UGA Reportedly Spearheaded a Bill to Delay Public Records Responses. What Are They Hiding?

On Monday, Georgia governor Nathan Deal signed state Senate Bill 323 into law, allowing Georgia's public colleges to drag their feet for 90 days before even acknowledging an open records request. Previously, the time to acknowledge receipt of the request—not respond to in any meaningful way—was just three days. Now, Georgia public schools, including UGA, can stick the request in a drawer for three months and get their cards in order. Kirby Smart, head football coach at UGA, is being praised for his efforts in getting this passed after a personal visit to the statehouse, hence the nickname "Kirby's Law."

The rationale for the new waiting period, as provided by the governor's spokesperson Jen Talaber Ryan was that 90 days "simply levels the playing field with other states that also have strong athletic programs like Georgia." The new provision had virtually no chance of being vetoed because it was attached as an amendment to an unrelated measure and passed during a last-minute, midnight legislative session.

While sneaking unpopular bills into larger, more popular bills is not necessarily unprecedented in politics, according to FOIA expert Dave Cuillier, the 90-day response time is, despite Governor Deal's level playing field claim.

To put those 90 days in perspective, Georgia law requires parties in a civil suit to provide just 30 days of notice before a hearing on a motion for summary judgment. That is, Georgia law requires a moving party to provide two-thirds less time to respond—on the merits—to a motion that may dismiss an entire case, than it does for a school to merely acknowledge a request for information that is required to be publicly available.

Although Kirby is deflecting credit for the measure, UGA is obviously over the moon with this new three month window to operate in secret and buy time to build a case and cover up their tracks should shit ever hit the fan.

Our Aaron Gordon put in an initial request for UGA's head coach expenses on November 16, 2015. They acknowledged receipt three days later as per the previous law's requirement, and provided the documents the week of Thanksgiving, on November 24, 2015. That's a pretty quick turnaround to which you can now add at least 90 days.

Here is what it takes to feed 40 freshmen football players pic.twitter.com/yDGdgbbSiJ
— Aaron W. Gordon (@A_W_Gordon) April 12, 2016

There are a lot of very mundane pieces of information contained, here. There are the standard fare expense items for hotel rooms, flights, and meals; as well as expenses unique to college football, like feeding 40 freshman a shitload of wings and chicken fingers. Obviously big time athletic programs have a lot at stake in the quest to pad their coffers win championships and they treat much of what they do as state secrets. Call it a competitive advantage, call it paranoia, this is how they operate. But why are they so worried about collecting and redacting information related to a team movie night, or the coach's car insurance? This is the easy stuff, the permissible stuff. There's no reason to hide or delay, but that's not what the 90 days are for, obviously. The 90 days are for protection. Perhaps because they have a reason to be paranoid?

Here's the entire set of documents provided by UGA. Soak it all in, it'll be a while before we see anything like this from Georgia.

University of Georgia head coach expenses by ViceSports

h/t Deadspin