Oklahoma Tells City it Can't Charge $17,125.44 for a Records Request Related to Data Center Arrest / The city tried to charge a farmer more than $17,000 for bodycam footage and records related to his arrest at a city council meeting.

[u/MarvelsGrantMan136]

https://www.404media.co/oklahoma-tells-city-it-cant-charge-17-125-44-for-a-records-request-related-to-data-center-arrest/

[u/hondactx16i]

Hope he makes them pay.

[u/Pasta_coil09 → u/hondactx16i]

wait how did they come up with 17k for bodycam footage

[u/DigNitty → u/Pasta_coil09]

Wagering a guess that they’re abusing some records request law that says something like “every record is subject to a $2 copying/processing fee”

And they treated 8500 frames of a video as individual “picture records”

[u/chownrootroot → u/DigNitty]

The absolute fools! They coulda charged for every pixel!

[u/fenris_357 → u/chownrootroot]

found the ubisoft exec

[u/kill3rfurby → u/fenris_357]

People should get used to not owning pixels

[u/CherryLongjump1989 → u/kill3rfurby]

PixelDRM, patented here first.

[u/Equivalent-Long4396 → u/kill3rfurby]

You wont own your pixels and you'll enjoy not owning your pixels.

[u/KaiserJustice → u/kill3rfurby]

Don’t give Ubisoft any ideas

[u/Whiskeywiskerbiscuit → u/kill3rfurby]

I love how that quote is what got the internet all riled up. Do people not realize that you’ve never owned your entertainment media? This is how digital media has always worked, going back to before I was born. When you buy Windows, you’re buying a license from Microsoft. When you buy Photoshop, you’re buying a license from Adobe. When you buy a movie, you’re buying a license to watch the movie on whatever format you paid for. When you buy a video game, you’re buying a license to run the software. This isn’t some new, nefarious invention by Ubisoft; it’s just how the industry has literally always worked.

[u/PlayfulSurprise5237 → u/chownrootroot]

Per pixel? Nah that's childs play, you got to pump those numbers up. Charge by the bit

[u/I_hate_all_of_ewe → u/PlayfulSurprise5237]

Not enough. Gotta charge per electron.

[u/MourningWallaby → u/DigNitty]

I'm thinking it's even dumber. Something like they took a month to process the request. and then charged a month's salary for any clerk or manager who had it sitting in their queue, regardless of what they actually worked on in that time.

[u/Mustbhacks → u/[deleted]]

stupid and invasive crap like all the township and police employee salaries

These... should all be public

[u/SJay_Plays → u/Mustbhacks]

I did double take when I read this too. Like, stupid and invasive crap like... public records... what?

[u/Noof42 → u/[deleted]]

Lotta places just post public employee salaries online.

[u/PopLegion → u/[deleted]]

there is nothing stupid or invasive about making FOIA requests to get all that information

[u/newhunter18 → u/[deleted]]

Sounds like a storage problem, not a request problem.

Or is the conservative meltdown just a euphemism for "angry desire to make government accountable?"

[u/kinkykusco → u/[deleted]]

That sucks and is wasteful. Though on the other side of that -

My city does restaurant health inspections. They used to publish them on their website, but stopped a few years ago. When I asked about it, they said their new website software doesn't support it (really? 2025 and you can't upload and link to documents???). They wanted me to pay $1 a page as per the FOIA law in my state if I wanted to see them.

Hundreds of restaurants so it would be something like $1000 a year to see the health department ratings for my city.

There's a middle ground here for sure. Stuff that is for public benefit of everyone, like public health inspections, should always be free, which incentivizes the government to just post it themselves. For other requests maybe each individual gets a specific yearly "credit" of free FOIA requests, like 20 pages, and then pay after that.

[u/joshTheGoods → u/[deleted]]

You guys charge for record redaction time, no? That's always been the big cost driver for me.

[u/CherryLongjump1989 → u/[deleted]]

I don’t feel bad for the clerk or the township. They can post their public records on a we site for everyone to see including all the salary data — it’s all public records. They choose to make it difficult for themselves.

[u/Torsomu → u/[deleted]]

We have to find which city councilman’s barn we put it in.

[u/joe5joe7 → u/DigNitty]

It's not a very long article...

"The bulk of the fees Claremore wanted to charge are for a legal review of 2,800 records related to Blanchard’s arrest and Claremore’s relationship with security contractors and Rogers State University where the meeting took place. Claremore said that the legal review “to ensure that all information which must be withheld relating to members of the public and the City’s personnel is redacted in order to protect their privacy” would cost $16,540.44.

Claremore also wanted to charge a fee of $585 for a 15 hour search — roughly what it costs to employ a city clerk for two days. To do otherwise, the city argued, would cause “excessive disruption to its essential functions,” according to a letter Claremore’s lawyers sent to the Oklahoma Attorney General’s office."

[u/EnnuiDeBlase → u/joe5joe7]

Damn city clerks are at $40 an hour?

[u/BadVoices → u/EnnuiDeBlase]

The cost of an employee is quite a bit more than what they are paid. Hourly wages dont include PTO, facilities overhead, employers share of taxes, healtcare, retirement/401k, etc. At my mid-sized business, depending on role, what I pay for an employee at their workstation is about 1.5-1.7x their base hourly pay.

[u/EnnuiDeBlase → u/BadVoices]

Yeah, I'm aware.

