Michael Paktinat

In Georgia, Community Services Board (CSB) are public agencies created by state law to provide mental health, developmental disability, and/or substance abuse services. There are ~25 independent CSBs throughout the state and they are free to use their own individual HR/accounting systems. A few simple calls lets me know they dont all use a system provided by the state.

Given I don’t think an agency “up stream” such as DBHDD or the CSBs various incorporated 501c6 and 501c3 would have the information on hand, I wonder if filing a request to a ‘upstream’ entity who I think does not have a record can oblige them to discover the record from their child entity.

For example there is a 501c6 that claims to represent all CSBs in the state. Would a FOIA or georgia open records request just be denied because they dont have it “on hand”?