A fee estimate is not a denial. That is the whole problem. A denial can be
appealed. A price just ends the request, and the file shows a person who stopped asking. Here is what
that looked like in one Georgia city, and what I would do differently.
The disclaimer. I am not a lawyer. This is a plain language account of a public
records process and my own documented file.
The shape of the problem
Open records laws are written around refusal. There are exemptions, and there are procedures for
challenging them. The system assumes that if an agency does not want to give you something, it will
say no.
Pricing sidesteps all of that. Nothing is refused, so nothing is reviewable. No exemption is
claimed, so no exemption can be contested. The agency has complied. You simply cannot afford to
receive what it has agreed to give you.
The outcome is identical to a denial. The paper trail is the opposite.
What it looked like
The City of Brookhaven priced a single request of mine at $49,385 and ran its demands across my
requests to $58,603.85.
Then, in one afternoon, it closed a majority of those requests in under twenty minutes each. Some
of them I had already paid for.
Its own police department answers the public in about 1.3 days. My requests averaged 60.
I paid hundreds of dollars and received almost nothing. My requests for an explanation went
unanswered.
What Georgia cities may charge .
The full City record
The twenty minute closures are the tell
Sit with those two numbers next to each other.
A request is priced at tens of thousands of dollars, which is a statement that it will take an
enormous amount of staff time to fulfil. The same requests are then closed in under twenty minutes
each.
Both of those things cannot describe the same work. I am not going to tell you which one is
wrong, because I was not in the room and I do not invent facts. I am telling you that they are in the
same file, on the same requests, from the same office, and that nobody has explained it despite being
asked.
Six things to ask for, in writing
Experience, not advice. Every one of these produces a document, and a document is the only thing
that survives.
- An itemised estimate. Hours by task, hourly rate by role, and how the scope was
determined. A lump sum cannot be reviewed by you, by a supervisor, or by anyone else. - The free first quarter hour. O.C.G.A. § 50-18-71(c)(1) provides that “no
charge shall be made for the first quarter hour.” Ask how the agency applied it, and whose salary set
the hourly rate, which the same subsection caps at the lowest paid full-time employee with the
necessary skill and training. - The cheapest category first. Break one broad request into several narrow ones
and ask for the least expensive one on its own. If a $200 slice is produced quickly, the $49,385
total needs an explanation. - Inspection instead of copies, where the statute allows. Copying and production
charges often carry most of an estimate. - The electronic version. If records exist natively as data, ask for them in that
form. Converting to paper and then charging for paper is a cost the agency created. - A written reason for any closure. If a request is closed, ask on what basis, on
what date, and by whom. A closure with no stated reason is the part that later looks worst for the
agency and best for you.
Keep the comparison that costs you nothing
The strongest single fact in my records file did not come from my file at all. It came from the
City’s own published performance.
Brookhaven’s police department reports answering the public in about 1.3 days. Mine averaged 60.
Same statute, same office, same clock.
Most agencies publish something like this somewhere: an annual report, a transparency page, a
performance dashboard. Find your agency’s own number before you complain about your own experience.
An institution can argue with your account of what happened to you. It has a much harder time arguing
with a number it published itself.
Document the giving up
This is the part I want to say to the next person, because it is the part I nearly got wrong.
If you cannot afford the estimate, do not simply stop. Write one final email that says, in plain
words, that you are unable to proceed at the quoted price, that you are asking the agency to identify
any narrower scope it can produce within a stated budget, and that you consider the request
outstanding until it does.
That email converts an invisible outcome into a documented one. Without it, the record shows
nothing at all. With it, the record shows a citizen who asked, a price that ended it, and an agency
that had the chance to offer an alternative.
Silent abandonment is the outcome this whole mechanism produces. It is also the only part of it
you fully control.
Where to take it
The Georgia Attorney General’s office publishes guidance on the Open Records Act and accepts
complaints about compliance. That is the route for the records question itself.
If the way the agency handled you also involved disability access, that is a separate and parallel
issue with its own free routes. Those are mapped here, and they do not
require you to finish with the agency first.
Frequently asked questions
What if I cannot afford an open records fee?
Do not simply stop. Write a final email stating that you cannot proceed at the quoted price, asking the agency to identify any narrower scope it can produce within a stated budget, and saying you consider the request outstanding. That converts an invisible outcome into a documented one.
Can I split a records request to reduce the cost?
Several narrow requests, each individually affordable, are harder to price out than one broad one. Ask for the cheapest category first, because a small slice produced quickly puts a large total in question.
Should I ask for inspection instead of copies?
Where the statute allows it, yes. Copying and production charges often carry most of an estimate.
What is the strongest evidence in a records dispute?
The agency’s own published performance. If a department reports answering the public in about 1.3 days and your requests average 60, that is a number the agency published itself.
Corrections: this page is built from documents I received and from published
Georgia materials. If any fact here is incomplete or inaccurate, identify the page, the sentence, and
the supporting document, and I will review and correct the record.
I have invited the City of Brookhaven to identify any inaccuracy on this page.
As of the date above, it has identified none.