From the Wilson Times (2/26/13): Town officials will charge residents up to $26 an hour to make copies of public records under a new policy that an attorney says might violate state law.
The policy applies to “administrative records or research requests above the normal scope of any employee’s job duties, or any request that requires more than 30 minutes to complete.” Town commissioners adopted the rule unanimously at their Jan. 14 meeting.
“Obviously, we want to get somebody everything we can all the time,” Mayor Luther “LuHarvey” Lewis said, “but if something is going to take longer than 30 minutes, we have to be able to charge the fee for that.”
Requests that take more than a half-hour to complete will be billed at the “actual cost to the town,” the rule states, which “represents the salary plus benefits of the employee performing the work.”