Applause is in order for Jack Cashman, the new chairman of the Maine Public Utilities Commission, who apologized last week to a journalism organization for grossly overbilling a request for records.

He showed refreshing candor.

The Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting had requested copies of the e-mails sent and received by former PUC Chair Kurt Adams, who left his state job to join a private wind energy firm, First Wind.

The center’s reporting had raised questions about Adam’s departure, hiring and compensation. Adams, meanwhile, has denied any irregularities, and a state Attorney General’s Office investigation found that he did not violate state ethics laws.

In the course of that reporting, however, the MCPIR requested copies of Adams’ e-mails, which are considered official correspondence and which the state is required by law to maintain and provide.

One hitch: The state’s chief information officer said it would cost $36,000 to retrieve the documents from electronic storage.

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And that, bluntly, sounded crazy. If the state is required to maintain these documents, shouldn’t it have a cost-efficient way to retrieve them?

The excessive nature of the charge led many to suspect somebody just didn’t want the e-mails to see the light of day.

Cashman, however, explained that the estimate was prepared by a former chief information officer.

A new CIO, according to Cashman, discovered a number of errors had been made regarding the availability of the e-mails.

The new price to retrieve the information: $160, which Cashman agreed to waive “because of the history of this issue.”

The gesture is appreciated.

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Still, we are left to ponder how often, in this era of electronic wonderment, so many public records have actually become more difficult to obtain.

It used to be that a reporter — or for that matter any citizen — could walk into an office and ask to look at official records.

A government clerk would wave to a stack of books or file folders and mutter something cryptic like “Knock yourself out.”

While the Web has made a large number of public records more easily obtainable, there’s now often a price for seeing it.

Which raises the specter of excessive cost becoming a defacto wall between the public and the information it is entitled to access.

In 2005, the Sun Journal requested information on large employers who relied on MaineCare to provide health care to their employees.

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We were first told by the Department of Human Services that it would cost $500 and take five hours of computer programming time to fulfill the request. We challenged the estimate, which must have irked somebody in the computer department.

They adjusted their estimate — upward to $3,000 — and said it would take eight months to deliver the information.

Finally, with the help of state Sen. Peggy Rotundo and Gov. John Baldacci’s office, the fee was waived and the information provided in less than a week.

Under the current law, the public has little or no recourse to challenge such excessive cost claims, other than file a civil suit or convince the Attorney General’s Office to prosecute.

Both of these instances show the great need for a low-cost way for the public to appeal what appear to be excess charges for public information.

editorialboard@sunjournal.com