That has no impact on finding out that those city clerks make nearly 50% more on average than what people around my area do.

[u/BadVoices → u/EnnuiDeBlase]

Probably substantially less paid than that to the employee themselves, is my point. They state 585 is the cost to employ the clerk for 15 hours, not the pay for the clerk for 15 hours.

[u/BridgeToHerBithia → u/EnnuiDeBlase]

$25 an hour is 50% more on average?

[u/Metalsand → u/EnnuiDeBlase]

Actually yes, they range even higher depending on the size of the city. My current city is a pretty sizable one and the normal wage is $62 per hour but the ceiling is closer to $80 per hour country-wide. Indeed averages it at more around $32/hr country-wide.

[u/MechanicalSideburns → u/EnnuiDeBlase]

"Clerk" is one of those words that means vastly different things depending on where it is. I know some federal clerks in DC. They all have law degrees, and basically write the first draft of a judge's opinion half the time.

[u/joshTheGoods → u/DigNitty]

Naaaa, I've done FOIA. The costs come down to how long it takes to anonymize/redact the records. They have standard hourly rates in most places, and then they calculate the hours required by the size of the media (number of pages for print, minutes of media for audio/video). You have to be really careful with your FOIA requests ... you generally have to target material that was already redacted (so, stuff presented in open court for example ... state paid to redact that stuff).

The cost per page is generally nominal, and you can do things like just get a disk with all of the data instead.

This can be different from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but in general the costs come from processing the data for privacy shit.

edit ... turns out I should have scrolled down because someone already found the answer and it was exactly what I assumed.

[u/Same_Mood_8543 → u/joshTheGoods]

Whose privacy is at risk for a video of your own arrest in a public place? 

[u/Designer-Cow2477 → u/Same_Mood_8543]

That's exactly what the AG office said in denying the fees.

Sykes told Claremore to release the footage without a lengthy review and redaction process. “The footage sought here is of a public meeting attended by scores of people,” he said in his response to the City. “No one in attendance had any reasonable expectation of privacy, and the City has not identified any provision of state or federal law that justifies redaction of any portion of the footage [...] the City should be able to provide access promptly.”

[u/joshTheGoods → u/Same_Mood_8543]

The people around you. You wouldn't, for example, want the faces of a bunch of minors released. Or, say the officer takes your ID and it appears on their bodycam, you want that redacted, yes? You might have audio coming in over the radio that reveals information about other incidents or people that might need to be muted out. There are a bajillion things they legit need to redact before they can release this stuff. Watch true crime genre or the 1st amendment auditors and whatnot on YouTube and you'll see tons of examples of redactions. Sometimes they're total bullshit, and it's hard to prove it. Most of the time (in my experience) it's legit work done by an underpaid functionary that doesn't give a shit about the particulars of the case.

[u/newhunter18 → u/joshTheGoods]

I would say all that information would make sense if the recording was done in a non-public place. But a bodycam recording at a city council meeting where everyone who was there had no expectation of privacy and in fact could have ended up on the news doesn't need that level of redaction review.

In fact, I'd argue that redactions give the government more of an opportunity to hide the "bad thing".

[u/joshTheGoods → u/newhunter18]

In fact, I'd argue that redactions give the government more of an opportunity to hide the "bad thing".

The law is written with this explicitly in mind but it's obviously a really hard problem. This is why we have a trained human go through, in theory, making a good faith effort to balance public right to know vs individual right to privacy. The complexity of that decision is why we can't just take your word for it when you request the records. Someone has to check, and that means they have to go through all of the media being request. Sucks, but that's the pain of balancing freedom and safety in a complex gray environment.

[u/Same_Mood_8543 → u/joshTheGoods]

I want my ID redacted in a video released only to me? And I want a video with potential witnesses I would want to call in my criminal trial redacted for...reasons, despite the fact that they have no reasonable expectation of privacy?

And your other examples are: unencrypted radio calls from weeks before? I'm sure that hot news is definitely still highly secret. But, I guess, there are idiots on YouTube, so why should I look to the statute when there are theoretical reasons from people who are barely more than sovcits? 

[u/joshTheGoods → u/Same_Mood_8543]

Yes. FOIA operates under 'release to one, release to all' principle, so they aren't just thinking: '/u/Same_Mood_8543 won't care if I tell them their own social security number' they must think: 'would /u/Same_Mood_8543 care if I released this to the media and they published it?'

I believe you can do some other process to get a first party document request done where they won't redact your info, but I've never done it and can't speak on it.

The redactor does follow statutes here. FOIA enumerates the criteria for redaction, and the intent is to help the redactor balance the public interest vs individual right to privacy. My examples are just arbitrary off of the top of my head ... the point is that there are a lot of legit/good reasons to redact things at any given time in any record, so you have to pay someone to go through the whole thing making a tough determination about what to redact and what to not redact. You may believe what you're asking is totally cool to be public, but they have to check and that costs money based on how much needs to be checked.

[u/pharoh-king → u/joshTheGoods]

You wouldn't, for example, want the faces of a bunch of minors released.

Sure you would, they are in public, if there parents wanted their faces protect they shouldn't have brought them.

[u/paisleyturtle3 → u/DigNitty]

Probably. I have heard of municipalities charging the per page price for every page on a CD even though the pages aren't hardcopies which is what was considered when the ordinance was created. So sometimes there were fees in the thousands.

[u/Ambitious-Cut772 → u/DigNitty]

Maybe there were 8500 cops and they wanted every body cam?

