"Excuse Me Young Man, Which Aisle Are the Reel-to-Reel Tapes In?"

OK, this is crazy. A Thurston County commissioner says in this story from The Olympian that the bill to require recording of executive sessions will require "added staff and equipment and creates tape storage problems."

Tapes? Huh?

Storage problems? A digitial recorder costs about $50 at Office Depot and is the size of a Snickers bar. The only way to have "storage problems" and need additional staff and equipment is if the county tapes the meetings on a reel-to-reel. Do they even make those any more?

If the county needs additional staff to digitially record the meetings, my 12-year old can easily do so. On her iPod she has all the Harry Potter audio books and about a trillion (bad pop) songs--and all of this fits on a something the size of a pack of cards.

UPDATE: Dave Seago, editorial writer for the Tacoma News-Tribune, writes this piece entitled "Taping a Meeting: How Hard is That?" and mentions this og-blog posting.