{"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":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=JfLxI2UJbJM\"><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right;border:none;\"   src=\"http:\/\/i3.ytimg.com\/vi\/JfLxI2UJbJM\/default.jpg\"><\/a><br \/>\nI repeatedly apologized to County Planner Jason Davenport<br \/>\nabout an earlier misunderstanding about the<br \/>\n<a href=\"\/blog\/2011\/10\/sgmc-comprehensive-plan-and-4-h-at-county-commission-10-11-october-2011.html\"><br \/>\n&#8220;public hearing&#8221; agenda item,<\/a> which the Chairman stated was not really<br \/>\na public hearing and for which no citizens were allowed to speak:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n7.b. Greater Lowndes 2030 Comprehensive Plan Updates &#8211; Lowndes County Report of Accomplishments (ROA) and Short Term Work Program (STWP)\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Then I said:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nTransparent government is totally what my heart is about.<br \/>\nAnd I think that people trust the government more when we can see<br \/>\nthe business done in public.<br \/>\nAnd I really appreciate when you do things in public and you ask questions<br \/>\nin the work sessions so everybody can hear.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/valdostadailytimes.com\/local\/x744031000\/County-approves-SGMC-request\"><br \/>\nVDT&#8217;s version was:<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nThe lone citizen to be heard, Gretchen Quarterman, thanked commissioners<br \/>\nfor their observance of open government and apologized to County Planner<br \/>\nJason Davenport for things she said to him prior to the meeting, due to<br \/>\na &ldquo;misunderstanding,&rdquo; she said.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>\nAfter the meeting adjourned, Chairman Ashley Paulk apologized to me in public<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\n(although not on camera) about our on-going misunderstanding about this issue.<br \/>\nHe seemed to indicate that the draft Comprehensive Plan updates that<br \/>\nhe had refused to provide in response to an open records request would<br \/>\nbe forthcoming.<br \/>\nWeeks later, that still hadn&#8217;t happened, and I obtained the draft<br \/>\n<a href=\"\/blog\/2011\/10\/the-comprehensive-plan-updates-lowndes-county-refused-to-provide.html\"><br \/>\nthrough another channel.<\/a><br \/>\nAnd it turns out state guidelines say<br \/>\n<a href=\"\/blog\/2011\/10\/the-missing-lowndes-county-public-hearing-for-comprehensive-plan-updates.html\"><br \/>\nthere was supposed to be a public hearing before that draft<br \/>\nwas submitted to the state,<\/a><br \/>\nplus the draft was supposed to be made available to the citizens before<br \/>\nthat hearing: neither of those things happened.<\/p>\n<p>\nHere&#8217;s<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=JfLxI2UJbJM\"><br \/>\nthe video:<\/a><\/p>\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><br \/>\n<br \/>\n<small><br \/>\nTransparent government is totally what my heart is about. &mdash;Gretchen Quarterman<br \/>\n<br \/>\nRegular Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),<br \/>\n<br \/>\nValdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 11 October 2011.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nVideos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.<br \/>\n<\/small><\/p>\n<p>\n-gretchen<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"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"],"_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}]}}