The Poltava Oblast Council charged Nadia Kucher, the regional Institute of Mass Information representative, 6,500 hryvnias for copies of documents she had requested in her query about the budget money spent on media coverage of the government’s work, Nadia Kucher reports.
In her query, the IMI representative asked for copies of contracts with media outlets signed in 2025-2026 and related certificates of completion. The Poltava Oblast Council responded by providing some of the requested information: 10 pages containing two contracts with IRT-Poltava TV and an invoice for 6,476 hryvnias 85 kopiykas.
“The requested information takes up a total of 1955 pages. According to clauses 2 and 3 of Article 21 of the Law of Ukraine ‘On Access to Public Information’, if fulfilling an information query involves making copies of documents exceeding 10 pages, the requester has to to reimburse the actual costs of copying and printing,” the Council’s response stated.
Institute of Mass Information lawyer Volodymyr Zelenchuk believes that the Poltava Oblast Council’s reimbursement demand was unlawful, since the requested information was of public interest.
“The Law ‘On Access to Public Information’ provides for reimbursement of costs for copying or printing documents provided in response to a request, if their volume exceeds 10 pages. The person requesting information is relieved of the obligation to reimburse such costs if the information they requested concerns their person or is of public interest,” commented Volodymyr Zelenchuk. He added that “public interest” was not exhaustively defined in the law, but the information requested by Nadia Kucher was needed to strengthen the authorities’ accountabiliy to the public and ensure the transparency of decision-making by the government, hence it can be considered of public interest and no fee should be charged for making copies of these documents.