Alaska is flush with cash, but there are no bargains for reporters and citizens asking for records of the public's money at work.

Alaska officials said they have been swamped with requests for copies of state records since Gov. Sarah Palin was selected in late August to be Republican presidential nominee John McCain's running mate. For requests of less than 200 pages, the state sometimes waives fees. Agencies also offer news organizations the chance to fine-tune requests to avoid high fees.

The state is estimating $960.31 -- 13 hours at $73.87 an hour for a tech worker -- to comb through e-mails of a state employee, although there would be economies of scale for large requests to search many e-mail accounts. The e-mails are pulled from the desktop, archive servers and fallback servers that include deleted e-mail, then put into a storage device where they're searched.

In an e-mail to The Associated Press this week, Alaska's senior assistant attorney general said the state will not waive its fees due to the current budget climate and the public's interest in spending taxpayer money wisely. The AP requested that Alaska waive the fees because the information to be disclosed is in the public interest, but the state rejected the request.

"State agencies cannot foresee every exceptional circumstance that might make a waiver in the public interest," Ruth Hamilton Heese wrote. "In the current budget climate, however, cost is a very important element of the decision."

A spokesman for Palin referred questions to Heese when asked Friday what "budget climate" Heese was talking about. The state has enjoyed billions in surplus dollars from a tax increase on the oil industry and high oil prices, although those prices have been sliding recently. State offices were closed Friday for Alaska Day and Heese did not return a message left at her Juneau home.

Some news organizations have asked for copies of e-mails between state employees and the governor's private e-mail accounts as well as those between state employees and her husband, Todd. But under Alaska's cited prices, those costs would run to thousands of dollars depending on how many e-mail accounts were searched. The state has 16,000 employee accounts.

The state has sought to extend until Nov. 17 -- after the presidential election -- its deadline to hand over copies of those e-mails to 18 news organizations and others. Alaska Attorney General Talis Colberg said Thursday he is considering the delay to give electronic workers more time, and then time for lawyers to review the material for privacy concerns. His office says the governor no longer uses a private e-mail for state business.

$50,000 REQUEST

When an environmental group, Alaskans for Clean Water, asked for copies of state records about an unsuccessful August ballot proposal to limit mining pollution, officials initially said they would turn over the documents -- for $50,000. Eventually, the price dropped to $7,147. The AP and several other news organizations have agreed to split that cost to obtain the documents.

"They overestimated it grossly," said Scott Kendall, the group's attorney, "and I think that overestimation was for the purpose of discouraging me."

Lucy Daglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, a Washington-based group, said overcharging for public records is a problem in many states.

"There are ridiculous examples out there ... sometimes they'll throw a number out there just to see if you'll go away," she said.

Daglish said e-mails add a new dimension to the problem: "E-mails are the hottest thing in open government right now. There is not a single state out there that is not trying to get its arms around how to treat e-mails."

WHAT THE LAW ALLOWS

Alaska law says state fees for filling requests for electronic public records "must be based on recovery of the actual incremental costs of providing the electronic services and products, and a reasonable portion of the costs associated with building and maintaining the information system of the public agency."

Kevin Brooks, deputy commissioner of the Alaska Department of Administration, said he's looked at how much the state charges and will reduce it from $73.87 per hour to about $60 an hour for the time of a state tech employee.

He said that's based on the salary and benefit costs of an employee plus 15 percent to help with costs of maintaining the system. Brooks said he's heard the argument that the state is paying the employees anyway, so shouldn't charge the public for their time. But Brooks said working on the records requests, particularly the volume of requests since Palin was nominated for vice president, is taking them from their regular work.

"All they're doing is downloading and sorting e-mail. It really has taken over this unit that does this kind of work," Brooks said.

He said the experience has shown the state it needs a better way to deal with requests.

"Going forward, there's other archiving solutions that will allow you to search the pool of e-mail for the state without re-creating individual accounts and searching them separately," he said. "That is the key difference here and if we can get those tools in place, it's going to make everyone's life a lot easier."

ADVERTISEMENT