{"id":1246,"date":"2011-11-29T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-11-29T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/11\/transparent-government-is-totally-what-my-heart-is-about-gretchen-quarterman.html"},"modified":"2011-11-29T09:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-11-29T14:00:00","slug":"transparent-government-is-totally-what-my-heart-is-about-gretchen-quarterman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/11\/transparent-government-is-totally-what-my-heart-is-about-gretchen-quarterman.html","title":{"rendered":"Transparent government is totally what my heart is about. &mdash;Gretchen Quarterman"},"content":{"rendered":"<a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=JfLxI2UJbJM\">\n<img decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right;border:none;\"   src=\"http:\/\/i3.ytimg.com\/vi\/JfLxI2UJbJM\/default.jpg\"><\/a>\nI repeatedly apologized to County Planner Jason Davenport\nabout an earlier misunderstanding about the\n<a href=\"\/blog\/2011\/10\/sgmc-comprehensive-plan-and-4-h-at-county-commission-10-11-october-2011.html\">\n&#8220;public hearing&#8221; agenda item,<\/a> which the Chairman stated was not really\na public hearing and for which no citizens were allowed to speak:\n<blockquote>\n7.b. Greater Lowndes 2030 Comprehensive Plan Updates &#8211; Lowndes County Report of Accomplishments (ROA) and Short Term Work Program (STWP)\n<\/blockquote>\nThen I said:\n<blockquote>\nTransparent government is totally what my heart is about.\nAnd I think that people trust the government more when we can see\nthe business done in public.\nAnd I really appreciate when you do things in public and you ask questions\nin the work sessions so everybody can hear.\n<\/blockquote>\nThe\n<a href=\"http:\/\/valdostadailytimes.com\/local\/x744031000\/County-approves-SGMC-request\">\nVDT&#8217;s version was:<\/a>\n<blockquote>\nThe lone citizen to be heard, Gretchen Quarterman, thanked commissioners\nfor their observance of open government and apologized to County Planner\nJason Davenport for things she said to him prior to the meeting, due to\na &ldquo;misunderstanding,&rdquo; she said.\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>\nAfter the meeting adjourned, Chairman Ashley Paulk apologized to me in public\n\n<!--more-->\n(although not on camera) about our on-going misunderstanding about this issue.\nHe seemed to indicate that the draft Comprehensive Plan updates that\nhe had refused to provide in response to an open records request would\nbe forthcoming.\nWeeks later, that still hadn&#8217;t happened, and I obtained the draft\n<a href=\"\/blog\/2011\/10\/the-comprehensive-plan-updates-lowndes-county-refused-to-provide.html\">\nthrough another channel.<\/a>\nAnd it turns out state guidelines say\n<a href=\"\/blog\/2011\/10\/the-missing-lowndes-county-public-hearing-for-comprehensive-plan-updates.html\">\nthere was supposed to be a public hearing before that draft\nwas submitted to the state,<\/a>\nplus the draft was supposed to be made available to the citizens before\nthat hearing: neither of those things happened.\n<p>\nHere&#8217;s\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=JfLxI2UJbJM\">\nthe video:<\/a>\n<p align=\"center\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" width=\"480\" height=\"390\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/JfLxI2UJbJM\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<br>\n<small>\nTransparent government is totally what my heart is about. &mdash;Gretchen Quarterman\n<br>\nRegular Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),\n<br>\nValdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 11 October 2011.\n<br>\nVideos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.\n<\/small>\n<p>\n-gretchen\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I repeatedly apologized to County Planner Jason Davenport about an earlier misunderstanding about the &#8220;public hearing&#8221; agenda item, which the Chairman stated was not really a public hearing and for which no citizens were allowed to speak: 7.b. Greater Lowndes 2030 Comprehensive Plan Updates &#8211; Lowndes County Report of Accomplishments (ROA) and Short Term Work [&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":[97,40,552,14,16,70,2,20,3352,88,21,3],"tags":[3353,8777,8701,10,8702,91,12,7,8734,730,8711,722,4,8700,6],"class_list":["post-1246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-community","category-comprehensive-plan","category-economy","category-environment","category-ethics","category-government","category-law","category-lcc-11-october-2011","category-lowndes-county-commission","category-planning","category-transparency","tag-11-october-2011","tag-comprehensive-plan","tag-georgia","tag-gretchen-quarterman","tag-lake","tag-lcc","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-lowndes-county-commission","tag-open-records","tag-planning","tag-public-hearing","tag-regular-session","tag-transparency","tag-valdosta"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-k6","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1246","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=1246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1246\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}