Committee reviews ordinance to add hourly review fee for law-enforcement body camera video

City staff previewed proposed updates to the municipal public-records ordinance that would let the city charge for the time required to review and redact law-enforcement body camera footage, and would shift the city’s fee schedule out of the code into an administrable fee schedule. The changes, discussed in committee as an initial presentation, include a proposed $50 hourly charge for video review and a statutory per-video cap of $150 noted in state law. Staff said the goal is to help the city recover direct costs of redaction and storage while working with requesters to narrow requests where possible.

Why it matters: review and redaction of law-enforcement recordings account for a large share of staff time for public-records responses, staff said. Examples offered to the committee…