Rockingham County OKs drafting of revised public-records fee policy after concerns over large data requests

The Rockingham County Board of Commissioners voted March 2 to allow the county attorney to draft a revised public‑records policy that could impose special-service charges for complex or high-volume requests.

The motion, moved by Commissioner Richardson and seconded by Commissioner Hall, passed by voice vote after a discussion of whether in-county taxpayers should be charged. County Attorney Clyde Albright told the board that recent requests — including an out-of-state company asking for two years of building-permit data broken down by additions, remodels, roofing and other categories — require substantial information-technology resources and staff time. "Some of these things they can pull together in a couple of hours. One of our requests a few years ago was over 4,000 emails, and that took several days to put together," Albright said.

Albright said state law authorizes a "special service charge" when requests require extensive IT work and that a new policy would let staff estimate and recover the actual cost of compiling nonstandard exports. "If we do change this policy, I'll be happy to tell these folks when they send requests like this in that we estimate it's gonna cost a 150 or $200 to get this together," he said.

Members of the public raised concerns during the comment period. Doug Eisley, who had been yielded time by another speaker, asked directly: "Why are you wanting to charge fees for public records? We're already paying more taxes now to cover costs. You're not supposed to make profit off of paper. You can't charge for information, and you can't charge for research time." Eisley urged caution before broadening fees.

In the board discussion, some commissioners said routine document viewing and standard copies for local taxpayers would remain available without charge. "If a local [resident] can come view it, they can come and look at it anytime they want to make an appointment," one commissioner said, while another added that large, out-of-state or global requests seeking thousands of pages are a different case. The board asked the county attorney and manager to draft policy language for future review rather than adopt immediate fees.

The motion authorized drafting only; no fee schedule or formal charging mechanism was approved at the meeting. The attorney said his draft would be brought back for the board's consideration and would attempt to balance accessibility for local taxpayers with cost recovery for unusually burdensome requests.

The board did not set a timeline for the attorney's draft to return. The motion carried and the board moved on to other agenda items.