{"id":2404,"date":"2011-02-13T15:31:42","date_gmt":"2011-02-13T20:31:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/02\/we-can-limit-them-to-one-area-joe-pritchard.html"},"modified":"2011-02-13T15:31:42","modified_gmt":"2011-02-13T20:31:42","slug":"we-can-limit-them-to-one-area-joe-pritchard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/02\/we-can-limit-them-to-one-area-joe-pritchard.html","title":{"rendered":"“we can limit them to one area” –Joe Pritchard"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/a>\nOn the front page of the paper VDT today County Manager Joe Pritchard\nproposes further restrictions on citizens in public County Commission\nmeetings:\n
\n“We cannot stop anybody from taking video of a session;\nbut we can limit them to one area;\nit’s distracting to us and to citizens\nto have somebody running around the session trying to get different angles,”\nsaid Joe Pritchard, county manager.\n<\/blockquote>\nThe only person I’ve seen running around the session trying to get\ndifferent angles is Paige Dukes, County Clerk.\nWill she now be prohibited from coming out from behind the bar\nto take pictures of awards and such?\n

\nWhy they can’t stop anybody from taking video,\naccording to Georgia law,\n\nO.C.G.A. § 50-14-1-c.:<\/a>\n

\n“Visual, sound, and visual and sound recording during open meetings shall be permitted.”\n<\/blockquote>\nSome courts do put some restrictions on visual recordings, such as\nprohibiting pictures of jurors.\nBut the Lowndes County Commission is not a court.\nIt is the only elected body for the entire county,\nand thus the only public forum at which citizens can peacefully assemble\nto petition their local government for redress of county-wide grievances.\n

\n\n<\/a>\nDoes the Commission really want to put more restrictions on citizens in its meetings,\neven though a constitutional scholar is questioning<\/a>\nthe constitutionality of\n\nthe rules they recently passed?<\/a>\nRules which limit the number of speakers in Citizens Wishing to be Heard to 10\nand\n\n\nsay the Commission can declare subjects closed, among other\n\nquestionable restrictions?<\/a>\nRules that are already\n\nunder legal review by the NAACP?<\/a>\n

\n\n<\/a>\nIn the same article:\n

\n“Our citizen complaints are insignificant compared to what they were\nten to 12 years ago, but we need to continue to fine-tune the process,”\nsaid Paige Dukes, Lowndes County Information officer.\n<\/blockquote>\nIf citizen complaints are insignificant, it sounds to me like the Commission is trying to solve a non-problem,\nand thereby creating a new problem.\n

\nFurther:\n

\nSafety concerns about the citizens-to-be-heard section of\ncommission meetings was also discussed.\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<\/a>\nRemember this invention of new restrictions on citizens happened\njust after\n\nChairman Paulk turned a simple event invitation into an interrogation,<\/a>\nalleging he’d received a threatening letter.\nThe \nactual letter<\/a> contains nothing more threatening than the phrase “a wakeup call”.\nI’ve been attending Commission meetings for years, and the only safety\nproblem I’ve ever seen was when the Chairman made what many observers interpreted as\na veiled threat to arrest the inviter. Given what I’ve heard about local jail conditions, that would be a safety concern for the citizen.\n

\nNow that the county government has dug itself into a PR hole,\nmaybe they should stop digging!\n

\n\n<\/a>\nA much simpler solution would be to have the county itself\nvideo its own meetings and make them available on the web,\n\nas I recommended to them on 25 January 2011:<\/a>\n

\n