ORA-01 · Public records

How a Georgia open records request works

Ask a Georgia agency for a record and the law gives it three business days to answer, caps what it may charge, and never obliges it to write new reports.

Published 6 September 2026 · The Georgia Records Desk editorial team

What Georgia counts as a public record

The Open Records Act does not guard a kind of paper; it guards whatever a public office keeps in running itself. The Code’s list runs long: “all documents, papers, letters, maps, books, tapes, photographs, computer based or generated information, or similar material prepared and maintained or received in the course of the operation of a public office or agency.”

The definition reaches past the office walls. A record kept by a private firm counts when it is held “in the performance of a service or function for or on behalf of a public agency.” What stays outside is the machinery: the Act covers no “computer program or computer software.” You are owed the file, not the system it runs on. O.C.G.A. § 50-18-70(a), § 50-18-72(e)(2).

Which bodies owe you records

Both Acts reach every state department, agency, board, bureau, commission, public corporation and authority; every county, municipal corporation, school district and other political subdivision; and every city, county or regional authority. Nonprofits enter by one gate: a direct allocation of tax funds that makes up more than 33 1/3 percent of all its funds, with hospitals, nursing homes, dispensers of pharmaceutical products and similar medical or health service providers kept outside it. O.C.G.A. §§ 50-14-1(a)(1), 50-18-70(a).

Private entities can be pulled in halfway. When a public function is transferred to one, or it receives substantial funding for a task, only the records and meetings tied to that task are open, and an agency “may not transfer records to a private entity to avoid disclosure.” Homeowner’s associations stand apart: privately funded by dues and, in the page’s words, “not governmental or quasi-governmental agencies” within either Act.

What happens in the first three business days?

An agency “must produce records responsive to a request within three business days absent exceptional circumstances.” If it cannot, it owes you a written answer saying when the records will be produced, what they will cost and, if anything is withheld, “the specific legal authority exempting the records from disclosure, by Code section, subsection, and paragraph.”

The citation rule carries its own limit: the agency may add to or amend the authority it cited only once, and only within five days of discovering an error. So the clock produces paper either way: the records themselves, or a dated letter that pins each withholding to a numbered provision. O.C.G.A. § 50-18-72(h).

What the custodian may bill

Fees are capped in three directions at once. The custodian may collect a reasonable fee for “the search, retrieval and other direct administrative costs,” at an hourly rate that “cannot exceed the salary of the lowest paid full-time employee” with the skill and training to do the work. The first quarter hour costs nothing: “No charge can be made for the first 15 minutes of these actions.” Copies carry “a uniform copying charge not to exceed 25 cents a page,” and the agency must use the most economical means available, which brings computer records to you electronically where practicable. O.C.G.A. § 50-18-71.

The figures below are the ones the Code sets; this guide keeps a separate page on what a request costs.

Can an agency demand its money first?

Mostly, no. The Attorney General’s opinion is that prepayment “may not be required for an agency to comply with the Open Records Act except under the specific circumstances described in the Act,” and the Act describes two: you failed to pay the legal costs of a previous request, or the estimated cost of this one exceeds $500.

When an agency does intend to charge, “it must estimate the costs and notify the requestor in writing of the estimated cost within three business days of receipt of the request.” That notice is your exit: you may modify the request, withdraw it or accept the charges. If costs go unpaid, the agency may proceed directly to collection measures, without a prior court adjudication.

When records arrive with black bars

The Act names what must be shielded before release: Social Security numbers, medical and insurance information, bank account information, credit card and debit card account information, a mother’s birth name, the month and day of birth, and the home addresses and telephone numbers of public employees, judges and law enforcement officers. O.C.G.A. § 50-18-72(a)(11.1), (11.3), (13) & (13.1).

None of that lets the agency keep the whole file. Redaction is “the striking out of specific information from a record,” usually shown by blacking it out. “Records containing such information still must be produced, but the protected information is redacted,” and an agency “may not refuse to produce records because they contain some information not subject to the Open Records Act.” Redaction can be billed, priced on the lowest paid employee capable of doing it, and the agency should estimate that cost in advance.

Nobody writes a report for you

The Act opens files; it does not commission work. A public officer or agency “is not required to prepare reports, summaries, or compilations not in existence at the time of the request,” a rule the page traces to a 1989 Attorney General opinion (1989 Op. Att’y Gen. 89-32). If the study does not exist, no request will conjure it.

One door stays open inside the machine. When you ask for a printout of information already sitting in an electronic record, and producing it requires “no significant programming,” that information “is subject to being produced in response to an Open Records request.” Ask for the printout, not an analysis of it. O.C.G.A. § 50-18-70(d).

The FAQ page this article stands on

The rules above sit on one page: the open government FAQ of the Office of the Attorney General, at law.georgia.gov. It runs the two statutes side by side and answers plain questions with Code citations: who is covered, what counts as a meeting, how a session is closed. This guide read that page and checked it 5 September 2026.

Its penalty figures belong to the meetings side: a misdemeanor and a fine of up to $500 for knowingly closing a meeting that should have stayed open, and a 90-day window to challenge an action taken behind the closed door. On the records side it names no fine for a missed deadline.

What belongs in the first line of your request?

Before you write, settle two things: which office holds the record, a question the guide’s page on the offices that publish helps answer, and what the record is called. Put both in the first line. Name a record that already exists, because nothing in the Act obliges an office to build one. If it is a meeting you are after rather than a file, read what the Open Meetings Act requires of a public body.

Then send the request, and hold the agency to its three-day clock. If a written estimate comes back above $500, the choice to accept it, trim the request or withdraw is yours.