08/30/2026
Agencies in Washington state often complain about the expense of fulfilling public records requests. At times they portray the cost as burdensome.
A reality check was in order.
We found a way to estimate what agencies spend on fulfilling records requests as a percent of total agency spending. Our estimate is based on public data reported by 90 cities and counties for calendar year 2022.
Of their total spending that year, fulfilling records requests accounted for about 0.25%.
In a warehouse with 400 boxes, 0.25% is … one box.
Cities and counties get a lot of records requests. Of the 10 agencies in our state with the most requests between 2020 and 2024, six of them were cities and counties.
Spending 0.25% of their total outlays on records requests doesn’t sound anything like a structural budget crisis. A small city might spend 0.25% on a piece of park equipment. A mid-sized city might spend 0.25% on a tourism marketing grant.
What does spending 0.25% on records requests buy? It buys transparency, accountability, informed citizens and public trust. That’s a bargain.
What follows is a brief note on our methodology.
We tapped calendar-year data from two sources. One was the self-reported cost of fulfilling records requests compiled by the Washington state Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee. The other was the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2022 Census of Governments, which collected total spending by agency.
We used Anthropic’s AI agent Claude to compile, sort and analyze the data.
Ninety-five cities and counties in Washington state appeared in both datasets. We threw out five because of apparent reporting errors, leaving us with the final sample of 90 agencies.
