A recent records request targeting a new series of Colorado public service announcements on legal recreational marijuana has turned up the perfect cost — $420, obviously.
Earlier this month, Beryl Lipton, a reporter at the public-records news site MuckRock, filed a request under Colorado’s Open Records Act about the state’s $5.7 million campaign regarding recreational marijuana, called “Good to Know.” Tallying up the staff time associated with Lipton’s request, the Colorado Department of Health found that the minimum charge would be exactly $420. MuckRock reports that the Health Department estimated 21 hours of staff time, at $20 per hour, to retrieve and review the documents. (The agency noted that charge did not cover additional fees for the actual production of the documents, which depend on the format.)
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Now MuckRock is hoping to crowd-fund the $420 charge for the records so that “we can finally answer the question of how high you have to be to pay $5.7 million for some banjo music and parallax,” said MuckRock editor J. Patrick Brown. Check out more on the records request and fundraiser here.
