GRESHAM (AP) - Hundreds of cities, school districts and state agencies in Oregon have been asked to perform a records search for e-mails that mention term limits, property rights or spending limits. One of them - the Gresham-Barlow School District - says that information won't come cheap.

The district sent a letter last week to the group seeking the information, asking for $1.89 million to search roughly 450,000 e-mails from the past three months.

District officials contend it would take 31,500 hours to meet the request at $60 per hour of overtime. Employees would have to examine each e-mail because some may have confidential information.

The records request came from a Virginia-based group, Citizens in Charge, which is mounting what it calls “a study of public resource abuse.” Oregon election law forbids public employees to send, forward, copy or distribute e-mail that supports or opposes a political committee, election petition, candidate or measure. It is not, however, a violation to receive such an e-mail.

The Rainy Day Amendment Committee, which is running the Yes on Measure 48 campaign that involves clamping a tight lid on state spending, criticized the district for “obstructing” a legally filed records request.

“What Gresham-Barlow has done is try to set a spending bar so high that it becomes impossible to get them to comply with Oregon's public records law,” spokesman Matt Evans said.

He added that there's only one reason for the prohibitive cost - to thwart the request.

Altogether 484 state, county and city agencies in Oregon were blanketed with the request during the last week of September. Similar requests also have been sent to government bodies in Arizona, Idaho, Michigan, Montana, Nebraska and Nevada.