After The Badger Project reported on what experts said are “clearly illegal” fees for open records requests, the Richland Center Police Department removed a reference to its $25 minimum fee from its website, and Richland County said the sheriff’s office will stop charging the fee “effective immediately.”
The decision was covered in a story that appeared in multiple news outlets, including the Nov. 4, 2025 issue of the Portage Daily Register. According to the story:
Richland County Administrator Tricia Clements said the county board will work to formally change the sheriff’s department policy, and that requesters would no longer be charged the flat $25 fee.
When contacted by The Badger Project about the fee last week, Clements said the county would consult with its attorneys. On Oct. 28, she received a memo from attorney Michael Windle explaining the policy was “unlawful.
Charging a $25 minimum fee is “clearly a violation of the state’s open records law,” wrote Bill Lueders, the president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council.
Richland County imposed the $25 fee in November 2024. The sheriff’s office consulted with attorneys prior to implementing the policy, Windle’s memo suggests. “I believe a miscommunication occurred,” Windle wrote to Clements.
Prior to The Badger Project’s reporting, a website for the Richland Center Police Department mirrored the sheriff’s policy. In the days after the initial story, the website’s reference to its $25 minimum fee was removed.
Billy Jones, Richland Center’s police chief, could not be immediately reached for comment.
“For some reason, law enforcement agencies tend to have a bad habit of adopting flat fees for record requests, but the law does not allow that,” wrote Tom Kamenick, an attorney and the founder of the Wisconsin Transparency Project, a law firm which practices open records law and represents The Badger Project in lawsuits. “They have to calculate what their own ‘actual, necessary and direct’ costs are and they can charge no more than that.”
