State transparency laws remain strong, protecting the public’s right to know about crucial crime, policing and legislative information.
The Georgia First Amendment Foundation is pleased that lawmakers passed Senate Bill 12 in its original form, shedding last-minute, transparency-eroding amendments to the bill.
The bill, if signed into law by Gov. Brian Kemp, will amend Code Section 50-18-71 to require open records requests be sent to government agencies. Any private entities subject to the Georgia Open Records Act will have to provide copies of requested records to those agencies so the records can be made public.
It’s a reset for Senate Bill 12, which lawmakers attempted to amend for the worse with last-minute maneuvering in the final days of the General Assembly session. In a process that made a mockery of transparency, lawmakers added lengthy amendments to the bill after it was no longer subject to public comment.
GFAF led an end-of-session effort to educate Georgians and their elected representatives about the harmful implications of this late-stage move by lawmakers, detailing in media interviews, social media posts, and on the foundation’s Legislative Watch page how the bill would have eroded open government.
Lawmakers’ provisions would have hidden from the public crucial information about crimes and policing in Georgia communities. For example, local police departments would have been able to keep secret almost all information about officers’ stops, arrests and incident responses, curbing Georgians’ access to information about criminal activity and police activity in their neighborhoods. Current Georgia law requires that police make such information available to the public, a practice that is the norm across the United States.
If the amendments had stuck, Senate Bill 12 also would have allowed lawmakers to keep more of their own actions secret, obscuring lawmakers’ communications with other parts of state government. The Legislature has already exempted itself from the Georgia Open Records Act. The now-defunct changes to Senate Bill 12 would have extended that exemption to state offices and agencies that communicate with lawmakers.
The foundation applauds lawmakers for stripping Senate Bill 12 of its harmful additions, protecting the Georgia Open Records Act at a time when government transparency is more important than ever.
