03/08/2026
Katherine Revello, Inside Investigator
If you were to file a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request today and specify that you are seeking documents in electronic format, there’s a good chance that request won’t cost you anything.
That’s because the fees public agencies can pass on to requesters cannot exceed what it costs to fulfill that request. While you can be charged a per-page copying fee, capped at 25 cents per page, for paper records, there are usually no fees associated with copying electronic records (though there are exceptions to that rule if retrieving them requires specialized software or expertise).
But those aren’t the only types of fees public agencies can charge requesters. In many states, public agencies can also charge requesters a fee for the time employees spend searching for records, often to the tune of hundreds if not thousands of dollars.
Currently, Connecticut’s courts and the Freedom of Information Commission (FOIC) have interpreted the state’s FOIA law in a way that prevents agencies from charging requesters those types of fees. But that may soon change.
