Recent open records requests at the City of Valdosta and the Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office were similar. An unscheduled visit to the respective open records office (Valdosta City Clerk and Information Window at the Sheriff’s Office) resulted in a simple form and information returned on the spot. No waiting, no hassle.

Open records requests at the Lowndes County Board of Commissioners is a different story. It’s not too hard to get the form, it’s here: http://lowndescounty.com/content/links/c697/misc/open%20records%20request%20form%207.2013.pdf

However, it continues to appear as if Lowndes County doesn’t want to make their records open. For example, a request for Greater Lowndes Planning Commission minutes and agendas resulted in 66 pieces of paper, leaving me to scan the paper, even though I said I preferred electronic copies. As I noted earlier, O.C.G.A. § 50-18 says

An agency shall not refuse to produce such electronic records, data, or data fields on the grounds that exporting data or redaction of exempted information will require inputting range, search, filter, report parameters, or similar commands or instructions into an agency’s computer system so long as such commands or instructions can be executed using existing computer programs that the agency uses in the ordinary course of business to access, support, or otherwise manage the records or data.

I am relatively certain the minutes and agendas are not typed on a typewriter and I know that the county has Kyocera copiers that are capable of making PDF files from paper documents and saving that on a network drive or USB stick which could be purchased for much less that $6.60.

    -gretchen

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