Augusta commissioners and the mayor are considering pay raises for themselves, and the Richmond County Board of Education has already taken action and sent a request to the General Assembly.
A document obtained by The Augusta Press shows that the Board of Education members are asking for their pay to be nearly doubled. If the request is approved, the president’s pay would increase to $14,000, vice president to $13,000 and members to $12,000.
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While no official is documentation available, sources say that some Augusta commissioners and the mayor want to make a similar request to the legislature, asking for their current salaries essentially to be doubled. Commissioners debated the raises Tuesday in executive session, those sources say.
An executive session occurs when a governing body meets without the press or the public present. Under Georgia law, governing bodies such as the county commission are allowed to meet in executive session for several reasons. The most commonly used reasons are to consider real estate transactions and to make personnel decisions.
According to District 8 Commissioner Brandon Garrett, no action was taken in the secret session.
“We really kind of tabled it for now,” he says. “Mayor Davis and (District Six Commissioner) Ben Hassan are going to form a blue-ribbon panel to discuss the issue further.”
Some commissioners were leery about discussing the raises for themselves in executive session, raising transparency concerns. Furthermore, a blue-ribbon panel does not have to follow open records laws when meeting.
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The Georgia Open Meetings Law is vague on the subject of commissioners discussing their salaries in private with a quorum attending. The law states that the commission may go into secret session to discuss the pay of “public officers and employees.”
The law, however, does not define the term “public officers.” The law likely applies to offices such as the sheriff or coroner whose overall budgets are determined by the commission, but not for the commission themselves.
The city attorney agreed the law was vague.
“Unfortunately, sometimes statutes are not as clear as the drafters intended them to be,” according to an email The Augusta Press obtained from General Counsel Wayne Brown to the commission.
In 2018, when DeKalb County Commissioners voted to increase their base pay, a county resident challenged the raise because the commission had not included the item on the meeting agenda where they discussed the measure. The open meetings law requires anything that will be discussed in an executive session to be listed as an agenda item.
In June 2018, Georgia Attorney General Christopher Carr said in a letter regarding the DeKalb County raise matter that the commission’s failure to include the item on their agenda violated the Open Meetings Law, which requires any matter be on the meeting agenda that will be discussed in either open or closed session, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
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Section 50-14-1 Section 3B Item (b)(1) of the Open Meetings Law states, “Except as otherwise provided by law, all meetings shall be open to the public. All votes at any meeting shall be taken in public after due notice of the meeting and compliance with the posting and agenda requirements of this chapter.”
None of the commission committee agendas from yesterday’s meetings include commission and mayor raises as an agenda item.
Further, Section 50-14-3 (b) (2) says that governing bodies can meet to discuss individual salaries but not employment policies.
According to Brown’s interpretation, the commission could theoretically meet in secret, decide on making the salary request and then quietly vote on the matter in open session without any public input. But only if they had the raises listed on the meeting agenda.
Scott Hudson is the Managing Editor of The Augusta Press. Reach him at scott@theaugustapress.com
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