Access Atlanta > The Newcomer > Archives > 2008 > August > 21
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Georgia’s public records: make yourself at home with them.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
One of the best ways to get to know the place you live is to look at its paper trail. It’s exactly the kind of stuff that makes huge money at the box office and shows up on the New York Times best-seller list…just…unpolished.
And you have the right to look at a lot of it.
Say you want to know what Georgia’s largest non-profits are doing with their budgets. That info comes from the Internal Revenue Service.
You can find out which campaigns are receiving Georgians money using Federal Elections Commission data.
Or maybe you’re an overzealous soon-to-be parent and you want to know the weirdest and most popular baby names in the state. Thanks to the Department of Human Resources and their records, you can make sure your kid isn’t one of six Madisons or three Ashleys in her first grade class.
Yea records!
Journalists tend to be into records in a way that makes them awesome at work and odd at parties. You don’t have to. A lot of agencies post records online for you to peruse without creating your own analysis.
It’s the kind of information that will tell you whether you’re paying what you should in taxes, what’s in your drinking water and how your kids’ schools stack up, test-wise. (Here’s a list of some of that information, by topic.)
Here’s a quick guide to Georgia’s Open Records Act, including a list from the Secretary of State that details how long agencies must hold on to records.
Looking for more? The Georgia First Amendment Foundation publishes A Citizen’s Guide to Open Government. Thirty-five pages. Totally worth it.
Even if you think you’ll never, ever request a police report or a property record, it’s important to know that you can. There are limits to what is accessible, but it doesn’t hurt to ask, and sometimes argue for it.
Welcome to Georgia. Happy reading.
