John White: Million-dollar request

The outlandish Freedom of Information request by the N.C. Republican Party to Attorney General Roy Cooper is purely a political move. The request is for everything written in the past 14 years. But consider how much of our money the GOP wants to spend. Assume that the attorney general has 2 million pages (it could be much more). So the citizens will have to pay someone in Cooper’s office to look at 2 million pages to be sure that the document is required under the very broad request.

If we assume that each document takes 2 minutes, then we have 66,666 hours of labor – which does not include time for lunch, breaks or anything else. If a clerical person is paid $14 an hour (basically $10 an hour plus benefits), then the resulting cost is $933,333. Assume that 50 percent of the documents need to be copied. One million pages at 10 cents per page is $100,000.

Who wants to stand up and take credit for this juvenile idea, Chairman Claude Pope or Executive Director Todd Poole? So the request by the GOP will cost North Carolina taxpayers over $1 million! We could use that $1 million in North Carolina schools.

This story was originally published March 23, 2015 at 1:39 PM with the headline "John White: Million-dollar request."