Our friends at the Somervell County Salon blog, whom we profiled in March for Sunshine Week, wanted to get mugshots from the county sheriff's department. The sheriff's department declined to release mugs of people who had not been convicted and were awaiting trial -- and then wanted to charge the Salonners for the staff time used to determine whether the requested inmates' cases were open or closed.

Salon appealed to the state attorney general. There's good news and bad news from the AG's office on this one.

First, the AG said that the sheriff can release, or not release, at his discretion the mugshots of people awaiting adjudication of their cases.

But Haddasah Schloss, the AG's point person on deciding whether records-requestors have been overcharged, says the sheriff can't charge the bloggers for the sheriff's department's staff time in researching the status of each inmates' case. The fee for each picture can only be 10 cents, for a maximum charge of 50 cents for the Salon folks' five requested mugshots.

While you chew on that, check out the new Tampa Bay Mug Shots Web site, which is the source a great deal of debate right now. It was created by the same guy who created Politifact.

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