Nydia Tisdale settles city council video case for $200,000

Perhaps elected and appointed officials will take note: you are public servants, and the public can record what you do. Which, if you treat the public as your allies and not your enemies, can be greatly to your advantage.

Nydia Tisdale wrote for AboutForsyth.com 17 March 2015, Nydia Tisdale settles lawsuit against Cumming Mayor Gravitt,

On the eve of trial, Citizen journalist Nydia Tisdale settled her longstanding federal lawsuit asserting the right to film public meetings for $200,000 along with a new policy that ensures future filming of Cumming City Council meetings.

And that ain’t all. Steve Visser, AJC, 17 March 2015, Steve Visser Cumming must pay blogger $200,000 for blocking filming of council,

“This settlement sends a powerful message that government officials cannot shroud their operations in secrecy by barring truth-telling video,” said Gerry Weber, lawyer for Tisdale, on aboutforsyth.com.”But more, the lawsuit has unveiled decades-old practices of an entrenched City government that has left its citizens in the dark. The Mayor’s actions were a blatant violation of citizens’ constitutional rights to record public meetings.”

That AJC article also brings up the case of the six missing screams where Nydia was evicted from a GOP campaign event headlining Gov. Nathan Deal, manhandled, and apparently the sheriff’s office edited out her screams from the video on her own camera. But not from the audio recording of a blogger who had been sitting nearby. $200,000 may be just a drop in the bucket to what that one’s going to cost somebody.

-jsq