Sunshine Review’s look at Georgia counties regarding transparency revealed some disturbing – but not overly surprising – pieces of information.
For example, of the 44 counties it lists with no website, 26 of them – 59% – are in South GA (at least as I define it as PSC District 1, the area I represent for the Libertarian Party of Georgia). Of those, two of them are in the nine county area we define as SWGA here on this site and in LP-SWGA: Calhoun and Baker. The full list of counties without websites can be found here.
For the counties that DID have websites, Sunshine Review looked at 10 areas (Budget, Meetings, Elected Officials, Administrative Officials, Permits/Zoning, Audits, Contracts, Lobbying, Public Records, and Taxes) and noted whether the information was provided, not provided, or partially provided. (Note: In our chart below, P = Provided, NP = Not Provided, and PP = Partially Provided)
Below is the chart for the 7 counties we cover directly here on this site that had a website, and you can look here for the full list.
| County | Budget | Meetings | Elected Officials | Admin. Officials | Permits/ Zoning | Audits | Contracts | Lobbying | Public Records | Taxes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Crisp | NP | P | PP | P | P | NP | NP | NP | NP | NP |
| Dougherty | PP | P | P | P | P | NP | NP | NP | NP | P |
| Lee | PP | P | P | P | P | PP | NP | NP | PP | P |
| Mitchell | NP | NP | P | P | P | NP | NP | NP | NP | NP |
| Sumter | NP | NP | PP | P | PP | NP | NP | NP | NP | P |
| Terrell | NP | NP | PP | NP | PP | NP | NP | NP | NP | PP |
| Worth | P | PP | P | PP | P | NP | NP | NP | NP | P |
Because there are 10 categories, assigning 10 points for every P, 5 points for every PP, and 0 points for every NP, results in the following overall grading and ranking:
Lee: 65%
Dougherty: 55%
Worth: 50%
Crisp: 35%
Mitchell: 30%
Sumter: 30%
Terrell: 15%
Note: Even though numerically Sumter and Mitchell tied, I gave Mitchell the edge because even though they scored points in 1 less category, they more fully provided information, providing full information in 3 categories to Sumter’s 2.
It’s actually not surprising how the scores panned out. Lee and Dougherty are the better financed counties after all, so it stands to reason that they’d have better transparency than most.
the bad thing here is that you can literally build a completely free site on blogspot or wordpress.com, barely know web development at all, and still cover the basics of stuff this group is looking for.
See, for example, Brantley County’s site. (Though it appears that they did buy at least their domain name.) They got a 35% on this report btw.
Yeah, but government is notoriously bad about taking up free stuff. Why do you think most governments use Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator rather than something like Firefox? It’s because Firefox is free, so they’re apprehensive. Same is true with blogspot or wordpress.
Not only that, but someone has to actually do it. While it may be free, someone within that body has to know about it and at least direct someone on staff to maintain it. It’s possible that they’re understaffed enough that there’s just no one to handle putting the information out there. A lack of funding could enter into it in a lot of ways.
Not that I think that’s a good excuse, just that I can see the arguments.
A note on here listing what the P, PP, and NP symbols stood for would have been helpful. It took looking over the article several times for me to finally figure out what they meant.
Otherwise, interesting information.
P=Provided
PP=Partially Provided
NP=Not Provided
At least that’s how I understood the information in the post. Jeff will be happy to correct me later on if I’m wrong
Ah, thanks for the update, it’s much much clearer now.
Happy to help