I blogged about State Rep. Mary Margaret Oliver and then happened to run into her about an hour later, along with her partner in ethics. This time she was in color.
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Some legislators tried to hide potential ethics violations in the name of privacy. They failed in the last hour of the last day of the legislative session.
Jim Galloway wrote for the AJC yesterday, Your morning jolt: The failed attempt to make ‘transparency’ commission a translucent one
In other words, the Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commission would have been handed permission to cut off from public view the more pesky complaints against your leaders. Cases that it would decide you didn’t need to know about.
Who did this, and when?
State Rep. David Knight, R-Griffin, introduced the conference reportin the House, but didn’t mention the above paragraph. That came to light under questioning from state Rep. Mary Margaret Oliver, D-Atlanta, and other Democrats.
My AJC colleague Chris Quinn described a scene in which the tally board started out with green “yes” votes and red “no” votes evenly divided. But slowly, green lights began blinking out, and the red votes began to grow. At 11:08, the bill was defeated 25-143.
Sanity and ethics prevailed at the eleventh hour.
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Did you know about the Lowndes County Commission retreat this weekend? 
It wasn’t mentioned at their recent regular meetings, it’s not on their website calendar, and there’s no agenda posted, either. Fortunately, the VDT at least has been informed about it.
VDT editorial today, Commissioners annual retreat this weekend,
The Lowndes County Commissioners and staff are attending the annual planning retreat this weekend, but are not spending any county funds doing so.Chairman Ashley Paulk invited the county to hold the retreat at his farm, and he’s doing all the cooking for their meals, at no charge to the county.
It’s good Ashley Paulk wants to contribute to the public good in that way.
However, this is a public meeting of an elected body, and the public has not been informed of where it is, for example, at which of Ashley Paulk’s farms? Maybe they’ll at least keep good minutes.
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Best to record those votes! So said the Georgia Supreme Court last month.
G.G. Rigsby wrote for SavannahNow 6 February 2012, Court ruling favors openness in government
The Georgia Supreme Court ruled Monday that votes taken in open meetings must be recorded, even if they are not roll-call votes.The decision in Cardinale v. the City of Atlanta reverses a Court of Appeals ruling that the state’s open meetings law doesn’t require meeting minutes to reflect how members voted when the vote is not unanimous.
Matthew Cardinale filed a lawsuit against the City of Atlanta for failing to record how each city council member voted when a non-roll-call vote was taken at a February 2010 retreat.
Hm, the Lowndes County Board of Commissioners is meeting in retreat this weekend. Maybe they’ll keep good minutes.
Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Carol Hunstein said,“While the act provides for public access to agency meetings, it also fosters openness by, among other things, requiring agencies to generate meeting minutes that are open to public inspection so that members of the public unable to attend a meeting nonetheless may learn what occurred. …To adopt a contrary holding that agencies possess discretion to decline to record the names of those voting against a proposal or abstaining in the case of a non-roll-call vote would potentially deny non-attending members of the public access to information available to those who attended a meeting.”
Earlier this year, Effingham County’s commissioners took a secret ballot for vice chairman. At their next meeting, after questions from a reporter, they said how they voted so the information could be included in the minutes for the meeting.
The secret vote in Effingham was an indication that the case that was pending before the state Supreme Court was important, Cardinale said.
Effingham County… ah, yes! The county whose Industrial Authority fired Brad Lofton for non-transparent dealings.
Doubtless everything is on the up-and-up around here, so I’m sure all the local government bodies, elected and unelected, will have no problem recording how all their members vote.
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It’s good to know County Commission Chairman Ashley Paulk supports transparency. However, if he considers certain details important enough for the public to know, how about if the Commission puts them in its own minutes? Or publishes its own videos of its own meetings?
Or even publish a list of changes that it approves when it changes an ordinance?
At the 28 February 2012 Regular Session of the Lowndes County Commission, Chairman Ashley Paulk said:
I kind of like transparent government.
He proceeded to tell VDT reporter David Rodock that
Not killing the messenger, but it was written in your paper the other day that the alcohol ordinance was kind of rushed and people were not aware of it. If you would go back to your story of May the 11th we discussed that in great depth.
