Oregon police quoted $2.5 million for records on one officer. The outlet is appealing

What the city wants to be paid for

The Intercept reports that Double Sided Media filed the request in August 2026. The city's estimate for Peckels, an officer with community complaints behind him, came to about $2,484,599 across at least 44,816 staff hours. A separate request about former officer Eric Klinko was priced at $195,869. Together that is nearly $2.7 million.

The justification: the city says it cannot limit the custodians to search. It will continue once paid, and the requester owes any overage. The outlet is appealing. The story notes Oregon allows fee reductions when disclosure serves the public, and that agencies often decline to apply that.

Slow-walking is a cheaper weapon than a price tag

"I sent a public records request to my local school district on March 9th 2026… I've received 8 of those responses so far, and there's no indication when, if ever, I will have received all the records responsive to my request." — a requester still waiting on a school district

The defense from inside

A commenter who says they have been on the agency side offered a duller explanation than obstruction.

"The work falls outside normal scope of the person's job. There's likely zero guidance on how to answer and an implication that the person is personally liable if they accidentally reveal something that legitimately should not be revealed." — a commenter who says they have worked on the agency side

A founder and CTO pointed at a hole in the story itself: the article never says what the request was, and an "anything, anywhere" request would be costly under any fee schedule.

A workaround, and its limit

One proposal was to split the request across 100 people so that the agency faces many small deadlines at once. Xirdus argued that sufficiently small requests could not be paginated into monthly drips. That only works for requesters with allies, which is the opposite of a one-person newsroom.