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When Bobby Gunst went to the building permits office to ask for a copy of the occupancy certificate at 1410 Avondale Avenue, they charged him 75 cents for the three pages. That was outrageous.
As a matter of law, the Act allows the City to recover the actual cost of the copies. The Building Commissioner does not have any records to support a charge of 25 cents per page. His actual cost is closer to a nickel a page.
The Building Commissioner does have a "policy" to charge 25 cents per page for requests over five pages. So the Gunst case was not only a violation of State law but also of the Building Commissioner's own policy.
City Council's own policy encourages dissemination of information. Moreover, as discussed elsewhere, each City employee has an interest in making it easy for citizens to get this kind of information with a minimum of hassle. Some of them, however, view the Act as an intrusion and they use it to make things as difficult as possible for citizens who want information about their own government.
They get away with this because most folks won't sue them over 75 cents, or even 75 dollars. That doesn't make it either right or lawful for the City to behave this way. Your job is to remind them at every turn, and to help create the record for the first person who gets mad enough to sue (Intentional violations of the Act can lead to a penalty for the offending bureaucrat).
So please make things as plain as possible, and say all the important things that are true. To that end, include this paragraph.