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EDITORIAL
April 28 - May 4, 2016 • Page 6A
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CHAMPION
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CIRCULATION
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COUNCIL
New legislation protects
athletics, hinders journalists
While some Southern states
during the last few days of their
legislative sessions passed laws that
dictate bathroom usage, Georgia’s
elected officials at the state level were
discussing religious freedom, guns on
college campuses and protection of our
collegiate athletic departments.
Senate Bill 323 (AKA The Smart
Bill—named for new UGA football coach
Kirby Smart) affectively limits access to
public records that have any association
to sports at schools that fall under the
protective umbrella of the University
System of Georgia. Passed in the wee
hours of the next-to-last day of the
legislative session, the new bill changes
the period of time allowed for open
records requests acknowledgement from
three business days to 90 business days.
“Title 18 of the Official Code of
Georgia Annotated, relating to state
printing and documents, is amended in
Code Section 50-18-71, relating to the
right of access to public records, timing
of responses to requests, fees, denial
of requests, and impact of electronic
records, by adding a new subsection to
read as follows:
(d. 1) Any other provision of the code
section to the contract notwithstanding,
the period within which any production,
access, response, or notice is required
from an agency with respect to a request
for records, other than salary information
for nonclerical staff, of intercollegiate
sports programs of any unit of the
University System of Georgia, including
athletic departments and related private
athletic associations, shall be 90
business days form the date the agency
received the request.”
In a letter to Gov. Nathan Deal,
Georgia Press Association’s general
counsel David Hudson wrote on behalf
of Georgia’s newspapers “we were
extremely disappointed with the last
day passage of an amendment to the
bill that added extraordinary secrecy for
90 days to state college and university
athletic records-a topic never mentioned
previously.”
This new bill restricts timely access to
information such as salaries of coaches,
recruiting costs and investments and a
host of other topics that would fall into the
now protected categories. Coaches
and/or players could play an entire
season while the news media waits for
an answer to a question.
There is no logical reason that the
University System of Georgia, aided by
our state lawmakers, should be able to
restrict access to what should be public
information.
Collegiate sports in Georgia is big
business, it seems as if it can now legally
be an even bigger business with little
oversight.