In the course of researching the lawsuit between the city of Augusta and C4 Live entertainment, the pointy heads in the Augusta law department began parsing words and phrases and again attempted to skirt the open records law, and again, it was to their detriment.
The Augusta Press requested all emails between Steven Kendrick, Commissioner Sean Frantom and C4 Live entertainment group. Clearly, the city of Augusta is the custodian of the records as both Frantom and Kendrick, who is now the deputy tax commissioner, have email addresses through the city servers.
At first, the office that handles these requests acknowledged that the city did have the emails that were requested available and sent an itemized bill listing how many hours it took for the staff to complete the request and The Augusta Press sent a response agreeing to pay the $87 tab to get the documents.
Then, suddenly, the city backtracked, and the claim was made that the emails had to be requested through the Augusta Economic Development Authority, a quasi-governmental organization that does not receive direct funding from the city of Augusta and is therefore, like any other private entity, immune to the open records law.
Naturally, such a reversal may make one think that perhaps the city was covering up possible wrongdoing by Kendrick in the entire C4 Live mess that has culminated in a ruined piece of city property and an ongoing lawsuit.
To his credit, Kendrick hotly demanded the emails from his account be released and Cal Wray, director of the Augusta Economic Development Authority, spent hours retrieving the emails that the city already had and decided, to be fully transparent, to include his own emails regarding C4 Live Entertainment and any other related emails that did not fall under attorney/client privilege.
Wray put all the material on a flash drive and hand delivered it to The Augusta Press.
After an exhaustive review, it is clear that neither Frantom nor Kendrick did anything inappropriate. In fact, Kendrick was advocating for the company, C4 Live, to use Richmond County deputies at stadium events rather than hire outside security.
Meanwhile, Frantom accepted a lunch invite long after the contract was signed.
All of it was, as they say, a nothing burger.
Both Kendrick and Frantom stood up and protested when the city law department attempted to shield what were eventually proven to be harmless emails, and we commend them for that.
However, an important question is whether should it ever take this amount of effort, money and time for the public to get access to documents that are related to the public interest?
The city law department needs to understand a battleship is now permanently moored just outside the parking lot. The Augusta Press is not going away. The tide has started to turn, and people within the government and some that work hand-in-hand with the government who truly want to be transparent, like Frantom, Wray and Kendrick, are willing to bypass the city attorney and release documents on their own.
This is a good thing.
