AG Letter A — Opening
Dated 2024-10-25 · Author Senior Assistant Attorney General Kristen Settlemire, Georgia Department of Law · Addressed to Andrew Davidson, Esq., Jones Cork, LLP · CC Laura Corley; Val Mayfield · Responding to Open Records Request filed by Laura Corley on 2024-07-29 View the PDF →
Legal shorthand used here: AG = Georgia Attorney General’s Office. ORA = Georgia Open Records Act. ORR = Open Records Request. BCSD = Bibb County School District. FERPA = Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. O.C.G.A. = Official Code of Georgia Annotated (Georgia’s compiled state statutes). § = “section”. F. Supp. = Federal Supplement (a book of federal trial court decisions). N.D. Ga. = Northern District of Georgia (a federal trial court). Case citations read: volume / reporter / page / year.
What is this document?
This is the opening letter in the Georgia Attorney General’s Open Government Mediation Program dispute between Macon Melody reporter Laura Corley and the Bibb County School District over Corley’s July 29, 2024 Open Records Request concerning the July 18, 2024 board-approved settlement for Student JH.
Georgia’s Open Records Act (O.C.G.A. § 50-18-70 et seq.) gives the Attorney General’s office an informal mediation role: a requester who believes an agency has improperly withheld records can complain to the AG’s Open Government Mediation Program, and the AG’s office will open a file, ask the agency to defend its position, and issue an informal opinion. The process is not binding. It is, in the AG’s own framing, a mediation — not a ruling. Its outputs land as formal letters to the parties’ counsel.
Senior Assistant Attorney General Kristen Settlemire signed this opening letter on October 25, 2024. It is addressed to Andrew Davidson at Jones Cork, LLP — BCSD’s general counsel at that time — and sent with Laura Corley and Val Mayfield (an additional contact on the Melody side) copied. The letter is not an adjudication; it is a case-opening document that sets out the AG’s preliminary reading of the law and directs BCSD to defend its position.
At a glance
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Dated | October 25, 2024 |
| Author | Senior Assistant AG Kristen Settlemire |
| Recipient | Andrew Davidson, Esq., Jones Cork, LLP |
| CC | Laura Corley; Val Mayfield |
| Responds to | ORR by Laura Corley, dated July 29, 2024 |
| AG file number | #1524891-v1 |
| Asks BCSD to | (1) defend the O.C.G.A. § 50-18-72(a)(37) exemption; (2) produce July 18, 2024 board minutes; (3) respond within 10 business days |
Deep dive — what the letter says and why it matters
The core language on Mullins v. City of Griffin
The letter’s key passage reads:
“Settlement agreements must generally be provided in response to an Open Records Act request. See generally, Mullins v. City of Griffin, 886 F. Supp. 21, 21 (1995). While education records … are subject to the (a)(37) exemption to disclosure, my review of the July 18, 2024, meeting agenda shows ‘Settlement for Student JH (ACTION)’ as an item for the board’s consideration in public session.”
Two things are happening in this paragraph. First, the AG’s office is reading Mullins v. City of Griffin, 886 F. Supp. 21 (N.D. Ga. 1995) — a 1995 federal trial-court decision from the Northern District of Georgia — as authority for disclosure of settlement agreements paid with public funds. BCSD, at this point, was citing Mullins in the other direction. Second, the AG is flagging a factual problem with BCSD’s FERPA-based exemption argument: the JH settlement was an action item on a public agenda at an open public meeting.
What the AG asked BCSD to do
The letter asks BCSD to do three things:
- Defend the O.C.G.A. § 50-18-72(a)(37) exemption — the provision in the Open Records Act that exempts “education records” as that term is used in FERPA. The AG wants BCSD to articulate, on the record, why a settlement dollar amount paid from public funds falls within that exemption.
- Produce the July 18, 2024 board minutes — the public record of the meeting at which the board voted to approve the JH settlement.
- Respond within 10 business days.
Why this letter matters in Melody v. BCSD
The Melody complaint filed August 4, 2025 attaches the AG’s April 24, 2025 close-out letter — not this opening letter — as Exhibit F. The close-out letter explicitly rejects BCSD’s reliance on Mullins. This opening letter is the upstream predicate: it shows the AG had already flagged the same underlying legal problem in writing, six months before the close-out letter, while Jones Cork was still BCSD’s counsel of record.
For the plaintiff’s fee-shifting theory under O.C.G.A. § 50-18-73(b) — under which the court awards attorney’s fees where the agency acted “without substantial justification,” unless special circumstances would render an award unjust — this letter is the earliest documented state-level pushback on the Mullins theory. BCSD had the AG’s adverse informal view of its legal authority nine months before the Melody complaint was filed.
Why this matters
The pre-lawsuit record has often been summarized on this site and in the pleadings as “the AG letter” — singular. There are, in fact, two AG letters. This opening letter (October 25, 2024) begins the mediation; the close-out letter (April 24, 2025) ends it at impasse. The directional framing across both letters — that Mullins supports disclosure, not non-disclosure — is consistent.
For a fuller narrative of how this letter fits into the broader pre-lawsuit sequence, see the Background page.
Read the original
Part of the Pre-Litigation Record · Civil Action No. 2025-CV-083495 · Bibb County Superior Court