According to an article published on TCPalm (Treasure Coast Palm), the City of Port St. Lucie has demanded a whopping $3.5 million as an advance payment for the production of public records. The requestors are several former LEOs and their attorneys who are seeking the records as part of a civil action against the city.
The article states that the records being sought are emails created and received by the Port St. Lucie Police Department. One would imagine that even if the request was for every single email ever created or received by the police department, $3.5 million would be slightly excessive. At an annual salary of $80,000 that would be 43.75 years of labor. Admittedly, I don’t have all of the facts, but I’m a little skeptical of any quote in the seven figure range.
Certainly there are some emails on the PD’s server that are exempt and or confidential. For example, emails that contain the names of the victims of child abuse or sexual crimes. Keeping those kind of records out of the hands of the general public makes sense and that’s why the State Legislature has already made them exempt and confidential.
If the Florida constitution requires these documents to be available for inspection and copying, why would there be any cost except for a space for their viewing?
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Public records should be considered much like a public Library or the Clerk of the Court’s records. I should be able to go to ANY public government office, ask to see records and be shown where they are and permitted to view and inspect them at that very moment. In most cases anything short of that is a violation of Chapter 119.