Another non-profit opens its records

Downtown Vision, a non-governmental non-profit in Jacksonville, Florida, has just agreed to comply with Florida’s public records law.

Last week, a Georgia judge ordered a somewhat similar non-profit to open its books to the public.

Both of these non-profits work closely with, and receive some or all of their funds from, the government.

I suspect that the judge who ruled as he did in the Georgia case wanted to make sure that Georgia taxpayers had access to meeting minutes, financial records and vendor contracts–that kind of thing. Was he thinking about the fact that if an agency is subject to FOIA…that means that the emails on the organization’s servers are subject to FOIA?

Do the employees of these non-profits understand the potential ramifications of the fact that their organization was just determined to be FOIAable?