FORT SCOTT — Bourbon County commissioners on Monday will take up a question that affects anyone who asks the county for public records: who pays when the county’s computer contractor has to search county email?
Stronghold Data of Joplin, Mo., which runs the county’s computer systems, says those searches are not covered by its contract and wants to charge $95 an hour. One resident’s recent request shows what that looks like from the requester’s side, and the numbers on his bill do not add up.
How the charges work
Under the Kansas Open Records Act, anyone can ask for public records, and the county can charge what it actually costs to provide them. The county’s records policy, adopted Sept. 28 (story), sets copies at 50 cents a page and bills staff time at the wage of the lowest-cost staff reasonably needed for the work. When outside services are “reasonably necessary” to provide records, the requester may be charged “the actual cost incurred.” If staff time is expected to top five hours or $200, the office must try to contact the requester about reducing the cost.
One request, start to finish
On Oct. 26, Fort Scott resident Thomas D. Metcalf Jr. emailed the Bourbon County Clerk asking for records about a photo sent to commissioners alleging that county equipment was used to repair personal vehicles (story). He asked for the photo, the message that carried it and related messages, “electronically, if available.” That evening the clerk’s office forwarded his email, without comment, to Laura Krom, executive assistant to the commission, who handled the request from there.
- Oct. 28: Krom wrote Metcalf that she was “helping the Clerk fill Koras currently” and asked for another week. Metcalf replied the next morning that when he called the clerk’s office, “she said I had to go through you.”
- Oct. 29: Krom, writing that she was “just filling in for the clerk, as she is busy with the election,” sent a $90 estimate: five hours of staff time at $18 an hour, with no added costs, “assuming electronic delivery without third-party charges.” Metcalf paid it Nov. 2.
- Nov. 4: Krom told him there would be an additional fee “as Stronghold is now charging $95 per hour” to retrieve emails. She wrote that she had found out the day before. The same morning she told commissioners she was “doing a Stronghold Request for the email portion.” Stronghold’s ticket for the search, titled “estimate needed,” shows Krom telling the company, “Go ahead and proceed with this Kora.” “So a total of $185? Sounds excessive,” Metcalf replied.
- Nov. 6: Krom sent the records and an amended invoice with “a balance due of $18.00.”
The amended invoice lists one hour of county staff time ($18) and one hour of Stronghold time ($95), for a total of $113. It subtracts his $90 deposit and shows $18 due. But $113 minus $90 is $23. The $18 matches the county’s staff time alone. (FortScott.biz texted Krom to ask about the discrepancy in the numbers, but had not received a response by publication time.)
Metcalf said he has paid the $18. He said he told Krom he believed he was being overcharged and that he had contacted the Kansas Attorney General’s office. He said she told him he had the right to do that.
What he got for $108 was a 19-page PDF. The photograph was one page of it, printed and scanned in black and white, not the image file he asked for. The county said no original text message existed “as the photo was AirDropped.” For records identifying who sent the photo, and messages with that person, it wrote “Record not available,” without saying whether the records do not exist or were withheld. Asked whether the county’s answer told him what he wanted to know, Metcalf said it did not. “I had to do my own investigation,” he said.
How the $95 rate came about
The emails in Monday’s meeting packet (pages 100–115) show Stronghold announced the rate months before Metcalf’s request.
- Aug. 14: Replying to a Stronghold technician who quoted “$95/h” for an email search on another request, the clerk’s office wrote that the search should not go ahead “until a cost estimate is provided” and that County Counselor Bob Johnson, not Krom, should direct it (page 102).
- Aug. 20: Stronghold’s chief operating officer wrote that the county had not been charged for records work (page 106).
- Aug. 21: Johnson wrote that if the county was not being charged, “we cannot charge someone for something that we do not have to pay.” Stronghold replied that day, to Johnson, Chairman Gregg Motley and the clerk’s office, that it would bill $95 an hour, “effective now,” and would “continue getting approval from Bob for all KORA requests before fulfilling” (pages 107–108).
- Oct. 30: Stronghold billed the county for records work. Milburn-Kee wrote, “I don’t think these charges were passed on to the kora requesters” (page 110).
- Nov. 3: Stronghold counted “65 requests and just over 107 hours of engineering time” since July 2025, an average of about 7 hours a month over 16 months. It agreed to void the October bill as “a one-time waiver” (pages 111–115).
In an email to Stronghold that morning, Milburn-Kee wrote that “Laura and the clerk” had no way of understanding that the terms had changed. She wrote that charges “can be passed on” if requesters know them in advance and “can make an informed decision.”
What Stronghold is proposing
Stronghold plans to present a contract addendum, which is not in the packet. As described in its Nov. 3 email:
- Requests expected to take under two hours, such as “targeted email searches,” would be billed at “a flat one-hour minimum of $95.”
- Larger requests would get a written estimate that a single county contact must approve, but the bill would be “based on the actual time spent.”
- The county would review and black out records before release.
- Stronghold said it would follow this process “effective immediately” until the addendum is approved.
Questions for Monday
- Will Stronghold’s charges be passed on to requesters, and will they see the cost before the work starts?
- Who will approve Stronghold’s estimates, and will requesters see them before work starts?
- Stronghold gave notice of the $95 rate in August, and Krom wrote that she learned of it Nov. 3. Who is the county’s contact for these requests now?
The commission meets at 5:30 p.m. Monday.