Iowa Code allows governmental bodies, such as the University of Iowa, to charge a "reasonable fee" for expenses associated with retrieving, copying, and supervising the examination of public records. The fee shall not exceed the actual cost of producing the records. As a general rule, the University of Iowa requires payment of the estimated fee before proceeding with the production of records.
The following fees are common among the Regents institutions and the Board office and should be assessed in satisfying any public records request:
- Copying Fees: Photocopies will be provided at no charge for the first twenty pages. A 25 cents per page charge will be assessed for each page in excess of 20 pages.
- Computer Programming: Requests necessitating computer programming or extraction of data will be assessed a charge of $75 per hour for each hour of staff time involved.
- Mailing: Fees for mailing will be assessed based on actual cost.
- Miscellaneous: Miscellaneous fees, including Board office or university provided CDs and flash drives requested or required for transmission of the request, will be assessed based on actual cost.
All other requests not requiring computer programming and/or database extraction are charged $30 per hour, subject to the following:
- Requests requiring less than one hour of staff time will not incur any hourly charges.
- Requests requiring more than one hour of staff time will incur charges for all time spent in excess of one hour. Charges for partial hours are at the institution’s discretion.
- Staff time includes (1) time spent retrieving potentially responsive documents, (2) reviewing documents for responsiveness, confidential or other information exempt from disclosure; (3) redaction; and (4) time spent supervising the examination of records by the requestor.
- Staff time does not include legal consultation.