The issues regarding the changes to the state of Georgia’s Freedom of Information Act — nicknamed Kirby’s Law — were at the forefront of the football discussion for most of the spring for me. I wrote about this issue in a column for The Red & Black in the spring, and it continues to be a notable problem for writers seeking information.
The biggest issue I have with the law change is the time increase. If the adaptation had been from a response having to be made in three days to one in, say, one or two weeks, I would have been OK with that. There’s no denying that requests take time to fulfill, and when you throw several different writers into the mix, it’s definitely isn’t an easy task to take care of. However, the jump from three days to 90 days remains nothing but absurd.
What also bothers me is the ridiculous arguments that some tried to make defending the change. Many people said that the driving force in the change was that the athletic department receives so many requests concerning recruiting, but that cannot possibly be true. Writers at publications such Rivals or 247Sports don’t go through the athletic department to find out recruiting news; they go straight to the source, i.e. the high school player involved or his head coach. That’s not to say there are no recruiting requests made, because I know at one point The Athens Banner-Herald’s Marc Weiszer sent in requests regarding graduate transfer quarterbacks. That being said, there are so many other areas that could have held up a better argument in this case than recruiting.
But it wasn’t like everything was perfect with FOIA requests before. As Matt Brown outlined in this post on SB Nation, there were times where the charges for certain documents were outlandishly high. The state legislature just took a process that often rendered peculiar requirements from the requestee and turned it into a process that’s practically not worth the investment due to the time involved.
I watched the FOIA law change’s implications play out recently. My boss, Jason Butt, broke a story regarding Virginia and Georgia facing off in the Chick-fil-A Bowl in 2020. Butt made a FOIA request to Georgia about the contract, but knowing the information would not be available for 90 days, promptly did the same thing in Virginia for the Cavaliers’ side of the contract. As a result, he got the information in a matter of days and was able to break the story.
The inclusion of the Fetty Wap rider is an important example for us to consider. Since the concert occurred before the new law kicked in, The Red & Black was able to get the contract and flesh out the details. This is important considering the circumstances of the concert, in that Fetty Wap was late and performed well short of the requirements of the contract. Considering the funds for Fetty come from the students, they deserve to know how much money was dedicated for that show and whether he had fulfilled his required duties. Without this access, no one would have been aware that he in fact did not follow through with what the contract stipulated from him.