I mean there are at least that many cops that would participate in open corruption

[u/Chemical-Anteater332 → u/DigNitty]

At this point I’m about to just say fuck it and call in motors bc at this point what can’t bombs solve

[u/Guardian6676-6667 → u/Pasta_coil09]

Its happening in MI too, since they legally can charge for FOIA processing fees, they realized if they make them ridiculously high people will stop requesting them. Also on the list is making the FOIA process take as long as possible.

[u/roadblocked → u/Guardian6676-6667]

Michigan also restricts FOIA fees and FOIA requests must be responded to within 5 business days.

I’ve been requesting tons of info on flock and data centers in multiple cities and counties and I haven’t been hit with any excessive charges or wait times

[u/Trick-Competition947 → u/roadblocked]

Whatever it is that you're specifically looking into, thank you and best of luck.

[u/roadblocked → u/Trick-Competition947]

I’m just doing the tiniest bit of activism by letting those in charge know we are watching. If I find anything questionable or get questionable responses I just forward it to someone I think would be interested in doing more. FOIAs are super easy and can be done exclusively by email, so I just notice where these things are going up and request broad information and contracts

[u/spez_might_fuck_dogs → u/roadblocked]

So, I'm married to a public records worker and I just want to let you know, you aren't doing anything but making someone's life harder by glutting their inbox with requests that must be answered routinely. 'Those in charge' will never know that you're making multiple flock requests, and I assure you the person who has to find and redact the records you're requesting doesn't have any authority over Flock.

[u/justusemeup → u/spez_might_fuck_dogs]

Your spouse never tells their supervisor that these requests are making their lives harder? They should. They should ask for a raise or help as well.

[u/spez_might_fuck_dogs → u/justusemeup]

The requests don't matter. A request is a request and they're all subject to the same laws and limitations. My wife generally doesn't give a shit what the request is about, unless it's specifically to help someone out who needs it soon. The first thing she's gonna think if someone makes a bunch of spurious requests about Flock cameras, especially if they don't even live in or around our cities, is that someone is fishing to trip her up so they can sue the city for a mishandled records request. If you think that's unrealistic, then I assure you it is not, and that many, many people make a living doing solely that.

Secondly, if you or some other dipshit 'activist' request 40 Flock records, now she has to spend time filling your request instead of maybe finding and redacting a police report for some poor woman who was beaten by her husband or a child who was SA'd by their local priest, who need those things for court cases.

So now you're making other people's lives harder by proxy as well.

Lastly, my wife doesn't need to ask for a raise. She's part of a very good union and makes good money, which is nice because she goes to a lot of conferences and spends a lot of time looking up public records laws. She's very passionate about helping the public. As for asking for 'more help', you toddle on down to your city hall and tell them they need to lay out for more public records staff and see how that goes over.

[u/justusemeup → u/spez_might_fuck_dogs]

It seems her city hall is understaffed if this is the case. It’s a shame that they can’t handle there obligations.

[u/Guardian6676-6667 → u/roadblocked]

This must be newer, I remember like a year or so ago there was a county that was charging like 7k for just bodycam footage and a report of an incident on the east side of the state.

[u/DogBarf00 → u/Guardian6676-6667]

It might not be. Municipal government employees are more often than not, complete idiots, especially if it’s small town government where the records keeper is the mayor’s cousin and sister in law.

[u/Guardian6676-6667 → u/DogBarf00]

Weaponizing incompetence 

[u/Raise-Emotional → u/Guardian6676-6667]

In Iowa we have a department that you can report these abuses to. That's where this all goes to die because the department has hundreds of unacknowledged complaints. Our ground water is cancerous so they defunded the testinf. MAGA don't like accountability.

[u/Matra → u/Pasta_coil09]

In the article, it is explained. Basically: $500 for the County Clerk to spend two days searching for the files, $16,500 to redact them.

And then the AG pointed out the law doesn't allow them to charge for redacting, they have to disclose search fees upfront, which they failed to do, they didn't explain why they are charging for the clerk's hourly rate and not a less-expensive member of the office, and that fee is probably not pegally permissible either. And that it's recordings of a public meeting with no reasonable expectation of privacy, so they don't need to redact anything.

[u/jonasshoop → u/Pasta_coil09]

They are saying there are 2800 records related to the arrest that need to be legally reviewed before releasing. How there are 2800 records? I have no idea. Maybe there's 4 bodycams with 4 videos and x number of still per minute.

[u/drossdragon → u/jonasshoop]

The requester is also asking for records related to the contracts with the city and the security company and the University where the meeting was held, but the city’s excuse is the cost to redact personal information about attendees. To a public meeting. That was recorded.

[u/Smith6612 → u/jonasshoop]

Probably one record per video frame. 

[u/Asmordean → u/Smith6612]

If it was 30 frames per second that would be 93 seconds. Seems plausible.

[u/Metalsand → u/jonasshoop]

The bulk of the fees Claremore wanted to charge are for a legal review of 2,800 records related to Blanchard’s arrest and Claremore’s relationship with security contractors and Rogers State University where the meeting took place. Claremore said that the legal review “to ensure that all information which must be withheld relating to members of the public and the City’s personnel is redacted in order to protect their privacy” would cost $16,540.44.

