Editor’s Note: In this second installment of the Augusta Press’s series on openness in local government, reporter Stephanie Hill talks with local leaders to discover their understanding of the Georgia Open Records law.
Freedom of Information and transparency are an integral part of government and elected bodies.
Under the Georgia Open Records law and the federal Freedom of Information Act, citizens can request access to records from government agencies, unless it falls under an exemption.
In the CSRA, elected officials the Columbia County government, Columbia County School System, Augusta government and the Richmond County School System think their agency vary in how they handle public records.
Columbia County government
Columbia County Board of Commissioners Chairman Doug Duncan, who is in his ninth year, said the county strives to be as open and transparent as possible. One of the most controversial topics the county deals with is rezoning, and citizens want the most transparency there, he said.
“At this point, when someone files an application for a rezoning, we automatically put it on our website,” Duncan said. “Which, half the time I read about it in the Augusta Press. Before it even comes before staff, we just put it online, any applications. I don’t think you can be any more transparent with really the number one issue we deal with.”
When it comes to transparency, Duncan said Columbia County has nothing to hide.
“I think the Bible says what a man does in the dark will be revealed by the light, and that’s just, it’s a dangerous path to go down to try to hide things much more. It’s much better to have everything laid out for the public so there are no questions,” Duncan said. “People are always going to have questions, but we do the best we can to be totally transparent. Better to have nothing to hide.”
Columbia County District 4 Commissioner Alison Couch said being open and honest, along with good communication, are important.
“We all value good communication. It’s important for any organization, and that even applies to our local government,” Couch said. “I think that transparency and communication can be subjective topics. People have a different opinion on what they see as good communication and transparency versus how someone else may see. But as the law defines it, I believe Columbia County does a good job adhering to that.”
Couch added she wants the citizens of Columbia County to be informed about what’s going on in the county and to know they have opportunities to participate in local government.
“We want citizens to be as informed as they want to be,” Duncan said.
Columbia County records their Board of Commissioners meeting, along with committee meetings, which are then posted online for citizens to watch back.
Columbia County School District
The Columbia County School District has made some changes within the last year to the process for requesting information. Superintendent Dr. Steven Flynt said now citizens can go onto the school district’s website and see who has made a request for information and everything they’ve seen unless it falls under one of the exemptions that isn’t releasable.
“We’re very responsible to those, and it’s open for everybody to see,” Flynt said. “It was about a year and a half we started getting more of those, and it was a more cumbersome process until we figured out a better to do it. So, we have a technology now so everything is available online. It’s on our website, you can get all of that information. So, if you want to go back and find out what somebody requested a year ago you can go back and see that on the open records. You can see who did it and what all they received.”
Flynt said the school district values transparency, is accountable to the voters and members of the public and involves the community when possible. When working on the strategic plan, there was heavy community involvement.
“When we developed that plan, we also broke that up and had feedback groups, so that was made up of internal and external folks,” Flynt said. “We had to present it a number of times in public and ultimately the Board of Education voted on that and that became our five-year plan.”
For David Dekle, the Columbia County Board of Education, he said transparency is “an asset, not a liability.”
“Because one thing Dr. Flynt has kind of taught me is that when you want to move the Titanic, it’s good to have everybody on the same side of the boat, and so, I’m talking about collaboration,” Dekle said. “You can’t have collaboration, you can’t have support of stakeholders without being transparent about what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, why it’s important to the community and so I think it’s an asset and a liability.”
When it comes to the Columbia County Board of Education meetings, Flynt said they are open to the public, and the school district makes sure to follow the requirements. But one thing that is done that isn’t required is live streaming the meetings.
“We believe that’s necessary,” Flynt said. “As far as all of the actions that kind of happen in the school district that need to go out to the public, we do that in a number of ways. For example, if we have kind of an emergency at one of our schools, we’ll typically send that out almost immediately to all of the stakeholders. We try to get staff obviously involved very quickly, then send a notice to the parents, but right after that we send it to the press.”
Flynt said it’s important for the community to know what’s happening in the schools, especially if it’s related to student behavior.
