As a governmental retiree with over 30 years of public service, I vote for "Some want to hide embarrassing information."
David Hudson represents the media. Pete Fletcher represents the Richmond County school district.
And the two esteemed attorneys are longtime friends.
That alone set a congenial tone at Monday night's public forum on the laws surrounding open government sponsored by The Augusta Chronicle and other local media. But the two men's friendship is also a metaphor: The relationship between the public and government employees who serve them need not be adversarial.
We hope that message got through to the Augusta city government -- which has had trouble following state laws on open records -- but we're not optimistic, sad to say.
For one thing, there wasn't a flood of City Hall employees at the forum. Some city's attorneys might have actually wanted to speak at such a forum.
Meanwhile, at least one Augusta commissioner stayed away because he saw no need for the discussion.
And, perhaps most troubling of all, a new city policy requires all open records requests to be funneled through the city attorney's office.
That may conform to state law -- but it's quite possible it does not. The city's policy seems designed to delay release of records that are, in fact, routinely open and subject to viewing or copying by the public.
Public records should be made available as soon as practicable. Perhaps the law needs to be updated to spell that out.
On a practical level, rather than assume all city employees incapable of administering public records, as the city's policy does, why not simply educate employees on the law and their requirements under the law to serve the public?
It's clear that hasn't been done.
We applaud Commissioner Alvin Mason for attending Monday night's forum along with colleagues Don Grantham and Joe Jackson. And perhaps Mason is right that, after his commission training in open records, the forum was a "refresher" course in material he was already familiar with. But that's simply not the case with the rest of City Hall.
We hope Mason and his commission colleagues are committed to ensuring that such familiarity with the open records law filters down to every city employee.
So does Becky Shealy -- a Goshen-area citizen who was stonewalled weeks ago in her attempts to see the city's application for federal stimulus funds for her area. She was wrongly, illegally, told she couldn't have them. She ultimately got them, but only after repeated attempts and a plea to the entire Augusta Commission.
Sometimes government employees go to great lengths to avoid public scrutiny. The Atlanta school district was asked in the 1990s to provide information on school bus driver records -- which, one would think, the public has a compelling interest in, since school buses transport our most precious commodity. Neither the school district nor its private transportation company would willingly release the records -- and they fought the release as long as they could in the courts.
Why? Wouldn't they want parents and other citizens to have confidence in their school bus drivers?
Maybe not.
Some government employees just don't know the law. Some want to hide embarrassing information.
Either way, it's illegal.
Comments
As a governmental retiree with over 30 years of public service, I vote for "Some want to hide embarrassing information."
As an attorney, the city's new open records policy seems to be legally problematic. To ensure a delay (by routing requests through the city's legal department) for inspection of routine documents seems to violate the "reasonable time" requirement of the Georgia Sunshine Laws. Looks like the city wants another losing lawsuit so we the taxpayers can foot the bill for their illegal behavior.
The Chronicle and the other media have done their part to ensure that records and meetings are open. The lack of participation by Chiquita Johnson, officials and county employees at the forum shows there is an unwritten policy and attitude to circumvent the law. As Avesposito says, now is the time to go about ensuring compliance through the courts.
Aren't you tired of this back door, secret meeting, cover-up, bribe taking government we have here? Aren't you tired of incompetent Chiquita who uses FOIA as "job security" because she is useless as a litigator and legal adviser? It's time to clean house starting with the crooked and incompetent commissioners and going all the way down to the department heads. We need an independent county administrator with the authority to hire and fire. We need open government instead of back door deals and trading taxpayer money between commissioners. We need to shut down the influence of the "money men" and their minions who keep trying to sell us on putting taxpayer money into projects where they are the only ones that make a huge profit. We need to stop pouring SPLOST money into private organizations, churches, and non-profit special interest organizations and use that money for our rotting infrastructure (which matches our rotting government). The entire RC government is like a cockroach infested slum and needs to be gassed and then cleaned up.
You go MM...but remember your talking about Augusta..where good is bad and wrong is right.......................
The place to start would be the city code, which hasn't been updated in years. But that would equire the comissioners to read it first and that would be a hard task for some of them.
Putting the request thru the legal office would be OK but for two reasons, thre isn't any time fram given for the legals dept to process the requests and the other is to fire Chaquita the Banana (er city attorney) as shehas proven on more than one occasion that she is incompetent.
AC, why don't you release all the driving records of your AC employees. What, that's illegal? You mean that's a violation of their privacy? But they work for a newspaper! Don't you want us to have confidence in your employees? You mean if it's a private company and not a governmental entity, people are legally entitled to privacy? What a concept!
As far as the privacy of government employees, that is protected. Personnel matters are explicitly exempt from disclosure.
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