Claremore also wanted to charge a fee of $585 for a 15 hour search — roughly what it costs to employ a city clerk for two days. To do otherwise, the city argued, would cause “excessive disruption to its essential functions,” according to a letter Claremore’s lawyers sent to the Oklahoma Attorney General’s office.

Claremore also said it had found more than 10 hours of bodycam footage from Blanchard’s arrest but, again, needed time to review it “to ensure all available redactions are made to protect the privacy of the public and City personnel,” Claremore’s lawyers said. “Much of the footage at issue in Ms. Griffin’s request was taken in a very crowded room and features an incalculable number of people. A review of this footage by legal counsel is required in order to determine what, if any, portions should be redacted as required by law.” 404 Media acquired a portion of the bodycam footage from Blanchard’s arrest and published it in June.

One interesting thing I've learned - townhalls aren't strictly a public forum, but rather they are "limited public forum". It's a private location that opens up to the public for a specific purpose. Sort of like how a gas station is open for the purpose of selling convenience store items and gasoline, but they can still kick you out if you are disruptive. Townhalls have less ambiguous rules, though, and the presence of police officers mean that you don't have the leeway of when they call the cops on you and the time for the cops to arrive.

[u/dropbear_airstrike → u/Pasta_coil09]

Take the $$ they all wanted to pocket and multiply it by the number of corrupt fucks wanting a cut. Say, 5 people x $3,400 each = $17k

[u/Familiar-Banana-8116 → u/Pasta_coil09]

One of them is good at drawing zeros. They gave him a pencil.

This is an old scam. The law says you have to honor FOIA requests, but gives you room to charge for it.

[u/Zokar49111 → u/Pasta_coil09]

It should be part of discovery.

[u/Swordsandarmor22 → u/hondactx16i]

Us pay, the state does not supply their own funds.

Which makes it even more awful when we get mistreated

[u/0tanod → u/hondactx16i]

Wake me when the local population stops voting for the GOP. if blowing up trains in the middle of town or cops standing around while children get slaughted isn't enough, I dont belive flock cameras are going to get MAGA to change

[u/BAthaDoc → u/hondactx16i]

Call Tim Misny. IYKYK

[u/asp821 → u/BAthaDoc]

Came here to say that.

[u/404mediaco]

A city in Oklahoma tried to charge a farmer more than $17,000 to fulfill a public records request for information related to a proposed data center and the farmer’s arrest at a city council meeting. Now, in a win for the farmer, the State’s attorney general has stepped in and told the city to drop the fees and “provide access promptly” to the documents.

Farmer Darren Blanchard attended a meeting about Project Mustang — a proposed 225 acre data center in Claremore, Oklahoma — in February and planned to speak in opposition to the project. He left in handcuffs after the city council ordered him arrested for going 30 seconds over his allotted three minute speaking limit.

The bulk of the fees Claremore wanted to charge are for a legal review of 2,800 records related to Blanchard’s arrest and Claremore’s relationship with security contractors and Rogers State University where the meeting took place. Claremore said that the legal review “to ensure that all information which must be withheld relating to members of the public and the City’s personnel is redacted in order to protect their privacy” would cost $16,540.44.

Read now: https://www.404media.co/oklahoma-tells-city-it-cant-charge-17-125-44-for-a-records-request-related-to-data-center-arrest

[u/SlurmzMckinley → u/404mediaco]

Wow? What a crock of shit. They had to record video taken at a PUBLIC meeting to ensure everyone’s PRIVACY? They can get bent with that nonsense.

[u/azwethinkweizm → u/SlurmzMckinley]

The same people who tell you flock is no big deal because no one has an expectation of privacy out in public are wanting to censor attendees to a public meeting out of respect for their privacy. Unbelievable. We are not a serious country.

[u/jabba_1978 → u/azwethinkweizm]

Well not your privacy, THEIR privacy.

[u/DeathMonkey6969 → u/azwethinkweizm]

And the city councils that sign NDAs with data centers so they have an excuse for not disclosing the truth to the people they are meant to represent.

[u/hunnibear_girl → u/SlurmzMckinley]

That’s pretty much what the AG told them as well.

[u/honeybakedham1 → u/404mediaco]

I work for a firm that does records request for law offices. They do charge, but I dont think I’ve ever seen an invoice from a public office that was more than a couple hundred dollars, and that was for an insane number of pages and other files. Def them being vindictive

[u/Safe_Reading6267 → u/honeybakedham1]

Typically they cannot charge for the legal review. Usually states have set charges for public documents, no matter how onerous the production.

[u/Metalsand → u/honeybakedham1]

Sure, but it depends on the type of records, doesn't it? If it's just downloading a packet and forwarding it, vs having to manually review each page so that you can release a document that meets legal obligations...

The city claims it was a broad request, as well. Which is probably true, as is also probably true that the city is hamming it up a bit out of spite. The city does claim that they requested numerous times to narrow the search criteria...but we don't actually know definitively how this went down so... 🤷

[u/Snakestream → u/404mediaco]

How soon are we expecting them to "accidentally" delete the footage?

[u/Alundil → u/Snakestream]

They accidentally scheduled that deletion for yesterday.

[u/Hootinger → u/404mediaco]

225 acre data center 

What the hell!?!? This AI stuff is not worth it.

[u/myusername_sucks → u/404mediaco]

225 acres?! What if people like built houses there or something instead.

[u/WitchesSphincter → u/myusername_sucks]

You're also forgetting the considerable distance the sound from the center will make the area uninhabitable. Probably a couple acres on all sides, also useless to anything with ears. 

