(Spirit Lake)– It may soon cost you to get information from county offices. The matter came up for discussion at Tuesday’s Dickinson County Board of Supervisors meeting. Assistant County Attorney Steve Goodlow says while some offices already charge a fee for certain documents, there is no uniform policy in place…
“I would like the board to go ahead and give department heads discretion within their own department because, you know, the Recorder’s Office is different from the County Attorney’s Office which is different from the Zoning Office, for example. But to allow them to charge accordingly because we don’t have any policy that allows us to charge the public for these large copy projects. We just don’t. But I think we should.”
Zoning Administrator David Kohlhaase says his office is seeing an increase in requests for large volumes of information and it’s taking time away from employees…
“I guess we just don’t want to be demanded on to provide information on someone else’s timeframe. And then also it’s not so much the cost of the paper, it’s the time to do it. Because if you’re taking all those documents and scanning them and then either emailing or printing them off or whatever. In our case it was more the time. And then what, you know, irritates us is knowing that that information that we’re sending out is basically building a case against us.”
Kohlhaase says he realizes the fact the public has every right to the information…
“We provide it in a real, try to, in a timely manner, but when it gets demanding and when it gets just very often, you know, it’s going to be on our schedule.”
Goodlow says the intent isn’t for the county to make money on the deal, but rather to offset the cost of labor, materials and wear and tear of equipment. The supervisors directed Goodlow to look into the matter further and come back with a recommendation.
