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As many REAL activist know, the cost of public records adds up. In Florida, it's .15 a single page, .20 a double page. As a courtesy, cities will give newspaper companies FREE copies of City Commission minutes and attachments. For busy City meetings, this can be a stack of paper six to ten inches thick. You multiply that by the number of local papers in the area and you realize that the city is GIVING away thousands of dollars worth of public records EVERY meeting.
Now, when the newspapers were ACTUALLY doing a service to the community, it all made sense because they were looking after the public interest. Now, they're just an extension of corporations and real-estate interest.
So, what we have is the city applying two sets of laws. One for the newspapers, and the other for individual citizens who are all too often steam-rolled by decisions made in City Hall. To wake up the newspapers, we should make it loud and clear, that as long as they're not representing the public interest, they aren't deserving of special treatment. A person can challenge this favoritism based on the Fourteenth Amendment. Equal Protection under the law. The city should not be applying two different policies.
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