“People need to hear what’s happening in the schools so they can talk with their children about appropriate choices and learn from the things that are actually happening in the schools,” Flynt said. “We do believe that schools, as well as student behavior and everything else is a shared responsibility. Obviously, we all have our roles and responsibilities to that. But certainly, we benefit when the parents take that active role also to help us do that job even better, including feedback to us.”
Richmond County School System
When it comes to freedom of information, Richmond County School System will always be in compliance with the law, according to Superintendent Dr. Ken Bradshaw.
“Freedom of information is critical. Anytime there is a request, we are in compliance,” Bradshaw said. “We adhere with providing information within the three days if available, and we believe in transparency. Anything we do as public officials, the goal is to always be truthful and share information as we receive it, the information we can share. So, we do not have an issue or any challenges with providing information. It’s something that we feel is the right of the public, and we will always comply in a timely manner.”
The Richmond County Board of Education meetings are livestreamed, which Bradshaw says he believes helps with transparency. He added that a lot of community members have viewed these meetings, especially during COVID.
“I do believe any opportunity to share information through multiple mediums is always the best course of action,” Bradshaw said.
Charlie Walker, RCBOE president, agreed with Bradshaw about live streaming the meetings being beneficial. He added that it gives people who are interested but can’t attend in-person a chance to learn what’s going on.
“Our viewership has increased as we continue to do (it), especially when there are important subjects coming up, such as when we were dealing with the COVID issue,” Walker said.
“I think people learned, oh, they do talk about other things, and there might not be things on the agenda that are always of interest to everybody, but you might see a spike in viewership just so they can see how the process works,” Walker said. “As we were going through our rightsizing just recently where we had to involve certain elementary schools and (some) being closed and certain taking other students and those kind of things certainly peak interest in the populations mind of what’s going on. How did they approach this, what are the procedures they used, and how did they reach their decisions, and I would like to think the openness of the meetings showed them the things that we have to from a government and parliamentarian kind of aspect how we go about doing it.”
Walker said in his personal opinion, elected officials need to uphold the public’s trust when it comes to working on different issues and challenges.
“I believe that to withhold or not grant the people who elected us into office the things they might be looking for is kind of the opposite of what we’re supposed to be doing in my opinion,” Walker said.
Augusta government
For Augusta District 7 Commissioner Sean Frantom, he said it’s important to be transparent as a government because the government represents the people and uses the people’s money.
“When you look at national politics, that kind of filters all the way down to local when people just assume that politicians do things crooked or do things in a way that isn’t transparent but benefits them individually and that’s just not the case,” Frantom said. “You can’t paint all elected officials with the same paint brush. Some of us are doing this for the right reasons and want to make a difference.”
While the commissioners go into executive session to discuss certain topics such as legal, real estate and personnel, Frantom believes everything else should be discussed in an open setting. An example he gave was the recent ambulance contract negotiation.
“We went through a huge ambulance contract where there was, a company had everything from an equipment standpoint and how they scored, but when a subjective group graded them, it was way low, and I just think that things need to be open and transparent, and even I tried to get the negotiations with Central out on the floor because I think that people don’t trust government and that’s why everything needs to happen in an open area,” Frantom said.
By having items discussed in an open setting, Frantom said he believes it helps the public have more trust in government.
“It makes people trust us more. It makes people feel like they can have a say, or I have a lot of constituents that will reach out to me and give their opinion on issues,” Frantom said. “The animal trap neuter release that we just approved, I put it out on my social media to tell me why you don’t support this and frankly I didn’t get much response on it. I got all the supporters on there and I do that and try to keep the people informed because number one, we need to be educating people better because we are part of telling the story of Augusta and I don’t think we do a good job of that, and number two, I represent 25,000 people and I need their feedback. This is their decisions too as much as me.”
Frantom said that not a lot of people attend the Augusta Commission meetings, but the public does have the ability to watch the meetings online to see what is happening, which he believes people do because he hears feedback on what’s been discussed.
“I think that’s huge for people that work because they can put it on in their office and watch it while they work or when they get home,” Frantom said. “It makes for a more transparent government to make sure we’re televising and showing everything that is happening in the meeting. It’s up to the people if they want to follow along and be educated on the issues. Some people don’t but some people do and that makes for a better government when they’re engaged and we’re transparent that way.”
