If they actually don't have the staff to do it, like I can imagine in small municipalities, then a fee wouldn't help either unless it allows for surge pricing that actually reduces the demand.

I don't know about WA, but not, in any practical sense, in IL.

Service fees is the counter-tactic here.

If it takes the city clerk multiple hours to assemble and distribute the video clips and time gets billed to $1k/request because it's being done in the most inefficient, asinine way, well, how many FOIA requests really have $1k of urgency behind them?

I don't know enough about municipal billing to know how defensible that is, but it's definitely one of the escalation paths here.