How a public records request proceeds, step by step

A Maine agency or official that receives a request for public records must acknowledge it within five working days, under Title 1, section 408-A of the Maine Revised Statutes, read on the Legislature's website on September 6, 2026. The acknowledgement is the first published step; the estimate, the fees, the advance payment threshold and the appeal route follow it, all set by the same section.

The acknowledgement, five working days long

The first duty in the section is narrow and easy to check. Subsection 3 requires the agency or official to acknowledge receipt of the request "within 5 working days of receiving the request". The verb is acknowledge, not answer: the section separates the confirmation that a request has arrived from the delivery of the records themselves, and it attaches a day count only to the first. The clock runs on working days, the term the subsection uses, rather than on calendar days. Whether the record sought is covered at all is a separate question, and what counts as a public record is treated on another page of this folio; the acknowledgement rule applies once the request is made.

An estimate the statute calls nonbinding

Subsection 3 then adds a second duty with a softer edge. Within "a reasonable time of receiving the request", the agency or official is to provide a "good faith, nonbinding estimate of the time frame". Each phrase does its own work. Good faith describes the state of mind required rather than the accuracy achieved. Nonbinding means the estimate commits the agency to nothing: it is a forecast of how long the work will take, not a promise about the date it will finish. And reasonable time carries no day count in the subsection as read on September 6, 2026, which leaves this step without the fixed number that guards the acknowledgement.

What does the requester pay, and when?

The money rules sit together in subsection 8, split between two paragraphs with different jobs. Paragraph A caps the price of paper: "no more than 10 cents per page for a standard 8 1/2 inches by 11 inches black and white copy". Paragraph B governs staff time in two tiers: the agency or official "may not charge a fee for the first 2 hours of staff time per request", and after those first two hours it "may charge a fee of not more than $25 per hour". Two quiet words matter here. "Per request" attaches the two free hours to the request as a whole, not to each installment of work. And "not more than" sets a ceiling rather than a price: the words read permit up to $25 an hour and set no floor.

Stage	Figure set by the section	Where it is published
Acknowledgement of receipt	5 working days	Subsection 3
Estimate of the time frame	A reasonable time; good faith; nonbinding	Subsection 3
First staff time	2 hours free, per request	Subsection 8, paragraph B
Staff time after the first 2 hours	Up to $25 per hour	Subsection 8, paragraph B
Standard copies	Up to 10 cents per page	Subsection 8, paragraph A
Advance payment	Allowed when the estimate exceeds $100	Subsection 10, paragraph A
Denial	Appeal as provided in section 409	Subsection 4

One row of the table stands apart from the others: the estimate, alone among the steps, carries no figure, and the section leaves its timing to the single word reasonable.

When the estimate passes a hundred dollars

Subsection 10, paragraph A draws the one money line that comes before the work. It allows payment to be required in advance when "the estimated total cost exceeds $100". The trigger is the estimate, not the final bill: the line is drawn on the forecast given under subsection 3, before the copying starts. The verb in the subsection is allows, which is permission rather than command; nothing in the words read requires an agency to demand money first, and nothing in them forbids it either. The folio's page on fees and advance payment follows that arithmetic further; the subsection itself stops at the trigger.

What happens when the answer is no?

A refusal is not the end of the section's map. Subsection 4 makes a denial "subject to appeal as provided in section 409". A denial, in this setting, is the decision that the records will not be produced, and the subsection gives that decision a named exit rather than leaving it final. What that appeal involves, who hears it and on what timetable are not answered by the material read on September 6, 2026, which stops at the reference itself. This folio treats when a request is refused on a page of its own, from that exit outward.

The purpose on one page, the numbers on another

The state's own summary page for the Act, read on September 6, 2026, says the law "grants the people of this state a broad right of access to public records while protecting legitimate governmental interests and the privacy rights of individual citizens", and that it "ensures the accountability of the government to the citizens of the state by requiring public access to the meetings of public bodies". Those sentences hold the purpose. They do not hold the numbers: that page does not publish the statutory citation, the definitions, the rules on who may request, or the Ombudsman's powers, so the five days, the two hours and the ten cents live only in the section. On the Maine Legislature's website the section stands under the heading "Public records available for inspection and copying", offered as a PDF and as an MS-Word file, with links to the chapter contents, the title contents and the Revisor's Office. Reading subsection 3 there, next to a calendar and the date on an agency's acknowledgement, shows whether the five working days have run.