Although Keck said it may seem odd to charge the public to find out how much of their tax dollars are going to city employees, that's just the policy the city has set for all residents and every media outlet.

"For the recorder to pull those documents and make copies of them, she could be doing other work that needs to be done at the city," Keck said. "The City Council believed the city was losing too much revenue, not covering its costs."

If all 34 cities had assessed fees similar to Draper's, the newspaper would have shelled out more than $1,000 for the information.

"Does Draper not consider it a public interest for the citizens of Draper to know what their tax dollars are going for?" asked Campbell, who is a former Deseret Morning News employee. "Maybe it's not a violation of the letter of the law, but certainly a violation of the spirit of the law when you have a news organization trying to act in the public interest here and try to charge that kind of money for it."

Draper also charges for standard city documents like a copy of the budget, which a resident can purchase for $25. A copy of the city's laws and codes will run about $120.

Keck added that the city has cracked down on fee charges in the past few years, requiring all fee waiver requests to come before the council for a decision. Staffers can no longer waive the costs, a change Keck said comes from the proliferation of records requests in recent years.

It's the same story in Layton, where a fee schedule dictates that every person requesting city documents be charged 25 cents per copy and $10 per hour of labor.

"We haven't waived the fees for anybody else in the past," said Ric Higbee, Layton's human resource officer.

Layton employees spent two hours compiling the records, with the final bill ringing in at $22.50.

But like a few other cities, Layton waived all costs after an inquiry from a Deseret Morning News reporter.

"We've just always requested it and always got it," assistant city manager Jim Mason said. "We'll go ahead and waive it this time."

West Valley City waived $25 worth of research and copy costs. City officials typically don't charge residents for public records — if it only takes a little bit of research to compile the information, Assistant City Manager Paul Isaac said.

"When you ask for that kind of stuff and it takes our people so long to look through it, I think it's better for our citizens if we charge for it," Isaac said.

Other cities waived research costs altogether, charging the newspaper for copy costs only. North Salt Lake officials charged $1 for the four-page list, and St. George waived the labor fee but charged a $4.25 fee to copy all 17 pages.

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E-mail: ldethman@desnews.com; estewart@desnews.com; dsmeath@desnews.com