I filed a request under the Georgia Open Records Act with the City of
Brookhaven. The City priced a single request at $49,385 and ran its demands to $58,603.85. In one
afternoon it closed a majority of my requests in under twenty minutes each, including ones I had
already paid for. This page is about what a records request is supposed to cost, and what happens
when the price is the answer.
The disclaimer. I am not a lawyer and nothing here is legal advice. This is a
plain language account of a public records process and my own documented experience of it.
What the Open Records Act is for
The Georgia Open Records Act exists so that the public can see what its government is doing.
Anyone can ask. You do not have to explain why you want the records, and you do not have to be a
journalist, a lawyer, or a party to anything.
An agency may charge for the work of finding and producing records, and it may charge for copies.
Those charges are supposed to reflect the actual cost of the work, and the statute puts hard limits
on them. Under O.C.G.A. § 50-18-71(c)(1), “no charge shall be made for the first quarter hour,”
and the hourly rate for search, retrieval or redaction “shall not exceed the prorated hourly salary
of the lowest paid full-time employee who, in the reasonable discretion of the custodian of the
records, has the necessary skill and training to perform the request.” Copying is capped at 10 cents
per page for letter or legal size documents.
Subsection (d) adds two more. An agency that “will seek costs in excess of $25.00” must tell the
requester within three business days and give an estimate. Where the estimate exceeds $500.00, the
agency “may insist on prepayment of the costs prior to beginning search, retrieval, review, or
production of the records.”
The Georgia Attorney General’s office publishes guidance on the Act for both citizens and
agencies. That guidance, and the statute itself, are the right places to start if you are checking
your own situation.
Source: O.C.G.A. § 50-18-71(c) and (d),
2025
Georgia Code. General guidance: Georgia Attorney General’s
Office. O.C.G.A. § 50-18-70 et seq.
When a price becomes a decision
Here is the part the statute cannot fix on its own.
A fee estimate is not a denial. It does not have to be justified in the way a denial does. There is
no hearing. Nothing is refused. The agency simply names a number, and if the number is large enough,
the request ends and the record shows that the requester walked away.
That distinction matters because the two outcomes look completely different on paper and identical
in real life. A denial creates a reviewable decision. A price creates a person who gave up.
Nobody counts the second kind.
The numbers in my file
| Price quoted for one request | $49,385 |
|---|---|
| Total demanded across the requests | $58,603.85 |
| Requests closed in one afternoon | A majority, most in under twenty minutes each, including ones I had already paid for |
| Brookhaven Police Department average response time to the public | About 1.3 days |
| Average response time on mine | 60 days |
| What I actually received | Almost nothing, after paying hundreds of dollars |
| Answer to my requests for an explanation | None |
Look at the last three rows together, because that is where this stops being about money.
The same department that answers the general public in about 1.3 days took an average of 60 days
on mine. That is the same office, the same statute, the same clock. The difference is who was
asking.
The full City of Brookhaven record .
What to do when a request is priced out of reach
How the price gets that high
I cannot tell you what happened inside the City’s offices, and I am not going to guess. I can tell
you the mechanics that make a number like this possible, because they are the same everywhere.
- Broad interpretation of scope. A request that could be read narrowly is read
widely, which multiplies the hours. - Attorney review time. Legal review of every page is expensive per hour and easy
to justify in the abstract. - No itemisation. A total without a breakdown cannot be argued with, because there
is nothing specific to argue about. - Payment up front. The requester funds the estimate before knowing what the
estimate bought. - Bundling. Several requests are treated as one large one, so no part of it can be
afforded on its own.
None of those is unlawful on its face. Stacked together, they turn a public right into a purchase
most people cannot make.
Why I was filing at all
This is the part I want on the record, because the fee only makes sense in context.
I did not start with a records request. I started with a phone call and an email, the kind of
simple complaint a five minute conversation would have handled. Instead I was asked, more than five
times, who my attorney was. When I asked the City Manager for a five minute call, he declined “any
meetings” and cited “potential litigation.”
When an institution will not speak to you, the Open Records Act is one of the only doors left.
Then that door was priced at $49,385.
One of those records mattered beyond the City. I needed it for a rebuttal to the State Bar of
Georgia, on a deadline. The City would not release it. I obtained it another way and filed on time.
That is why my second rebuttal was late relative to the
first.
What to do if this is happening to you
Experience, not advice.
- Ask for an itemised estimate in writing. Hours by task, hourly rate by role, and
the basis for the scope. A number with no parts cannot be reviewed by anyone. - Ask how the free first quarter hour was applied, and whose salary set the
hourly rate. The statute caps that rate at the lowest paid full-time employee with the necessary
skill and training. - Split the request. Several narrow requests, each individually affordable, are
harder to price out than one broad one. Ask for the cheapest category first. - Ask for inspection rather than copies where the statute allows it. Copying
charges often carry the estimate. - Compare against the agency’s own published performance. If a department reports
its average response time to the public, and yours is many times longer, that is a documented fact,
not a feeling. - Put every unanswered question in a numbered list with the date you first asked.
Unanswered is a finding. Undated unanswered is an anecdote. - Keep paying nothing you cannot document. Every payment should map to a specific
request and a specific deliverable, so that a closure in under twenty minutes is visible as what it
is.
Why this page exists
The Open Records Act is one of the few tools an ordinary person has against an institution that
has stopped talking to them. It works right up until the moment the answer is a price.
I am not asking you to take a side on my underlying complaint. I am putting a real invoice, from a
real Georgia city, on a public page, so the next person who is quoted a number like this knows they
are not the only one, and knows exactly which questions to ask.
Frequently asked questions
What can a Georgia agency charge for open records?
An agency may charge for the work of finding and producing records and for copies. Those charges are meant to reflect actual cost, and the statute limits them. O.C.G.A. 50-18-71(c)(1) provides that no charge shall be made for the first quarter hour and caps the hourly rate at the prorated hourly salary of the lowest paid full-time employee with the necessary skill and training. Copying is capped at 10 cents per page. Under subsection (d), costs over $25.00 require an estimate within three business days, and an estimate over $500.00 allows the agency to insist on prepayment.
Is a fee estimate the same as a denial?
No, and that is the problem. A denial creates a reviewable decision. A price creates a person who walked away. The outcome can be identical and the paper trail is the opposite.
Can I challenge an open records fee in Georgia?
Ask for an itemised estimate in writing, hours by task and rate by role, and ask how the free staff time allowance was applied. The Georgia Attorney General’s office publishes guidance and accepts complaints about compliance.
How much did Brookhaven charge for one records request?
A single request was priced at $49,385, and demands across the requests reached $58,603.85. In one afternoon a majority of the requests were closed in under twenty minutes each, including ones already paid for.
Corrections: this page is built from documents I received from the City of
Brookhaven 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.