{"id":9293,"date":"2014-06-09T09:45:29","date_gmt":"2014-06-09T13:45:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=9293"},"modified":"2014-06-09T09:47:21","modified_gmt":"2014-06-09T13:47:21","slug":"when-are-the-two-budget-public-hearings-john-s-quarterman-lcc-2014-05-27","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2014\/06\/when-are-the-two-budget-public-hearings-john-s-quarterman-lcc-2014-05-27.html","title":{"rendered":"When are the two Budget Public Hearings? –John S. Quarterman @ LCC 2014-05-27"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\nWe can’t see the draft budget before the Public Hearings, said the Chairman,\r\nanswering my question after\r\n\r\nthe Lowndes County Commission Regular Session of 27 May 2014<\/a>.\r\n

\r\n\"When<\/a>\r\n

\r\nVideo.<\/a>\r\nAfter congratulating the Chairman on recognizing the poll workers,\r\nCrawford Powell for recusing himself on an appointment of himself,\r\nand the Commission for the recent Budget Sessions,\r\nI asked:\r\n

    \r\n
  1. \r\nWhen are the two Public Hearings required by state law before adoption of the budget?\r\n
  2. \r\nWhen is the second Budget Session\r\nmentioned in\r\nthe Budget Session held earlier that same day<\/a>?\r\n
  3. \r\nWhere is the draft budget on the county’s website so the public can see it before the public hearings?\r\n<\/ol>\r\n\r\n

    \r\nChairman Bill Slaughter’s answers to me after the meeting adjourned:\r\n<\/p>\r\n

      \r\n
    1. \r\nThe Public Hearings weren’t scheduled yet.\r\nWhen they were scheduled, the county\r\nwould put them on the website and make a public notice as usual.\r\n(They aren’t on the website yet, so we can guess they haven’t been scheduled yet.)\r\n
    2. \r\nIf they have a second Budget Session they’ll announce it on the county’s\r\nwebsite.\r\nHe said he was unaware that the website page for the one that same morning was blank.\r\n
    3. \r\nThe county will not publish a draft budget because then people wouldn’t\r\nshow up for the Budget Public Hearings.\r\nI pointed out that usually nobody showed up anyway.\r\nHe said that was evidence in favor of his point.\r\nI found that logic hard to follow, since it would seem to me more\r\npeople would show up if they could see what in the budget was of\r\ninterest to them.\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

      \r\nThe Chairman’s last answer is interestingly different from\r\n\r\nhis answer of 23 October 2013<\/a>:\r\n

      \r\n

      \r\nUntil it’s voted on, that’s when it becomes an official county\r\ndocument. Other than that it’s just like this piece of paper\r\n[crumples it up].\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

      \r\nThe Chairman’s last answer is also different from what Matthew Woody\r\nprinted in the Valdosta Daily Times the next day,\r\n\r\nLowndes County weighs tax increase<\/a>,\r\n<\/p>\r\n

      \r\n

      \r\nA draft copy of the budget remains on file in the Office of the\r\nCounty Clerk. Electronic copies may be provided upon request. Once\r\nadopted, an approved copy of the budget will be posted on the\r\ncounty’s website.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

      \r\nI suppose what the County Clerk told the reporter doesn’t\r\nquite exactly contradict what the Chairman said, but it doesn’t\r\nseem to agree, either.\r\n

      \r\nWhy are either of them trying to limit public access to a tax-funded\r\ndocument on the collection and expenditure of taxes?\r\n

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

      \r\nPS: Thanks to Jerrell Anderson for videoing this segment.","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We can’t see the draft budget before the Public Hearings, said the Chairman, answering my question after the Lowndes County Commission Regular Session of 27 May 2014. Video. After congratulating the Chairman on recognizing the poll workers, Crawford Powell for recusing himself on an appointment of himself, and the Commission for the recent Budget Sessions, […]","protected":false},"author":3,"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":[14,8,2,88,3],"tags":[7664,258,8704,8701,8699,548,8702,91,12,7,8734,730,656,4,8700,6],"class_list":["post-9293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-georgia","category-government","category-lowndes-county-commission","category-transparency","tag-27-may-2014","tag-bill-slaughter","tag-economy","tag-georgia","tag-government","tag-john-s-quarterman","tag-lake","tag-lcc","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-lowndes-county-commission","tag-open-records","tag-paige-dukes","tag-regular-session","tag-transparency","tag-valdosta"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-2pT","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9293","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\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9293"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9296,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9293\/revisions\/9296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}