[u/lumphinans → u/404mediaco]

Where can we build a 225 acre data center... howsabout Tornado Alley!

[u/ActuatorLower8371 → u/404mediaco]

think you have free speech? try talking to the government for 30 seconds too long

[u/WorryNew3661 → u/404mediaco]

I thought FOIA requests were like $10?

[u/Splurch → u/WorryNew3661]

I thought FOIA requests were like $10?

Whatever the cost, FOIA only covers Federal records from the Executive branch, states have their own laws for their version.

[u/WorryNew3661 → u/Splurch]

I hadn't realised it was dealt with separately

[u/Hour_Specialist_4291 → u/404mediaco]

Seriously, 2,800 records related to someone arrested for talking an extra 30 seconds?

[u/Familiar-Range9014]

I hope the local government is found guilty, has to pay a penalty, punitive damages, and must provide the information free of any charge

[u/CohentheBoybarian → u/Familiar-Range9014]

Idiots from the city trying to claim people in a public meeting have some right to privacy that would be violated if their presence and actions at that public meeting were known? Dumb even for Oklahoma.

[u/Numnum30s → u/CohentheBoybarian]

There is a lot of dumb in Oklahoma. It’s especially funny when someone tries to claim that Oklahoma was 17th in education 15 years ago. Not even close.

[u/DaGoodBoy → u/Numnum30s]

My favorite dumb Oklahoma story was from 2006 when a city's hosting provider botched their web site and left the default CentOS webpage up.

Tuttle's city manager Jerry Taylor fired off an angry message to the CentOS staff claiming, "Who gave you permission to invade my website and block me and anyone else from accessing it??? Please remove your software immediately before I report it to government officials!! I am the City Manager of Tuttle, Oklahoma."

Yes, the City Manager threatened the Open Source developers with calling the FBI for... existing.

[u/CherryLongjump1989 → u/DaGoodBoy]

This is not limited to Oklahoma. NY sent Louis Rossman a late fee for failing to pay the $0 taxes he owed.

[u/DakotaXIV → u/Numnum30s]

Back when Oklahoma was purple. Then the tea party showed up, ushering MAGA, which gutted our public resources. Now it's just a state full of Trump and police worshipers

[u/Numnum30s → u/DakotaXIV]

They weren’t purple at their peak in education performance. They had a solid blue state government in 1992 and ranked just ahead of half the states in reading and math. It has been all downhill from there.

Fast forward to today, there are people protesting the building of an industrial plant in the middle of nowhere that would bring many lucrative jobs to the area and help fund education. That state cannot get out of its own way.

[u/egyeager → u/Numnum30s]

Hold on, are you pro the Smelter? Very much not in the middle of nowhere, would not provide many jobs and it is being pushed by the Feds as a present to the UAE. Smelters are terrible for the local area.

We should absolutely be opposed to a Smelter being opened here.

[u/even_less_resistance → u/egyeager]

fr it sounds horrible dude- they plan on ruining the whole area it sounds like

[u/Numnum30s → u/egyeager]

I am pro letting Oklahomans decide. I do not live in Oklahoma. Their reality is that they do not have the money to fund their schools beyond a shoestring budget. They have a sensitive environment that should not be polluted further beyond what happened with Pitcher. They should either accept that they do not educate their children and their place in the hierarchy of states or vote for democrats who will fund their schools with tax revenue gathered from mostly Californians who are the source of the vast majority of tax revenue.

[u/jimothee → u/Numnum30s]

I don't think protesting industrial plants is dumb when you consider the health risks associated with the current lack of environmental regulation enforcement. I sure as shit wouldn't want whatever company pumping waste into the local ecosystem.

All that said, I went to high school and college in OK and that state's arrogant stupidity is only outdone by Texas.

[u/CherryLongjump1989 → u/Numnum30s]

Which industrial plant is this?

[u/Numnum30s → u/CherryLongjump1989]

An aluminum processing plant that would help bring Tulsa into the 21st century. Perhaps Oklahoma’s environment is just too important with all of their water ways for them to ever have industry. Other than oil, wind, and solar farms of course. Which leads them to needing federal (California) funding for education since Oklahomans cannot provide that for themselves.

Yet they vote for the party that wants states to fund their own education.

[u/CherryLongjump1989 → u/Numnum30s]

How cheap and abundant is the electricity supply in Oklahoma? Does it have any hope at all competing against Canadian hydro?

[u/Numnum30s → u/CherryLongjump1989]

I’m not an economist but I am assuming it made sense as the world’s largest aluminum producer partnered with the largest US aluminum producer to build this $4 billion plant.

[u/CherryLongjump1989 → u/Numnum30s]

If you live in Oklahoma you don’t need to be an economist, you should instead ask your politician how much electricity they’re going to use and where it’s coming from. Because if you think the local data centers are sending your electric bill through the roof, wait until you see what a bunch of electric arc furnaces will do. And yeah you don’t have to be an economist to build a $4bn plant if your plan all along is for your neighbors pay your electric bill for you.

[u/Daveinatx → u/DakotaXIV]

Look at the turnout for a recent OK election to raise minimum wage. Too few people vote

[u/egyeager → u/Daveinatx]

They intentionally don't schedule those votes for the big general elections. See them also putting fitting the funding source to schools for the Republican run off.

