{"id":254,"date":"2012-12-17T15:20:34","date_gmt":"2012-12-17T20:20:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2012\/12\/are-augusta-and-richmond-county-special-in-transparency.html"},"modified":"2012-12-17T15:20:34","modified_gmt":"2012-12-17T20:20:34","slug":"are-augusta-and-richmond-county-special-in-transparency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2012\/12\/are-augusta-and-richmond-county-special-in-transparency.html","title":{"rendered":"Are Augusta and Richmond County special in transparency?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nSo why does\n\nAugusta have the second highest high tech job growth in the country?<\/a>\nI can only speculate, but local government transparency could be a factor.\nIf you had a high tech company and were looking to open an office,\nwould you go for a place where you couldn't tell what the local governments\nwere up to, or one where you could easily find out?\nAugusta's combined City Council and County Commission meetings\n(it's a consolidated government)\n\nare on video, online.<\/a>\nTheir agendas are available in either HTML or PDF,\n\nwith attachments<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n

\nHere's an example, their\n\n<\/a>\n\n5 December 2012 Commission Meeting.<\/a>\nIt includes\n\na proposed amendment to their land subdivision code.<\/a>\nThe actual proposed ordinance\n\nis linked right into the agenda<\/a> so everybody can see it.\n<\/p>\n

\nAnd yes, they link attachments into their agendas before<\/em>\ntheir meetings;\nhere's\n\nAugusta's agenda for their meeting tomorrow 18 December 2012,<\/a>\nalready with attachments, such as this one\n\nabout a zoning exception,<\/a>\nwhich was apparently submitted on a standard agenda submittal form,\nand approved by the Clerk of Commission.\n<\/p>\n

\nMeanwhile, the outgoing Lowndes County Chairman\n\n<\/a>\n\ncomplained the Chamber of Commerce hadn't read a proposed\nzoning code change<\/a>\neven though\n\nthat change is not<\/em> linked into the agenda (nor is anything else)<\/a>\nand\nlast year\n\nthe same Chairman said no drafts would be published.<\/a>\nTuesday last week, Lowndes County Commissioners passed changes to the\nsolid waste ordinance<\/a>\nand to the\n\nalcohol ordinance<\/a>\nthat voters and taxpayers and business owners did not get to see\nbefore the Commission voted on them.\nThose ordinances seem to be on the county website now that it's\ntoo late to provide input on them: alcohol<\/a> and waste<\/a>.\nBoth ordinances were revised with no public hearings.\nAnd the Chairman even\n\nforgot to hold a scheduled public hearing on special tax lighting districts.<\/a>\nOh, and they\n\napparently now have property owners paying on almost $9 million\nin bonds for a county palace\nthat only two years ago they said was already completely paid off\nout of sales taxes.<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

\nIf you had a high tech company and were looking to open an office,\n\n\nwould you choose transparent Richmond County or secretive Lowndes County,\nwhere you don't know who's rezoning what, or how Commissioners are\nchanging the zoning code, or what ordinances they're passing,\nor when sales taxes might get shifted to property taxes?\n<\/p>\n

\nIt's not so much that Augusta and Richmond County are special\nin local government transparency.\nAs we've previously seen,\nGlynn County, Georgia\n\neven streams their meetings on live video<\/a>.\n\nLeon County, Florida,<\/a>\nand\n\nTravis County, Texas,<\/a>\npost agendas with attachments before their meetings\nand add videos afterwards.\nBoth the\n\nValdosta and Lowndes County school boards<\/a>\noften include attachments along with their agendas.\n<\/p>\n

\nWhat's special is the Lowndes County Commission:\nspecial in secrecy.\nExcept many of the local appointed boards and agencies\nare even less transparent, with no posted agendas or minutes\nor even membership lists.\nDoes this seem right to you?\n<\/p>\n

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