{"id":1202,"date":"2011-12-18T16:55:21","date_gmt":"2011-12-18T21:55:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/12\/more-county-commission-transparency-chatham-county-georgia.html"},"modified":"2011-12-18T16:55:21","modified_gmt":"2011-12-18T21:55:21","slug":"more-county-commission-transparency-chatham-county-georgia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/12\/more-county-commission-transparency-chatham-county-georgia.html","title":{"rendered":"More County Commission Transparency: Chatham County, Georgia"},"content":{"rendered":"The Chatham County, Georgia Board of Commissioners has\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.chathamcounty.org\/Government\/MeetingMinutesAgendas.aspx\">\nits agendas and minutes online.<\/a>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.chathamcounty.org\/Government\/MeetingMinutesAgendas.aspx\">\n<img style=\"float:right;border:none;\"\nwidth=\"175\" height=\"180\"\nsrc=\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/en\/f\/f5\/Chatham_County_ga_seal.png\"><\/a>\nThe agenda for\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.chathamcounty.org\/portals\/chathamcounty\/custom\/3029\/26_1307_1_2011_12_02ag.pdf\">\n2 December 2011<\/a>\ndoes not include the detailed packet materials for most of the\nitems to be voted on.\nHowever, it does include a table of dollar amounts and other details\nfor bids that were to be voted on,\nso the public doesn&#8217;t have to go to the work session and scribble\ndown what staff read aloud.\n<p>\nThere&#8217;s also this interesting boilerplate:\n<blockquote>\nProposed changes to ordinances must be read or presented in written\nform at two meetings held not less than one week apart. A vote on the\nfollowing listed matters will occur at the next regularly scheduled\nmeeting. On first reading, presentation by MPC staff and discussion only\nby Commissioners will be heard.\n<p>\nComments, discussion and debate from\nmembers of the public will be received only at the meeting at which a\nvote is to be taken on one of the following listed items.\n<\/blockquote>\nSo in Chatham County the Commission can&#8217;t just decide one day to\nchange an ordinance.\n<p>\nAlso it appears that the public does get to discuss and debate ordinance\nchanges.\n<p>\nThe <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/98706376@N00\/6533657955\/in\/photostream\/\">\n<img decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right;border:none;\"   src=\"http:\/\/farm8.staticflickr.com\/7014\/6533657955_c5dc5cdbd9_m.jpg\"><\/a>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.chathamcounty.org\/portals\/chathamcounty\/custom\/3029\/28_1307_1_m2011_11_18.pdf\">\nminutes for 2 December 2011<\/a>\ncontain quite a bit of detail as to who said what.\nPlus for each agenda item that was approved it includes\nthe agenda packet information,\nsuch as item IX-2 on the right here,\nwhich is about local participation in jail construction.\n<p>\nThis isn&#8217;t as transparent as\n<a href=\"\/blog\/2011\/12\/transparency-by-a-county-commission.html\">Travis County, Texas<\/a>.\nChatham County doesn&#8217;t put the agenda packet items in the agenda,\nand doesn&#8217;t do videos.\nBut it&#8217;s still more transparent than Lowndes County, Georgia,\nwhich doesn&#8217;t provide agenda packet items unless you do an open records request\nfor each item you want to see.\n<p>\n-jsq\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Chatham County, Georgia Board of Commissioners has its agendas and minutes online. The agenda for 2 December 2011 does not include the detailed packet materials for most of the items to be voted on. However, it does include a table of dollar amounts and other details for bids that were to be voted on, [&hellip;]","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":[2,88,3],"tags":[494,1255,1272,3255,1363,1364,8701,2274,7,232,812,3254,1280,8700],"class_list":["post-1202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","category-lowndes-county-commission","category-transparency","tag-agenda","tag-chatham-county","tag-citizen","tag-county-commission","tag-debate","tag-discussion","tag-georgia","tag-hearing","tag-lowndes-county","tag-minutes","tag-ordinance","tag-packet","tag-public","tag-transparency"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-jo","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1202","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=1202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1202\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}