What is a reasonable fee?
This is the question that’s at the heart of the ongoing complaints about the Sweetwater County Clerk’s decision to charge for access to a database of records maintained by a separate company.
This is also a question that local and state governments have contended with since Wyoming’s public documents laws allowed for the charge of a reasonable fee.
The unfortunate answer to the question is this: there is no such thing as a reasonable fee. This is because what’s reasonable for one person is unreasonable for another.
A fee of $10 for unlimited printing of documents may be reasonable for someone who has to consider the cost of a tank of gas and time to travel to the Sweetwater County Courthouse, but unreasonable for someone who can simply pop over to the courthouse and pay 25 cents a copy.
Also, considerations of who can afford frequent use of the iDoc Marketplace service should be weighted. It’s impossible to pinpoint where an access fee becomes unreasonable, but it’s safe to say the fervor from residents upset with the clerk’s price scheme isn’t completely unjustified. Comments about people feeling like they’re being taxed twice do hold some weight, especially since people who used the previous version of the database were not charged for access and a majority of the documents of the documents and files on that database were available for years.
While we do question the county commissioners’ ability to override a decision made by another elected official, a public demonstration and explainer by the clerk’s office, which tackles many of the concerns raised by residents, could be the best way to clear the bad air circulating around this issue.
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