Missouri to charge $28 million for driver's database
On May 1 the Missouri Department of Revenue will start charging journalists and others $7 per driving record, or $28 million for the whole database, claiming a need to recover the costs of producing the records just as other states do, according to an
Associated Press story. Well that's a lot of bunk. The reality is that most states don't charge for the cost of
producing records, just to copy them. So for a database of 4.2 million records we're talking the cost of a few CDs and the 20 minutes for someone to copy and paste. Previously, the media have paid about $2,000 for the database, which still seems unreasonable in my book. The magic of computers today is that it isn't that time consuming or expensive to copy files, and it's getting easier every day. Yeah, it's the Missouri Department of Revenue, but public records are not intended to be revenue stream enhancements.