language specifically allows agencies to charge an amount “equal to the hourly salary attributed to all agency employees engaged in providing the requested computer-stored public record, including their time performing the formatting or programming functions necessary to provide the copy as requested” nothing in FOIA “states that an agency employee’s labor engaged in “legal review” or “redaction” is not labor ‘engaged in providing the requested computer-stored public record.’”

The complaint also argues that FOIA provides a “statutory scheme for determining maximum fees for the requester’s exercise of the right to obtain copies of public records.”

“As part of the FOI Act, such a statutory scheme is consistent with the public policies underlying the FOI Act. Thus, the FOI Act frees public information in the sense of availability, not the sense of costlessness to the requester.” the complaint states.

Further, the attorney general’s office argued that FOIA does not limit “such agency employees to those employees who are exclusively engaged in labor changing the digital file format of the requested computer-stored public record to a digital file format requested by the requester.”

They also argued that the per-page copying fee for physical records does not prohibit agencies from charging those fees for electronic records.

Whether the per-page fee applies, the complaint argues, “depends on the format of the public record itself, and not the media or format of the copy requested and/or provided to the requester.” The complaint claims that FOIA “does not limit the fee for a copy of a paper record to a public agency’s expenses directly attributable to photocopy paper and/or photocopy machine toner.”

“Accordingly, the per-page FOI fee for a copy of a paper record reimburses a public agency for any and every agency expense arising from the provision of a copy of a paper record to a requester. Such expenses may well include employee labor spent examining such paper records and redacting exempt information.” Langmaid reasons in the complaint.

Public Impact: In their Own Words

Should the court find those arguments persuasive, it will fundamentally change how FOIA in Connecticut operates—and has the potential to limit requesters’ ability to obtain information.

Osmond’s cases are somewhat unique among most FOIA requests because they are seeking information in relation to his legal battles, and fallout from his whistleblowing activities, with DECD. 

Throughout his FOIC cases with both agencies, Osmond has voiced his belief that the fees being assessed against him are retaliatory. In a hearing on his complaint against DECD he argues that the agency’s handling of the request and its invoice “deviates starkly from its past practices” and was “arbitrary, punitive, and constitutes the very unequal treatment the FOI Act is meant to prevent.”

The FOIC probed DECD’s decision to charge Osmond for that request during the hearing, noting they had previously turned records over to Osmond without charge. DECD officials said that while they often choose to waive fees, they declined to do so in this case. The FOIC’s final ruling noted that agencies have the authority to choose when to waive fees.

Osmond has reason to fear that the fees being levied against him might be personal.

The Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities (CHRO) found in 2024 that DECD retaliated against Osmond over his whistleblower complaint. Records Osmond obtained from the attorney general’s office through FOIA also show employees from that office who worked on DECD’s behalf in whistleblower complaints Osmond filed with DECD using derogatory language.

Osmond’s case is one potential example, but the ability of public agencies to weaponize hourly fees is a broader concern.

Justin Silverman, the executive director of the New England First Amendment Center (NEFAC), told Inside Investigator, “the ability to charge requesters a fee for their time is often abused by public agencies who will quote a completely unreasonable amount of money to fulfill a records request that is completely prohibitive.”

In other states in New England that allow hourly fees to be charged, Silverman said they see “a lot of requesters asking for info they should be receiving that are scared away by unreasonable cost estimates.”

Osmond fears that, should DECD and the attorney general’s office appeals be successful, those high fees will have exactly that affect, impacting not only his cases, but the ability of all requesters to obtain information through FOIA.

“I believe that if the [attorney general] succeeds in charging these excessive fees, it will not only affect my cases, but it will also impact every person in the state who is trying to obtain public documents, as no one will be able to pay thousands of dollars.” Osmond told Inside Investigator. “Furthermore, what prevents them from simply increasing the hourly rate and the number of hours? I think if that happens, you might as well shut down the FOIC and void the FOI Act because it will be the end of it. Just consider the recent FOI cases involving PURA. If it were not for the FOI, those facts would never have come to light. That is just one example.”

Osmond isn’t the only one.

Louis Rinaldi is a medical marijuana advocate whose FOIA requests to the Department of Consumer Protection (DECD) led CT Insider to publish a 2021 piece finding that the agency allowed several labs to increase the limit of allowable mold and yeast in medical marijuana.

Rinaldi told Inside Investigator that he submitted a FOIA request to DCP in 2021 seeking to have the full contents of lab testing results from individual cannabis laboratories’ certificates of analysis made available through the state’s open data portal.

According to Rinaldi, DCP only complied after he filed an FOIC complaint. The agency initially tried to charge Rinaldi for the cost of processing paper forms they claimed were responsive to his request.

Rinaldi asked why they wouldn’t be provided electronically, since the forms were digital, and offered to write an SQL query to obtain the records, at which point DCP turned over records prior to an FOIC hearing.

That data led to CT Insider’s story. Rinaldi also said that after the story was published, DCP started heavily redacting documents.

“I absolutely would not have been able to expose the fraud if I had been billed for the production of the responsive documents.” Rinaldi told Inside Investigator.

