Money Order No Good For Open Records Requests at City

Frankly, I’m confused. I while back I submitted an open records request that resulted in a substantial amount of data. The city sent me an invoice for a little over $100. According to the invoice, the city accepts cash, checks or credit cards. Being over 1,700 miles away I wasn’t about to mail cash. I didn’t want to use a credit card because I didn’t want to commingle personal funds with business monies. And since almost everything I do now is online I haven’t bothered to order checks for the El Paso News, Inc. business account.

Therefore I did what I thought was the prudent thing to do. I mailed a money order to the city for the full amount. Late yesterday I received an email from the city letting me know that they got the money order, however they are sending it back to me because the “city does not accept money orders“.

I cannot use the bank’s online “bill pay” option because there is no way to attach the required invoice to it. Therefore my only option is to use one of the temporary checks the bank gave me when I opened the account.

To be honest, I’m not really sure how to react to the city’s resistance to accepting a money order for an open records request. In my business, I would prefer a money order over a check. I guess I’m missing something.