(It still failed with 75% opposed)

[u/Kulandros → u/Numnum30s]

I was a few years out of high school 15 years ago, graduating from Oklahoma. In High School, I was using books and learning material I had used in Middle School in Kansas.

There's no way Oklahoma was 17th in education then.

[u/ShibeCEO → u/Familiar-Range9014]

and it will come out of your tax dollars while the people responsible will just go on with that bullshit cause: no direct consequences for them

[u/Familiar-Range9014 → u/ShibeCEO]

Then that needs to change via the vote with the incoming elected official charged with a mandate to clean house

[u/ShibeCEO → u/Familiar-Range9014]

never gonna happen, the system protects itself and it takes the system to change the system, which the system doesnt want

people will just lie to get elected and then be the same corrupt worthless self enriching pieces of shit as the previous ones

[u/New_Writer7325 → u/Familiar-Range9014]

Not the government. The individual workers who made this false bill possible.

[u/tevert → u/Familiar-Range9014]

Even in that unlikely event, it's on the taxpayer's dime

I lowkey hope for worse, but the most that can be achieved legally would be the political expulsion of the people involved.

[u/CremeOk4115 → u/Familiar-Range9014]

The data center passed. They dont care. They all get paid now

[u/buck70]

Claremore’s lawyers also complained that Griffin wouldn’t narrow the focus of her request.“Her persistence ... likely has everything to do with ... in order to generate public sympathy for her client and negative publicity for the City"

Hey Claremore, Barbra Streisand would like to introduce you to her effect.

[u/SaviorSixtySix]

Imagine a criminal charging police 17,000 dollars for evidence against them.

[u/Particular_Archer499]

It is my sincere wish that the members of that council and the cops that accepted the order to remove them always have their delivery orders come to them wrong.

[u/ak_sys]

To be fair, the cities Lawyer's defense makes sense:

"We can't release the body cam footage because it would make us look bad"

[u/azwethinkweizm]

Oh that's nothing. Here in DFW we had a city try and charge $26,000 just to get HR records for an employee. The reason cited was "mainframe minutes" even though the city has no mainframe and the employee was only there for a year.

[u/saltyourhash]

Obstruction of justice charges are fit for this.

[u/Wild-Highway-8739]

If he was arrested and charged wouldn't this be discovery? Aren't they required by law to turn this over to him and his defense team? 

[u/Astartes2435 → u/Wild-Highway-8739]

Yes. That’s why the states AG stepped in. 

[u/DENATTY → u/Astartes2435]

They requested it via the open records statutory procedure, not discovery. These are separate things. Sure, it could be requested via discovery, but discovery has limits on how many things can be requested so why waste a request on something you can readily get via an open records request?

The AG stepped in because they were violating the open records law, it had nothing to do with discovery.

[u/TheModWhoShaggedMe]

U.S. conservatives are fascists.

[u/fork_yuu → u/TheModWhoShaggedMe]

And farmers would happily vote for them again.

[u/KidKarez]

There is no reason a records request should cost more than like $50

[u/Revolver_Camelot → u/KidKarez]

There’s no reason a records request should have a cost. That’s public information, put it in a database available to the public

[u/SteakhouseThrowup → u/Revolver_Camelot]

This sounds nice at first, but consider the amount of body cam video that gets produced, and is stored only locally for a short time because nobody asks for it. It costs little to store it at each jurisdiction until it ages out of access. Centralizing, indexing, and serving all of that footage to anyone who casually browses it would be insanely, prohibitively expensive. 

Then consider how much sensitive information a body cam captures on a shift. People at their worst, in mental health crises, in domestic disputes, naked, bloodied, or discussing family secrets. You want that to be publicly available for anyone anytime?

Cost shouldn’t be a barrier to someone who has a legitimate need for a record, but it’s not as easy as just saying “make it all public” either. 

[u/AbunaiKujira → u/SteakhouseThrowup]

There is data on this too. For example, in 2023 in the state of Washington, the average cost of a data request was $292. The total cost to respond to records requests was $137 million and the cost to maintain those records was $213 million. That is about 437,000 data requests over the course of a year.

https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/jlarc/viz/2023PublicRecordsReportingOverview/PublicRecordsAgencyOverview?:render=false

That is a lot of money that has to come from somewhere. Maybe it is our tax dollars. The city of Gold Bar that almost had to dissolve itself due to data requests, they ended up cutting some snow plowing to pay for data requests. Or Gulf Stream, a city in Florida that had to raise taxes by 40% to pay for data reuqets.

[u/DogBarf00 → u/Revolver_Camelot]

Yes there should be a reasonable cost otherwise someone could spam hundreds of thousands of requests making it impossible for anyone else to request records and receive them in a reasonable time frame.

[u/Revolver_Camelot → u/DogBarf00]

What I’m really saying is it shouldn’t be a “request” to see public records, those records should be as browsable as the books at a library

[u/DogBarf00 → u/Revolver_Camelot]

Oh so you want the un redacted video of a mass shooting of children to be freely available? You want a police interview with a rape victim to be available to anyone that wants to jerk off to it like it’s in a library?

Think through what you want a little more.

Not all public records are the same. Why should the public know the details of some horrific child abuse case? Why should a child grow up and any of their peers can read the horrific shit they experienced and make fun of them for it? Why should parents be able to tell their children to not hangout with little sally because her uncle raped her, which to them means she’s a bad influence on their child?

Why does the public need to know I had to commit my uncle for wet brain syndrome?

