The Platte County Commission approved a $35,000 amendment on May 5 to increase a contract with Lineal Services to $95,000 so county staff can respond to an unexpectedly large number of open-records requests.

County staff said the original contract, authorized in September, was for $60,000 as a time-and-materials arrangement based on an estimate of records to process. The county administrator and staff told the commission the actual requests “exceeded the number of estimated records,” leading to the request to raise the contract ceiling.

County leadership described the amendment as a commitment to transparency. The commission chair said county clerk Jared Pruitt and the IT department had spent substantial staff time on the requests. The motion to approve the amendment passed 3-0 after roll-call votes and a brief statement from the commission about the importance of making records available to the public.

The amendment was presented as a budgeted need; the county auditor certified available funds and the county attorney reviewed the contract form. No changes to the county’s records policies were made at the meeting; the amendment increases the consultant ceiling to cover labor and processing costs tied to the present requests.