From The Durango Herald: The Durango Mall made more than $16,000 worth of public-records requests with the city regarding its correspondence with Mercury, the credit-card payment-processing company that is building a corporate headquarters next to the mall, a project that the mall had initially opposed through litigation.
The mall’s records request required four city employees working 10 days to complete, but “then the mall said they didn’t want to pay it because they did not need all that information,” City Manager Ron LeBlanc said during a City Council workshop Tuesday.
While the mall eventually paid, city staff members recalled the incident to illustrate the demands on their time for public-records requests and problems the city has in recouping its costs.
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The city now wants to forbid photographing of public documents because people apparently are photographing the requested records with their smartphones and no longer asking for copies to be made. Copies cost 25 cents each after the first 10 copies. The fee also is applied to records that are digitally scanned and emailed.