[danaris]

But it doesn't matter what their "normal process" for digitizing is, because there's a law that says that they have to provide the requested information and restricts the kinds of expenses they can pass on to them.

So, sure, their "normal process" would say, "If this is to get digitized, we need to make sure that it will go into our existing system of digitized records, and it has to meet these standards of quality, and it has to have three people review it to make sure the OCR got done properly" etc etc.

But that's what it would take to get it into their system. Not what it would take to provide the records to the requestor.

If the requirements of the law can be satisfied and the requestor is happy to accept a simple scan costing a few thousand, the state doesn't get to say "we'll only do it by our full six-month six-figure process."