There are different levels of public records. Like I can go to the school bus depot office and demand to see this morning inspection logs on the school buses and they must provide them to me right there. If I tried to get info on the bus routes and students that ride the buses I would have to jump through a bunch of hoops and probably not get a lot. All of it is public records.

[u/Several-Action-4043 → u/DogBarf00]

Oh so you want the un redacted video of a mass shooting of children to be freely available?

Yes. People need to see the truth so they can make informed decisions. Ignoring things that are uncomfortable does not make them go away.

[u/Revolver_Camelot → u/DogBarf00]

We could also revisit what enters public record, ultimately the whole system needs rebuilding from the ground up because as it is now isn’t really public record

[u/DogBarf00 → u/Revolver_Camelot]

You clearly do not know what a public record is. Please ask your teacher to explain it to you.

Sounds like you want to create public and shadow records.

[u/Runs_With_Toast → u/Revolver_Camelot]

There is a whoooole lotta data/documents/files in any given county and all of it has personal info all over it. Theres a reason its not all slapped into a public data base. It all has to be redacted and there is no easy way to redact them other than having someone manually do it. As for having to pay for it, I agree to an extent. I work in a smallish county and we sometimes get record requests for hundreds of properties by large real estate companies looking to audit their holdings. Asking for all of that for free is ridiculous due to the man hours needed to gather the large ammount of info. But a business owner looking for all documents on their property/business? That should absolutely be free.

[u/IkLms → u/KidKarez]

Especially when the request is by the defense attorney and its records related to the request. That's discoverable information

[u/TOGFIAVDF]

Not only should the farmer not have to pay, Claremore should be required to pay all legal fees as well as damages for any stress and time lost due to the matter.

It blows me away that we have such people in power in our country, and that they're so detached from the rest of the communities they're supposed to serve that they'll do anything to grease their own palms without hesitation.

American society needs a serious makeover. There is way too much selfishness and cruelty.

[u/RodgerCheetoh]

I was just in OK helping move my daughter into college. Late at night, I ran out to grab pizza from a small town local spot and made a left turn onto an empty street from a stop sign, literally not a single moving car anywhere in sight. A cop who was just waiting in a dark parking lot pulls me over and writes me a $227 ticket for "failure to signal intention to turn."

I looked up the actual Oklahoma statute (47 O.S. § 11-604), and the law explicitly says a turn signal is only required "in the event any other traffic may be affected by such movement." Since there was nobody on the road, the violation shouldn't even exist. The officer even hit me with the classic "Oh, don't worry, this won't go on your record" line at the window just to get me to pay it quietly, knowing full well I had out of state plates and assuming I'd never bother showing up to contest it.

Since I was still in town, I tried to handle it in person. I walked into their combined City Hall/Public Works building, only to be told by the window clerk that she doesn't deal with tickets and to go to the police station. I went over to the PD, and the dispatcher told me the chief wasn't in and basically chuckled, saying the chief wouldn't care unless it was something "egregious." I finally had to pry the court clerk’s contact info out of him, and it turned out to be a personal Yahoo email address because their court only runs once a month and nobody is ever physically there.

Seeing towns try to charge $17k for public records just to cover their tracks doesn't surprise me at all when this is how the baseline municipal machinery operates at the street level. It’s entirely built on the bet that out of towners will just fold and swipe their card.

[u/e37d93eeb23335dc → u/RodgerCheetoh]

So, don’t pay it. 

[u/FamiliarRip8558 → u/e37d93eeb23335dc]

So a $227 fine turns into a $10k+ legal event when a bench warrant is issued and their license plate gets flagged by any cop with a Automated License Plate Reader or a Flock/Axon camera seeing his plates.

Then they get to be handcuffed for hours, booked, mugshot taken, mugshot photo/arrest records held forever in AI systems/Lexis Nexis and usually will still have to go to court to clear it up now with an expensive lawyer.

So yeah, don't pay it. 🤡🤯🤣

[u/just_a_bitcurious]

They arrested him because he exceeded his comment time by 30 seconds.

What a bunch of clowns!

[u/EnvironmentalWin1277]

I think discovery materials must be provided for free to a defendant charged with a crime/violation. It is a violation of standing law to make a defendant pay for those materials.

Any lawyers who can comment?

[u/williamgman]

My the ranchers and businesses of Oklahoma have the life they voted for.

[u/PartyRyan]

The rot has permeated municipalities. It’s absolutely insane where we are right now.

[u/Revolver_Camelot]

Why do we even have to pay to have someone dig through “public records” for us? Put all public record in public databases

[u/jh937hfiu3hrhv9]

The representative city government too busy to represent the citizens. Smells like fascism.

[u/Lancair7]

The city officials who tried to get away with this should be imprisoned.

[u/Ardbeg66]

How in the world isn't ALL government business wide open to everybody 100% of the time? It's ours. We paid for it.

[u/wrxninja]

Oklahoma...Nebraska..what is it with these States that are so ass backwards on everything? I can't imagine living there with some brains that they will absolutely hate you for.

[u/hawksdiesel → u/wrxninja]

there's one thing that's common. A certain red hat and i'm not talkin linux

[u/adoodle83 → u/wrxninja]

an uneducated populace is substantially easier to manipulate than an educated one

[u/JustTheOneGoose22]

It's almost like Oklahoma is deeply red corrupt af state that doesn't give two shits about its residents

[u/SNStains]

lol, authoritarianism by stupids

[u/Darksmithe]

One state I will never set foot in.

