Superior Court Judge Jesse Stone will hear the open records case four Augusta news organizations have filed against the city in regard to documents related to the city’s search for a new fire chief.
Stone has set the hearing for Monday, May 3 at 2 p.m.
The four press representatives who are seeking the records include The Augusta Press, the Augusta Chronicle and television stations WJBF and WRDW. They have requested an injunction to compel the city to provide application records as required by the Open Records Law. The city has provided the records of a single candidate, Antonio Burden, who city officials say was the only finalist. However, city commissioners interviewed four candidates earlier this month.
MORE: Local Media Seek Injunction to Obtain Fire Chief Hiring Documents
Press coalitions such as the one suing the city are uncommon, said Augusta University communication department Chair David Bulla, a former journalist himself.
“I think the media worked well together and in a fairly unified way through the 1990s,” Bulla said.
Cooperation is less common today, Bulla said. That’s because fewer investigative stories are being done, thus there’s not so great a need for media to work together.
Compounding the issue, all levels of government are becoming less responsive to media requests for information, Bulla said.
“Government just won’t play,” Bulla said. “I’m seeing a lot of what I saw when I lived in Abu Dhabi. You ask for something and get it two weeks later when it’s not a story anymore.”
Katherine Wideman, news operations manager at WJBF, acknowledged that cooperation among media organizations is less common than competition, but, she said, sometimes something can be more important than competition.
“We’re all competitors, but at the end of the day, we all work for the public,” Wideman said.
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The Augusta Press Publisher Joe Edge, who approached the Chronicle and WJBF about jointly seeking the injunction, agreed with Wideman.
“The public’s right to know goes hand-in-hand with the watchdog role of the press,” Edge said. “It’s our responsibility to serve the public’s need for information about their government, to keep government honest.”
In this case, the dispute is over the meaning of a clause in the Georgia Open Records Act. That act states that governments must provide “all documents concerning as many as three persons under consideration who the agency [Augusta] has determined to be the best qualified for the position shall be subject to inspection or copying.”
City Attorney Wayne Brown argues that “as many as” gives government the leeway to turn over only one file, which the city has done by providing Burden’s resume. A letter from Julia C. Lugo, a paralegal for the city, refers to Burden as “the finalist for the position of Augusta Fire Chief.”
“The announcement of finalist(s) by the Commission, published on April 20, 2021, clearly provides and shows that there is only person that is ‘under consideration whom the agency [Augusta] has determined to be the best qualified for the position,’” Brown wrote to David Hudson, attorney for the media groups, in an April 22 letter.
The press organizations, however, believe the city is obliged to turn over the files of all four candidates who were interviewed, according to the complaint Hudson filed April 26 in Augusta-Richmond County Superior Court. The complaint asks for an injunction that would stop the city from naming a new fire chief until 14 days after it provides documents on all candidates, as the Open Record Law requires.
On April 28, Brown sent a letter asking Stone to deny the news organizations’ request for a hearing on the injunction. Brown argued that the complaint cited no case or statutory law to support such a request. He argued again that Augusta had selected only one finalist, though city commissioners interviewed four people.
Brown’s letter also argued that the media organizations were “incorrect and misleading” in insisting that the law requires the city to provide records of at least three candidates.
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If the news organizations were correct in their reading of the law, Brown wrote, that would make Stone’s court the “hiring authority for the Augusta Fire Chief.”
“This proposed remedy would be a violation, if not an anathema, to the separation of powers between the executive and judicial branches,” the city attorney added.
A 2013 letter from then-Senior Assistant Attorney General Stefan Ritter maintained that “the widespread understanding” of the clause in question is “that it means at least three.”
Ritter’s letter continued, “The release of this information must be made 14 days before a final decision on the candidates is made. . . . This delays the decision by the local government.”
In responding to Brown’s letter, Hudson called the city’s attempt to withhold records “brazen,” and added that he knew of no other city that had tried to make such an argument. Hudson is a nationally known media lawyer who has handled open records cases for years. He wrote that the media organizations only want the documents for the qualified candidates for fire chief.
“For example,” he wrote, “it has been reported in the press that Mr. Burden only scored 10 out of a possible 20 points on the evaluation scale, and that 10 points was the very minimum to qualify for an interview? What did the other candidates score? This is not known and that is why the production of documents is in the public interest.”
MORE: News Analysis – The Augusta Fire Chief Position
Brown also accused the media groups of putting Richmond County citizens in danger by delaying the hiring of a fire chief.
“The fire department is an essential and critical health and safety function of government. The leadership of that department, and the selection of that leader, is central to the morale, organization, and efficiency of firefighters and first responders,” he wrote.
The previous fire chief, Chris James, resigned five months ago, in December 2020, and is being paid his full salary through August 2021.
Debbie Reddin van Tuyll is Editor-in-chief of The Augusta Press. Reach her at debbie@theaugustapress.com.
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