{"id":1044,"date":"2012-03-05T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-03-05T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2012\/03\/georgia-takes-steps-towards-more-open-government-could-take-more.html"},"modified":"2012-03-05T09:00:00","modified_gmt":"2012-03-05T14:00:00","slug":"georgia-takes-steps-towards-more-open-government-could-take-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2012\/03\/georgia-takes-steps-towards-more-open-government-could-take-more.html","title":{"rendered":"Georgia takes steps towards more open government; could take more"},"content":{"rendered":"The state of Georgia may improve open government with HB 397.\nWhile the steps it takes are welcome, the bill could go farther.\n

\nKay Harris wrote for the VDT today,\n\nGeorgia AG works to boost Sunshine Laws<\/a>,\nquoting State Attorney General Sam Olens:\n

\n\n<\/a>\n“The legislature has given the Attorney General’s office the\njurisdiction to enforce the Open Records law and this bill will give\nus the tools to do so.”\n

\nOlens said the AG’s office receives an average of 400 complaints\neach year of Open Records violations by governmental entities in the\nstate. The bill strengthens penalties and gives the AG more tools to\nuse to prosecute violators.\n

\nSubsection 50-14-6 changes the fine for knowingly violating the law\nfrom $100 to $1,000 and allows the court to impose a civil penalty\nas well.\n

\nThe bill also strengthens the guidelines for posting notices on\nwebsites and clarifies the rules for social events that may attract\na quorum of officials. Also, destroying public records can be\nprosecuted as a felony.\n<\/blockquote>\nThe bill (\nHere’s HB 397 on the legislature’s website<\/a>)\nincludes some welcome requirements about meeting times and public records\nofficers having to be posted on a body’s website, but builds in a huge\nloophole:\n\n\n

\nas well as on the agency’s website, if any\n<\/blockquote>\nSo an agency can avoid all that by just not having a website.\n

\nAnd there’s nothing about requiring agendas and\nminutes to be posted on a website.\nWhy not add that requirement?\nAgendas and minutes are pretty much all compiled electronically\nthese days anyway.\nConvert to PDF and another copy as HTML\nand stick in a website directory: presto, online agendas\nand minutes.\n

\nIf LAKE can do it, all these elected and appointed boards can do it.\n

\nWhiie they’re at it, they could\ntake the board packet documents related to each agenda\nitem and put them online, too, like\n\nTravis County, Texas does.<\/a>\nTravis County even includes videos with the minutes.\nThere’s no reason Lowndes County, Georgia couldn’t do that.\nAnd there’s not much good reason for the state of Georgia\nnot to require at least posting agendas with board packet materials\nfollowed by minutes, all on the web.\n

\n-jsq\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The state of Georgia may improve open government with HB 397. While the steps it takes are welcome, the bill could go farther. Kay Harris wrote for the VDT today, Georgia AG works to boost Sunshine Laws, quoting State Attorney General Sam Olens: “The legislature has given the Attorney General’s office the jurisdiction to enforce […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[97,8,2,3,133],"tags":[8701,7,1883,1683,730,1096,237,238,8742],"class_list":["post-1044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-georgia","category-government","category-transparency","category-vdt","tag-georgia","tag-lowndes-county","tag-open-government","tag-open-meetings","tag-open-records","tag-sam-olens","tag-texas","tag-travis-county","tag-vdt"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-gQ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1044\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}