Fulton County Attorney Patrise Perkins-Hooker has dropped a proposal to place new limits on the state's open records law.
Earlier this month, Perkins-Hooker had asked the Fulton County Board of Commissioners to back her plan to limit residents to 15 open records requests to a single agency in a year and no more than two within a 10-day period. She said the limits would relieve agencies of the aggravation of dealing with people who file multiple requests and tie up government resources trying to fill them.
“Limiting the rights of all citizens to make requests is not in keeping with the spirit and intent of the Open Records Act,” Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Colangelo wrote in an email to Fulton County.
Perkins-Hooker is dropping the idea, but she said some remedy is needed.
“We have several people who have mental impairments,” Perkins-Hooker said. “We have people who are compulsive with no reason for the information but they get latched on an idea and repeatedly request information.”
Chairman John Eaves said county government must be transparent, but he is sympathetic about the county attorney’s workload.
“I’m not sure if the public is aware of the myriad of requests that are made,” he said.
Commission Vice Chairwoman Liz Hausmann was more dubious about the proposal.
“Transparency outweighs the nuisance factor by far,” she said. “At the end of the day, I can’t see a positive in trying to limit transparency.”
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigated the number of requests that come into Fulton County and how quickly the county responded to them. For what we found, read this week's AJC Watchdog column here.
