Georgia demands $22,434 for virus records

ATLANTA — State officials want to charge $22,434 for public records that could shed light on Georgia’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.

The estimated bill — submitted to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution — dwarfs previous charges for comparable records sought by the newspaper in recent months. The highest previous bill was $1,884.

The Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency also informed the AJC that it will take about 34 weeks to produce the records. So emails written between June 17 and Aug. 12 would be available in the spring of 2021.

Previous records have been provided in six weeks or less.

GEMA attributed the cost to the extensive review of sensitive materials required to process the newspaper’s request. Though it was asked, it did not explain why the price is so much higher than previous requests for comparable information.

“As you can see by the attached estimate, broad document request asking for any emails and documents related to Coronavirus response over more than a month long time frame generate thousands of pages, many of which are responsive in nature,” Deputy Director Mark Sexton wrote in an email to the newspaper.

“Due to this, it is necessary to examine each document and redact sensitive information prior to release, resulting in significant man hours expended to fulfill the request,” he said.

Candice Broce, communications director for Gov. Brian Kemp, said Monday that she was not aware of the GEMA bill and did not comment. A spokesperson for the attorney general’s office, which has processed many of the AJC’s records requests and is responsible for enforcing the state’s open records laws, did not respond to a request for comment.

The price hike follows the publication of an AJC article that highlighted the agency’s decision to redact thousands of pages of pandemic documents provided to the newspaper. Open government advocates questioned that decision, saying it might violate open records laws.

Richard T. Griffiths, spokesman for the Georgia First Amendment Foundation, said the steep price for the latest batch of government records also is disturbing. He said state agencies have jacked up the price of processing records requests when documents “potentially problematic to public officials” are requested.

“The open records laws were designed to allow the public to hold public officials accountable for their decisions and their actions,” Griffiths said. “This seems to be a mechanism to thwart the public’s right to see what is happening in their government.”

The Georgia Open Records Act requires government records to be made available for public inspection. The law allows citizens to scrutinize the inner workings of state and local agencies that spend billions of dollars in taxpayer money and sometimes make life-and-death decisions.

The stakes of government action are especially high during the pandemic. COVID-19 has already claimed the lives of more than 5,600 Georgians and more than 180,000 people nationwide.

For months the AJC has requested and reviewed tens of thousands of pages of GEMA correspondence and documents related to the agency’s pandemic response. The documents have shed light on everything from Kemp’s April statewide shelter-in-place order to the opening of emergency hospitals to the awarding of tens of millions of dollars in contracts for pandemic-related equipment and services.

GEMA redacted thousands of pages of documents, citing various exemptions to the open records law. Many of the redacted documents originated with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and are labeled “for official use only.”