Like Osmond, Rinaldi, who continues to file FOIA requests, fears what agencies’ ability to charge hourly fees would mean for requesters.

“Substantive policy change does not typically happen in Connecticut without public shaming. Optics and public image are the currency of those in power here. FOIA and public data are the two most significant levers that populist advocates have available to them in order to drive this change.”

FOIA Langauge at the Forefront

MuckRock’s survey noted that instances where fees were charged were, in many cases, dependent on the language used.

Many states allow for fee waivers when information is either being sought for newsgathering purposes or for noncommercial purposes that will be used to inform the public. 

According to MuckRock’s data, those exemptions are crucial to controlling fees—but so is including language that references them in requests.

Silverman also noted that, in other New England states that allow hourly fees to be charged, policies often allow for the first few hours of work to be provided for free.

That means simple requests that can be easily fulfilled are often provided at no cost.

Simple requests are usually what they sound like: requests that only seek a few records that don’t need to be collected and don’t require extensive review for information that might need to be redacted.

At the federal level, simple requests are often processed in a different track than more voluminous requests and often have a faster turnaround.

Simple requests have some strategic advantages, chiefly that they’re usually received more quickly and at little or no cost. But, as cases like Osmond’s and Rinaldi’s show, they don’t always satisfy a requester’s needs.

And that can create an imbalance in how public information requested through FOIA are processed and handled. When requesters know they want or need to review large batches of records but fees reaching into hundreds of dollars may be attached, they may opt to file either a narrower request for a smaller number of documents.

That process, by itself, is not a bad thing. FOIA requests should be precise in what they are seeking, so long as that information is knowable (which it may not be). But when the result is a chilling effect, that means requesters do not or cannot file requests for all of the documents they’re seeking for fear of incurring large fees, and that can create problems, both for requesters and government officials.

For example, an investigation by the Oregon Capital Chronicle found that fees often translated to a “battle of wills,” as requesters are forced to haggle to negotiate requests. The result: additional tasks for overburdened government workers and easier access to records for those who can simply afford to pay, often meaning large companies like data brokers have easier access to records than regular citizens.

There is often an art to filing simple requests that requires precise language and, potentially, precise knowledge about what’s being sought (which it may not be). For example, requests for email communication sent or received by a public official within a given time frame may be based on knowledge that a conversation or event happened within a timeframe without having specific knowledge about it. FOIA, in that case, is a tool to help reveal previously unknown information.

Fees rewarding the filing of simple requests can also raise other issues: namely the rise of long series of nearly identical requests that, under some state laws, might be considered vexatious.

The Oregon Capital Chronicle describes a series of 365 separate requests filed, one each day, in the city of Portland, Oregon by Parick Cashman. Cashman initially unsuccessfully fought to obtain the route of the World Naked Bike Ride through the city.

He then exploited simple requests to gain information without paying a cent and frustrate city officials.

From the Oregon Capital Chronicle’s story:

In December 2022, Patrick Cashman — a Portland records activist who previously crusaded against the city’s refusal to reveal the route of the World Naked Bike Ride — asked for every single record the city had already released that year to other requesters. It was an attempt, he wrote in an email to InvestigateWest, to push the city to upload all those records to an open data portal like federal agencies do. 

Instead, Portland asked him for nearly $68,000 to re-review and upload the records again. So Cashman hit back: He split up his request into 365 separate pieces, one for each day. 

Cashman’s not above paying for records — he shelled out nearly $3,000 for Portland records alone — but Wilton said he didn’t pay the bill on any of those 365. He just made the city jump through a year’s worth of hoops, then abandoned them. To Cashman, it was a “free speech exercise,” a way to protest an unaccountable, “byzantine” records bureaucracy.

“I enjoy torturing city personnel because it really is the only way we citizens can get some payback,” Cashman wrote in an email to InvestigateWest, reasoning he “might as well make every day of their life an unendurable hell until they decide on a different career.” 

When the public can’t use FOIA to obtain public information as a result of fees, that’s a limitation on requesters.

And it’s likely more of a limitation on requesters who are not as familiar with the best practices for filing FOIA requests as people, like journalists, who use the law routinely as part of their professional duties. 

For FOIA requests to be workable, a requester should not need to be knowledgeable about including fee waiver language or how to file a series of simple requests to obtain information while skirting fees.

Should DECD and the attorney general’s office win their appeals, there’s also a danger that agencies will be able to charge fees without any of the limits on how fees can be structured that are already laid out in the law.

There would likely need to be a legislative fix, laying out hourly fee structures such as those that exist in other New England states that would act, as existing fees do, as a safeguard against requesters receiving exorbitant invoices.

“That’s the tension here between government’s ability to provide a service in a cost efficient way and the public’s right to know.” Silverman told Inside Investigator. “I’m not endorsing any fees for requesters, but if the law were to change, there would have to be some sort of safety net built in for requesters, where agencies wouldn’t have the license to quote astronomical sums of money just to scare away the requester.:

“That’s the situation we’re often seeing in other states and that’s what at risk in Connecticut.” Silverman added.

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