On the front page of the paper VDT today County Manager Joe Pritchard
proposes further restrictions on citizens in public County Commission
meetings:
“We cannot stop anybody from taking video of a session;
but we can limit them to one area;
it’s distracting to us and to citizens
to have somebody running around the session trying to get different angles,”
said Joe Pritchard, county manager.
The only person I’ve seen running around the session trying to get
different angles is Paige Dukes, County Clerk.
Will she now be prohibited from coming out from behind the bar
to take pictures of awards and such?
Why they can’t stop anybody from taking video,
according to Georgia law,
O.C.G.A. § 50-14-1-c.:
“Visual, sound, and visual and sound recording during open meetings shall be permitted.”
Some courts do put some restrictions on visual recordings, such as
prohibiting pictures of jurors.
But the Lowndes County Commission is not a court.
It is the only elected body for the entire county,
and thus the only public forum at which citizens can peacefully assemble
to petition their local government for redress of county-wide grievances.
Does the Commission really want to put more restrictions on citizens in its meetings,
even though a constitutional scholar is questioning
the constitutionality of
the rules they recently passed?
Rules which limit the number of speakers in Citizens Wishing to be Heard to 10
and
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NAACP reiterates charges of environmental racism,
despite claims from Brad Lofton, Executive Director of the
Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority,
that
“all of a sudden we haven’t heard anymore about environmental racism.”
Leigh Touchton, president of the local NAACP chapter,
presents to the Valdosta City Council
research published by
Robert D. Bullard about environmental apartheid.
