“No cost can be calculated for records no one has looked for.”
He writes to the Department of Justice that a fee must be calculated from a search, and asks it to run the search, tell him what it found, and calculate the fee from that: “No cost can be calculated for records no one has looked for.”
Public Records Officer,
On November 2, 2026, you wrote: “the estimated cost to search for, review, and produce the requested records is $80.00.”1 You priced the search itself. No search has been run on my request of October 27, 2026.2
A fee may only be “reasonably calculated to reimburse the public body for the public body’s actual cost of making public records available” [ORS 192.324(4)(a)]. No cost can be calculated for records no one has looked for.
Run the search, tell me what it found, and calculate the fee from that. Follow the statute [ORS 192.324(4)(a)].
Thank you for your contribution to the record.