[u/PolitiMat]

Oklahoma Open Records Act?

[u/clrksml]

'Oops we lost the footage of us discussing crimes we can charge him with' - them probably

[u/richie65]

I can't conceive of a reasonable argument for deciding that producing something that belongs to the public, should incur a fee.

The public has already paid for it. Pre-paid for it actually.

[u/Miserable-Present720 → u/richie65]

There are administrative costs to pulling that information. If there were no fees, a person could abuse the process and just file thousands of requests every day

[u/richie65 → u/Miserable-Present720]

"administrative costs"...

But those individuals salaries are already paid for.

Their JOB is to provide the public with the information the public demands.

The overhead (blurring out faces etc) inherently should be built into the function.

[u/hawksdiesel → u/richie65]

what AI SHOULD be doing.

[u/richie65 → u/hawksdiesel]

I mean - Yeah...

Although - My level of faith in AI, leaves me expecting some seriously entertaining results.

[u/thefanciestcat → u/hawksdiesel]

And what a human being still has to check even if AI does it.

[u/null-character → u/Miserable-Present720]

The issue is how egregious the fees are but that they want to charge something.

[u/Possible-Tangelo9344]

“The City knows and is aware that any documents released to Mr. Blanchard and to those associated with him, regardless of the privacy implications of individuals named in such documents, are subject to wide distribution, including on social media,” said Claremore’s lawyers in a copy of the letter obtained by 404 Media.

So?

[u/HughJorgens]

Everywhere there is a datacenter, there are bribed politicians there somewhere.

[u/drisang1]

We're no longer a free country.

[u/Ada_Pearce]

The message is very clear: submit or else 

[u/TyhmensAndSaperstein]

Is there ANY gov't org that isn't corrupt?

[u/BothDivide919]

I hope this case and the arrest get the city council kicked out.

[u/killerkadooogan]

Oh that's obstruction and extortion

[u/LebrontosaurausRex]

The City of Gainesville Georgia did the same to me when I requested records related to the waste water management of chicken plants.

I was quoted 27,000.

[u/thefanciestcat]

“The City has not posted a schedule of fees as required by the Open Records Act. Having failed to give the requisite notice of the fees charged for public access to City records, the City is foreclosed from charging search fees,” Sykes said. “If I were to conclude otherwise, there would be no incentive for public bodies to comply with the statute. They could simply ignore what the ORA requires and charge what they deem reasonable on a case-by-case basis.”

You don't even get to know what the fees are until you have a problem, and, by then, the city has a vested interest in preventing you from getting that information.

They chose for this to cost $17,000 because they were trying to keep it hidden and thought that price would make things go away, not because they wanted to collect $17,000.

The records are technically available but practically unavailable. This is the lie of "freedom" in America.

“Much of the footage at issue in Ms. Griffin’s request was taken in a very crowded room and features an incalculable number of people..."

According to the 2020 Census, there are fewer than 20,000 people in Claremore, OK.

So dozens at a city council meeting is "incalculable"? Only a really stupid asshole would put this scam in place to begin with, but "incalculable"? Jesus.

[u/adumblittlebaby]

But doesn’t Oklahoma understand the farmer is a “bad guy” (doesn’t agree with us)????

Conservatives hate the rule of law because it doesn’t allow for judgement based rules that depend on who is the subject.

[u/AvailableReporter484]

Conservatives sitting around with their thumbs up their asses looking for these mythical post-op trans children when there’s blatant corruption like this in their own backyard. God damn

[u/SchmeckleHoarder]

Vote local yall

[u/Rich-Accountant-3381]

This is Oklahoma, the same state that ranks 47th in education and refuses to pay restitution to those who lost family and property during the unforgivable attack on their thriving black community.

I do not feel bad at all for him, they voted and supported for this.

[u/FamiliarRip8558 → u/Rich-Accountant-3381]

You know this dumb mf'er didn't read any part of the article.

If you actually could bother reading the article instead of bringing something else unrelated up, you'd notice the State of Oklahoma's Attorney General intervened in the case of this shitty city council.

Now, in a win for the farmer, the State’s attorney general has stepped in and told the city to drop the fees and “provide access promptly” to the documents.

Bro gonna soapbox while not even reading the article 🤣

[u/DicemonkeyDrunk → u/Rich-Accountant-3381]

That is an amazingly silly response…this guy is actively fighting the corrupt system.

[u/FamiliarRip8558 → u/DicemonkeyDrunk]

The Oklahoma state Attorney General is also stepping in here to stop the local city council from charging $17k in fees.

Now, in a win for the farmer, the State’s attorney general has stepped in and told the city to drop the fees and “provide access promptly” to the documents.

But yeah, it's the arrested guys fault for living in Oklahoma.

[u/SlowmoSauce → u/Rich-Accountant-3381]

Absolute clown take.

[u/Eric6052 → u/Rich-Accountant-3381]

He may not have voted for them. It’s a highly Republican state for sure but some people are stuck in shit states due to jobs, family etc. and get stuck with these clowns no matter how they personally vote.

[u/DicemonkeyDrunk → u/Eric6052]

Trust me I know …I live in the island of blue that is New Orleans in the red state of Louisiana…the governor and city officials are constantly battling…the rest of the state is always hating on us while happily taking all the taxes etc we contribute and coming here to vacation.