Last week, the Lee County Board of Commissioners appointed Al Crace of Roswell, Ga as the interim County Administrator. Per both Crace and Lee County Board of Commissioners Chairman Ed Duffy, this is to be a temporary position lasting roughly 5 months or so. In other words, he could well be gone before the end of the year, though before Spring Break 2011 is more likely.
My problem, which I will be discussing with the Board at their meeting tonight and have already privately emailed them about, is the secrecy involved in Mr. Crace’s appointment. In the email I sent the Commissioners, I did a very basic google search on nothing more than his name, and I found references to some form of trouble in two of his jobs within this decade (he has held at least 3, possibly more). Specifically, apparently he was fired by the Mayor of Athens, and he resigned his post as Jackson County Administrator barely 24 hours after telling the local paper that he had no intentions of doing so.
Because the Board met in closed executive session (and daytime meetings to boot) for the discussions on who to hire, there is no record of what was discussed. Therefore, we have no way of knowing what was said and no way of knowing whether these issues were thoroughly discussed. On this issue, the Lee County Board of Commissioners has worked in a way we in Southwest Georgia typically expect out of the governing authorities of Albany and Dougherty County – they have been transparent as mud.
Fortunately, I have no intentions of allowing Lee County to be as transparent as mud. We, the citizens of Lee County, have a right to know what our government is doing, and Georgia apparently has some of the best sunshine laws in the nation – laws which I intend to work to make even stronger. JD Sumner had an excellent piece on this a couple of weeks ago in the Herald, and a friend passed along some more relevant information that I intend to use.
After the jump is the email I sent to the Commissioners with everything I found in my very cursory google search mentioned above. So far, there has been no response from any Commissioner. [See the Email]
First, what I call the “Blogger Pledge”, which I have already signed:
Government transparency is critical to creating a better democracy, and of highest importance in how I cast my vote. I pledge, through my sustained engagement, to hold public officials accountable for being open and transparent.
Also, here’s a short (roughly 2 min) video from Sunlight on “Why Should Public Information Be Online?”:
SWGAPolitics.com, along with Peach Pundit, JasonPye.com, Georgia Politics Unfiltered, GriftDrift, and GaLiberal, has been commended is expected to be commended today by the Georgia House of Representatives for our “unique role in promoting openness and transparency in state government”!
I’ll put the full text of the Resolution after the jump, but this came out of the craziness that is Crossover Day. On the Live Blog co-hosted by all of those named above except GriftDrift we had several State Representatives join us, including Steve Davis (the sponsor of this resolution), Ralph Long (a cosponsor), Stephen Allison, and Mark Hatfield. We also had Democratic statewide candidates Carol Porter (Lt Gov) and RJ Hadley (US Senate) join us. This was the second time we had done this – last year Jason and I started it, and we hope it continues to grow – and we had 799 viewers on the day.
It was a great time, and just one example of the hard work we political bloggers do. Thanks to Reps Davis, Long, Jerguson, Everson, Glanton, “and others” for recognizing it!
This is the week many choose to recognize the fight for openness and transparency in government, most notably the work of the Sunlight Foundation.
Sunlight works at the national level to implement open and transparent government initiatives, and their latest bill was introduced Monday by US Rep Steve Israel. They call it the POIA – Public Online Information Act, and basically it mandates that within three years of passage, all public data from any Congressional or Executive agency must be made available online. [Continue Reading]
I really like the Sunlight Foundation‘s work. They are working mostly at the National level to bring the same transparency to government that I work for here in Georgia and Lee County.
They’ve got a new campaign they are gearing up for that sounds REALLY good, which is the title of this post.
Lee County’s website is a pretty good source of information, but it still is lacking in one area that I correct via youtube as much as possible – it doesn’t have video records of the various meetings. In Lee County, there is absolutely no way to know for yourself what the Board of Commissioners does outside of the agenda and agenda packets posted online, the reports of the Albany Herald, WFXL, and (sometimes) WALB, and my own efforts unless you actually attend the meeting yourself. There is no way to watch it at home on your television, and there is no way to watch it online even as a streaming live broadcast. [Continue Reading]
I was looking through LEGIS this morning for Constitutional Amendments when I came across one that absolutely stunned me – in a very good way.
As I’ve said before, I tend to favor small, incremental steps toward a goal rather than going for everything in one fell swoop. The analogy I most often use is 3 yard plays, every play, vs going for the endzone on every play.
A lot of talk has been going on over the last couple of years about transparency in government. By and large, most in “both” parties want to leave it at that – a lot of hot air, with nothing ever actually getting done. I say this due to the lack of bills and resolutions introduced into the General Assembly regarding these topics – quite simply, there aren’t very many, and there doesn’t appear to be much interest in moving the ones that are there. [Continue Reading]
At the very front of what I’m about to say, let me note that this is just an idea I’ve been thinking about that may or may not work. Based on my own thinking right now, I think it might, and it is certainly a different approach than what we’ve got right now, which is largely a paper tiger. Obviously, the point in writing this at all is that I would like public discussion on it, so feel free to have at it!
Sam Olenstold me a couple of weeks ago that if the Cobb County Commission violates the State’s transparency laws, they can be fined a whopping $100 per occurrence, and suggested that for the laws to have any real teeth, there needed to be an extra zero on that number.
That was the quote in particular that has stuck with me since that interview, floating in the back of my mind. As with many of my solutions, after percolating back there for a while, it finally comes to me, as this one has: [Continue Reading]
The above is 11Alive Atlanta’s coverage of the Georgia House of Representatives Republican Caucus meeting Friday, the one that was meant to be beyond reproach and a “clearing of the air”. [Continue Reading]
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.
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. [See the Chart and Rankings]
Mucking about on the City of Albany and Dougherty County web pages, I was struck by something a little odd. We live in a world where transparency is considered by many to be vital. We want to know who is doing what with our tax dollars and we want to know why. Both the City and the County are pretty good about that, though the County’s commission minutes are almost a month behind, the last dating from early May. But what struck me as odd is how there is so little about what is coming up. Continue reading Transparency In Local Government
Giant Leap for Transparency
I was looking through LEGIS this morning for Constitutional Amendments when I came across one that absolutely stunned me – in a very good way.
As I’ve said before, I tend to favor small, incremental steps toward a goal rather than going for everything in one fell swoop. The analogy I most often use is 3 yard plays, every play, vs going for the endzone on every play.
A lot of talk has been going on over the last couple of years about transparency in government. By and large, most in “both” parties want to leave it at that – a lot of hot air, with nothing ever actually getting done. I say this due to the lack of bills and resolutions introduced into the General Assembly regarding these topics – quite simply, there aren’t very many, and there doesn’t appear to be much interest in moving the ones that are there.
[Continue Reading]