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Eugene says it can't tell which employees might hold Peckels' records, so it plans to search every file of every city employee, past and present. A records request stays cheap when an archive can be narrowed down to the few people who actually kept the record. 2/6

These 44,816 hours say more about how Eugene stores its files than about how much exists on one officer. 3/6

Lauren Harper of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, who reported on the invoice, suggests three fixes: fee caps, public-interest waivers, and requiring agencies to buy searchable records software. Two of those three only cap the invoice. Only the third one touches the hours. 4/6