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. Montgomery Cnty., 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).
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”).