{"id":24,"date":"2013-03-19T20:51:16","date_gmt":"2013-03-20T00:51:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/03\/industrial-authority-already-met-what-about-open-meetings-law-vlcia-2013-03-08.html"},"modified":"2013-03-19T20:51:16","modified_gmt":"2013-03-20T00:51:16","slug":"industrial-authority-already-met-what-about-open-meetings-law-vlcia-2013-03-08","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/03\/industrial-authority-already-met-what-about-open-meetings-law-vlcia-2013-03-08.html","title":{"rendered":"Industrial Authority already met; what about open meetings law? @ VLCIA 2013-03-08"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\n<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

\nWanting to go to the Industrial Authority meeting tonight?\nOops, you missed it: they held it 11 days ago.\nDid you want to speak there?\nNope, no Citizens to be Heard on that agenda, and not much else, either.\n<\/p>\n

\nTo find that agenda on VLCIA’s website:\nHome \u2192 About Us \u2192 Industrial Authority \u2192\nMeeting Schedule<\/a>,\n<\/p>\n

\n

\nThere will be a Special Called Meeting<\/span> of the Valdosta-Lowndes\nCounty Industrial Authority on\n\nFriday, March 8, 2013, 11:00 am<\/span> at\nthe Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority Offices. This\nSpecial Called Meeting will also serve as the Regular March 2013\nMeeting.\n<\/p>\n

\n\nAgenda<\/a> (PDF) There will be no meeting on Tuesday, March 19, 2013.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nI don’t know when they put that on their website, but they announced\nthe same thing on\n\ntheir facebook page<\/a> on March 4th<\/sup><\/small>.\nMuch of the usual agenda boilerplate\nis replaced by an executive session, and the agenda doesn’t\neven say for what.\nI seem to recall the Industrial Authority’s attorney on several occasions\nreminding the Chair that before going into executive session it was\nnecessary to say for what purpose.\nAs the\n\nAssociation of County Commissioners of Georgia (ACCG)<\/a>\nputs it:\n<\/p>\n

\n

\nWhat is the procedure for going into and holding an “executive session” or “closing a meeting”?<\/h4>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n
\n\n<\/a>\n

\nFirst, the commissioners must go into an open meeting and specify\nthe reason for closing the meeting. A majority of the quorum must\nvote to close the meeting and the vote must be recorded. After the\nexecutive session concludes, the presiding officer must execute an\naffidavit identifying the reason for closing the meeting and\nswearing that the meeting was limited to the topics allowed by law.\nMinutes must also be taken for the closed section of the meeting and\nkept for in camera inspection.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n\n<\/a>\nThe permitted topics according to\n\nGeorgia’s open meetings law as amended last year<\/a> are:\nconfidential tax matters,\nconsultation with attorney about litigation,\nsettlement of lawsuits and claims,\nor judicial actions,\nreal estate (appraisal, purchase, disposal, or lease),\nor personnel issues.\nWhich of these did they discuss?\n<\/p>\n

\nHere is\n\nthat agenda<\/a>, such as it is, containing even less than\n\nlast time<\/a>,\nnot even including the usual PR and marketing update, existing industry\nand project report, park update, executive director’s report, attorney\nreport, or citizens to be heard.\nNo LAKE videos.\nAlso I don’t find any VDT report online.\nSo if you want to know what VLCIA did with your tax dollars,\nI guess you can file an open records request, and maybe at least\nfind out what the topic of the executive session was.\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nValdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority\nAgenda\/Special Called Meeting\n
\nTuesday, March 8, 2013 11:00 a.m.\n
\nIndustrial Authority Conference Room\n
\n2110 N. Patterson Street\n<\/blockquote>\n
\n

General Business<\/h3>\n
    \n
  • Call to Order\n<\/li>\n
  • Invocation\n<\/li>\n
  • Welcome Guests\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    Minutes<\/h3>\n
      \n
    • Regular Meeting, February 19, 2013\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

      Financial<\/h3>\n
        \n
      • Review Compiled Balance Sheet and Income Statements for February 2013\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

        Adjourn General Meeting Into Executive Session<\/h3>\n

        Adjourn Executive Session into General Meeting<\/h3>\n

        Adjourn General Meeting<\/h3>\n

        \nThe Mission of the Valdosta Lowndes County Industrial Authority is to\n
        \nlead economic development in our community by supporting existing industries\n
        \nand recruiting industries through capitalizing on opportunities for collaboration.\n<\/h4>\n<\/blockquote>\n

        \n-jsq\n<\/p>\n

         <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wanting to go to the Industrial Authority meeting tonight? Oops, you missed it: they held it 11 days ago. Did you want to speak there? Nope, no Citizens to be Heard on that agenda, and not much else, either. To find that agenda on VLCIA’s website: Home \u2192 About Us \u2192 Industrial Authority \u2192 Meeting […]","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":[48,14,2,20,3,178],"tags":[199,193,187,190,179,184,8720,192,8704,188,201,8701,8699,10,189,186,8702,8710,12,7,197,185,181,200,198,194,196,183,195,182,191,8700,6,180,8749],"class_list":["post-24","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-code-enforcement","category-economy","category-government","category-law","category-transparency","category-vlcia","tag-8-march-2013","tag-allan-ricketts","tag-andrea-schruijer","tag-attorney","tag-called-meeting","tag-chairman","tag-code-enforcement","tag-cpa","tag-economy","tag-executive-director","tag-executive-session","tag-georgia","tag-government","tag-gretchen-quarterman","tag-j-stephen-gupton","tag-jerry-jennett","tag-lake","tag-law","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-lu-williams","tag-mary-gooding","tag-norman-bennett","tag-open-meetings-law","tag-operations-manager","tag-project-manager","tag-public-relations-marketing-manager","tag-roy-copeland","tag-s-meghan-duke","tag-tom-call","tag-tom-davis","tag-transparency","tag-valdosta","tag-valdosta-lowndes-county-industrial-authority","tag-vlcia"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-o","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24","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=24"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}