The Second Department determined the town did not demonstrate the need for prepayment of the costs associated with locating the requested documents:
The only evidence in the record that justified the imposition of costs was a letter to the petitioner stating that it would take a Town employee a minimum of eight weeks, at $240 per week, to review 2,500-3,000 files to identify the records available for inspection. Although an agency may charge for employee time spent extracting or segregating data from an electronic database (see Public Officers Law § 87[1][c]), FOIL does not permit an agency to charge for employee time spent searching for paper documents … . Here, the Town failed to demonstrate that the prepayment costs were properly based upon employee time related to retrieving electronic files, rather than a manual search of hard copies for which the Town's recoupment costs are limited to 25¢ per photocopy … . Matter of Ripp v Town of Oyster Bay, 2016 NY Slip Op 04226, 2nd Dept 6-1-16
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION LAW (FOIL) (TOWN DID NOT DEMONSTRATE PREPAYMENT BEFORE RETRIEVING PAPER DOCUMENTS WAS JUSTIFIED)