Thanks to the generous donations of people from around Texas and the country, John Washburn, who requested several weeks worth of emails from Governor Rick Perry's office, was able to pay for seven days worth of email.

The cost? $611.

Washburn requested these electronically, so there won't be any charge for paper. The governor's office estimated dozens of hours of staff time to extract the emails, which explains the cost.

Washburn, a software developer, actually took the time to create source coding to export emails, sort them by date, and automatically redact any non-governmental email addresses found in little to no time at all, but apparently it's not being used.

“The Office of the Governor has chosen the most inefficient method possible to search for and produce these emails. The Governor has asked each member of his staff to interrupt their day, search through their mail boxes, and print out emails the staff believes are responsive to my requests”, explained Washburn. “I deliberately designed these requests so the emails could be exported directly from the email server without bothering the staff at all.”

Now we wait for the emails...