Here’s the video:
I kind of like transparent government —Ashley Paulk @ LCC 2012-02-28
Regular Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC), Lowndes County Commission,
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 28 February 2012.
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).
He recommended that the VDT editors research their own archives. Fair enough, but how about if we look at the Commissions own archives of its own minutes?
First let’s see what the reporter wrote that the Chairman was objecting to: Continue reading
Here are videos of the February 2012 Industrial Authority meeting.
Apologies for the poor sound.
The room turned out to have very echoey acoustics, and no placement
of the camera seemed to alleviate that.
Also it’s in three chunks, the first of them quite long.
In the interests of moving along and catching up on posting videos
of recent meetings, we’re going to leave it like that for now.
Here’s
the agenda.
Here’s a playlist:
Norman Bennett, Tom Call, Roy Copeland chairman, Mary Gooding, Jerry Jennett,
Andrea Schruijer Executive Director, J. Stephen Gupton attorney, Allan Ricketts Project Manager,
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 23 February 2012.
Video by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).
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The text of the announcement by Lowndes County Schools 20 March 2013, Valdosta-Lowndes Governmental Leadership Meeting, is below.
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The first annual Valdosta-Lowndes Governmental Leadership Meeting will be held on March 29, 2012 at 6:30 pm in the Lowndes High School Lecture Hall. Valdosta City and Lowndes County Board of Education members, Valdosta City Council members, and Lowndes County Commissioners will be in attendance. Lowndes County Schools will host a dinner for the leadership at 6:00 pm.The purpose of the meeting is to promote the enhancement of communication and allow leaders to share ideas and plans pertinent to the development and expansion of our local governmental entities. It will also allow members to discuss long-range strategic plans, including any special projects, while providing greater insight as to what will transpire within our community over the next five years. The meeting is open to the public.
- Agenda
Welcome and Introductions
- Dr. Steve Smith, Superintendent Lowndes County Schools
- Sharing of Long Range Plans and Vision
- Lowndes County Board of Education
Lowndes County Board of Commissioners
Valdosta City Board of Education
Valdosta City Council- Questions, Comments, Suggestions
Wrap Up
- Wes Taylor, Superintendent-elect, Lowndes County Schools
According to the VDT yesterday,
Website technical difficulties were a chief topic of concern at the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority Tuesday evening.Well, let’s see:Staff expects the website to go back online in less than 24 hours
Well, sort of. The links in the flash thing at the top do work again, so you can get to detailed pages. Well, some of them: Staff & Board works, but Meeting Schedule does not. This description still applies:
It was also pointed out that meeting agendas and minutes were still available on the crashed website, but were intermixed with coding language.The latest agenda is available. I thank VLCIA again for that, as I did both in Citizens to Be Heard and after the meeting Tuesday.
Doubtless VLCIA staff are doing what they can.
As an organizational issue, I wonder if the electricity was out for a week at the VLCIA office would the Industrial Authority do this: Continue reading
The Industrial Authority meets this evening at 5:30 in their usual location. It seems to be mostly about business parks this time, plus these interesting items:
Director’s Report –Andrea Schruijer
Strategic Plan response
Update on Personal Policy and Procedure Manual
Maybe they’re serious about input from the community for their strategic plan process.
Their website still has sidebar error messages like this:
Deprecated: Function eregi() is deprecated in /home/industri/public_html/modules/jsCookMenu/JSCookMenu.class.php on line 277
But it’s fixed enough that I could retrieve the agenda. This time they do not list what any of the expansion projects or potential projects are. They also still don’t say what the various executive sessions were for; I think real estate or personnel are the usual two reasons allowed by state law.
Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority
Agenda
Tuesday, March 20, 2012 5:30 p.m.
Industrial Authority Conference Room
2110 N. Patterson Street
According to the Georgia Department of Community Affairs 2010 Directory of Registered Local Government Authorities:
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Now we know.
How hard would it be for the City of Valdosta or the County of Lowndes to keep such information on their own web pages? They could include pictures better than the ones I found lying about on the web. Maybe even add agendas and minutes while they’re at it?
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