"Once the investigation is complete and closed all documents will be provided to you." —Custodian of Records

More from Susan Leavens:

----- Forwarded Message ---- From: "King, Shirley"
To: "[email protected]"
Sent: Wed, October 27, 2010 2:21:02 PM
Subject: Open Records Request
Ms. Leavens, as you requested under the Georgia Open Records Act, please find message from the custodian of records for Animal Protection attached.
If we may assist you any further, please don't hesitate to contact us.
Thanks.
Shirley J. King
Open Records Coordinator

The attached PDF is here on the LAKE website. Interestingly, although that message from Patricia Mitchell, "Animal Protection Office Custodian of Records" says

"Once the investigation is complete and closed all documents will be provided to you."

it also says:

"By policy the department only retains 2 years (2008 & 2009) inactive files and 1 years (2010) active files."

So if the investigation takes more than 2 years, do the earlier files about it start to vanish?

-jsq

Comments

[An Outsider Looking In]

Below - an email from 2008 - regarding an open records request for Ag Animal Protection's Licensee/Establishment List - one that I have had emailed to me numerous times - at no charge.
But look what they tried (and failed) to do to one emailer:
(Spoiler: Can you say "illegal"?)

==================================================

—– Forwarded Message —-
From: “
To: “[email protected]”
Cc:
Sent: Monday, April 14, 2008 1:59:42 PM
Subject: FW: asking for lists please – 4th request now

Mr. Jones, your request for additional information has been forwarded to me for handling. The additional information is too large to send via e-mail. There are 361 pages. With that in mind, you will be assessed fees for the following:

$0.25 per page X 361 = $90.25

Administrative Fee:

Which includes search & retrieval cost based on Ms. Mitchellʼs salary of $15.86 per hour; with an estimated time of 5 hrs, totaling $79.30.

Supervisory Fee for Mary Greene, Director to review information before sending out – $32.65 per hour; with an estimated time of 3 hrs, totaling $97.95.

Postage will have to be calculated

If you are still interested and would like to for us to proceed, please let me know. At that time, an exact cost will be quoted to you. Once we receive your check, your information will be mailed to you.

Thanks.
==================================================

[An Outsider Looking In]

So if the investigation takes more than 2 years, do the earlier files about it start to vanish? -jsq
===================================================
Just fyi - they can vanish long before the retention date is up.
.
.
To read what the Ga. State Auditor's Office had to report (2000 and 2003) regarding Ag Animal Protection's laxadaisy job performance, among numerous reports that "could not be located", etc.....please visit this link:
http://rattlinggeorgiascages.wordpress.com/animal-protection-state-audit/

[An Outsider Looking In]

Besides that, I am not sure that Ag can claim that line of "Ongoing Investigation" for an excuse to deny public access to a licensee's entire Ag Animal Protection file folder.

Or should I say, "I am not sure that Ag can CONTINUE claiming that line........"

Since Ag is regulatory, and not a criminal authority, and they have conducted their so called "investigation", and it's supposedly in the hands of a criminal authority...... on what legal basis is Ag denying access to the records.

I mean - I know they are claiming "Ongoing investigation" but I'm questioning if they can, by law, claim that in this case - or in a dozen (and half a dozen more) previous cases.

That might be something that should be looked into, yep, yep.
.