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Serving Columbus & Starkville, Mississippi        (https://cdispatch.com/) Home  » (https://cdispatch.com/news/) News  » City defends public records fee in complaint response   (https://cdispatch.com/news/columbus-lowndes-county/) Columbus & Lowndes County   City defends public records fee in complaint response By (https://cdispatch.com/author/emcraecdispatch-com/) Emma McRae  • August 18, 2026  • 3 mins to read   (City defends public records fee in complaint response)   Jeff Turnage  The city says a $310 fee charged to The Dispatch for public records was calculated correctly, arguing state law allows municipalities to recover more than just an employee’s gross hourly wage when fulfilling records requests. The Dispatch on July 10 requested records related to city appropriations to the Columbus Arts Council, as well as partnerships between the nonprofit and Columbus Parks and Recreation. The Dispatch (https://cdispatch.com/news/dispatch-challenges-vague-wording-in-open-records-law/) filed a complaint with the Mississippi Ethics Commission after being charged $310 for the records – a figure that included a 35% upcharge on top of the hourly wage of Greg Lewis, parks and recreation director, who took six hours to compile the records. Chief Financial Officer Jim Brigham, who serves as city clerk, previously told The Dispatch that upcharge reflects the city’s cost for providing Lewis’ benefits, such as insurance, during the six hours he worked on the request. Had the city calculated the fee using only Lewis’ salary, which equates to an hourly rate of about $38.33, the cost would have been $230. State law allows public bodies to recuperate from the requester the actual cost of producing public records. If employees are involved, those bodies can charge fees based on the “pay scale” of the lowest-level person competent to fill the request. Historically, public bodies have charged The Dispatch based on hourly wage or its salary equivalent. While The Dispatch did not necessarily dispute the city’s calculation in its complaint, it asked the Ethics Commission to specifically clarify if public bodies can incorporate fringe benefits into the fees they charge for public records. In a response to the complaint certified Aug. 12, City Attorney Jeff Turnage argues they can. Specifically, he writes that the use of “actual cost” in state statute is not limited to the employee’s gross wages. “Had the legislature intended to limit reimbursement to gross wages, it could have easily said so,” Turnage wrote in the response. “Instead, it retained ‘actual cost’ as the measure of reimbursement.” Turnage argues that an employee’s true cost to the city extends beyond hourly wages. Payroll taxes, retirement contributions and workers’ compensation, he wrote, are among mandatory employment expenses the city incurs when an employee is on the clock regardless of the task they’re doing. If those costs aren’t covered, Turnage argues they are shifted to taxpayers. “A salaried employee ordinarily receives the same paycheck whether the employee spends six hours responding to the Dispatch or six hours performing other municipal duties,” he wrote in the response. “Yet the Legislature expressly recognizes staff time as a recoverable component of actual cost. The statute necessarily permits a reasonable allocation of employment cost to that time. If the requester pays only the gross wage, the remaining cost does not disappear. Someone must pay it.” With the city’s response now filed, a designated hearing officer will review the case and issue a preliminary ruling. If either side objects to the preliminary ruling, the case will move to a final review by the commission. 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