I. How are fees for electronic records assessed?

There is no uniform fee schedule or formula for the assessment of fees for copies of electronic records. In Birmingham News Co. v. Peevy, 21 Media L. Rep. (BNA) 2125 (Cir. Ct. of Montgomery County, Ala., July 22, 1993), the trial court ordered the requester to pay (a) “the actual, reasonable cost incurred by the Department [of Public Safety] to create any new computer program required to comply with [the Plaintiff’s request for motor vehicle records]” and (b) the statutorily mandated fee of $5.75 “for each and every individual driving record identified by named driver in any such copy of the Department’s databases delivered to the Plaintiff,” id. at 2125, presumably on the ground that the MVR fee statute makes no distinction for the form in which the MVR records are produced. Ala. Code § 32-7-4 (1999) (as of Sept. 13, 1997, access to MVRs has been governed by 18 U.S.C. § 2721).

Rule 33 of the Alabama Rules of Judicial Administration provides that the Administrative Director of Courts (“ADC”) will promulgate policies and procedures — including a schedule of costs — for handling applications for computer-based information that is maintained by the Administrative Office of Courts (“AOC”). No such cost schedule has been established, but AOC computer-based information is available through two on-line services, ALALINC and alacourt.com. ALALINC has an annual user fee and provides access to current appellate decisions of the Alabama Supreme Court, Alabama Court of Civil Appeals, Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals, United States Circuit Court for the Eleventh Circuit, and United States Supreme Court, in addition to general information about Alabama’s criminal justice system, directories of judicial officers, and related educational information.  Alacourt.com has a one-time user fee of $150, and a monthly fee of $84 to $134, depending on the number of users; it provides access to case action summaries of pending civil and criminal actions in all Alabama trial courts, with search capacity.

Much more typically, there will be no statutorily mandated fee, and the fee for records in electronic format should be subject to the same reasonable-cost-of-production requirement that governs records requests in any other form.  See Op. Att'y Gen. Ala. No. 2008-030, 2007 Ala. AG LEXIS 97 (Dec. 28, 2007) (stating a state agency “may recoup reasonable costs incurred providing public documents to a citizen”).