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Limits on fees for public records passed by state House committee By Kathleen Gray Detroit Free Press Lansing Bureau Public bodies would be limited in what

they could charge for copying public records under the Freedom of Information Act under a bill passed by a House committee Tuesday. The bill would allow

public bodies to charge $0.10 per page for documents requested by anyone under the Freedom of Information Act. They also could charge labor costs of up

to three times the minimum wage in Michigan of $7.40 per hour. "This represents really good work and really good policy," state Rep. Mike Shirkey, R-Clarklake,

who sponsored the bill, said during a hearing before the House Oversight committee. "It will help make watchdogs out of all of our citizens. The bill is

almost universally opposed by public bodies because of the time and cost associated with filling hundreds of FOIA requests. Even with changes made to the

bill that will allow the bodies to raise the per-page charge based on inflation, they still remain against the bill. When the bills were debated earlier

this year, Hamtramck Police Chief Max Garbarino said requiring his officers to review and fill FOIA requests was taking them off road patrols. "FOIA is

very burdensome and this will make it even more so for us," he said. "Every minute one of my supervisors is reviewing a FOIA tape, it costs us money and

takes the officer away from patrol. But media and other citizens looking for answers from government hailed the bill as a necessary tool. "One of the most

significant problems that the public and media have had with FOIA in recent years has been the explosion of unreasonable labor fee demands from public

bodies," said Herschel Fink, attorney for the Detroit Free Press. " Many of those are intended to discourage FOIA requests. The bill would allow anyone

filing a FOIA request to sue public bodies to protest unreasonable labor costs. "This would give us a tool to use against those kinds of demands which

many public bodies have been imposing," Fink said. State Rep. Jim Townsend, D-Royal Oak, offered amendments that would require charter schools, public

school academies and the Michigan Catastrophic Claims Association, which is the body that determines an annual fee tacked onto auto insurance bills to

cover the health costs of catastrophic car accident victims, to be subject to the act. The amendments were voted down. The bill, which passed on a 6-0

vote, now moves to the full House for consideration.