Tag Archives: open government

Videos: Budget Public Hearing @ LCC Budget 2015-06-09

For the budget they will vote on Tuesday June 23rd, two weeks ago Finance Director Stephanie Black said:

“This is the public hearing”

What happened to the requirement for two budget public hearings?

The County Chairman said they had $7 million in requests above the expected revenue, so they had had a difficult time coming up with a budget. For (some of) how they did that, see the LAKE videos of the 18 May 2015 Budget Work Session.

Half of this budget hearing consisted of the same presentation from that previous meeting. Then County Manager Joe Pritchard added Continue reading →

Videos: Budget Work Session @ LCC Budget 2015-05-18

“Once you put in your transfers in and out, you have a balanced budget,” said Finance Director Stephanie Black. Transfers in from where? How does this magic work?

Even the Commissioners had no agenda to look at, although they did have printed copies of the draft budget, which the public could only see as it scrolled by on the screen at yesterday morning’s Lowndes County Commission Budget Work Session, which was over by 10AM even though it was announced as 8:30AM to 5PM. However, it is good that they had this Work Session in public. County Clerk Paige Dukes told Gretchen afterwards that no draft budget would be available to the public until after two changes requested by the Chairman were incorporated. She did not say when that would be finished or when the draft budget would be available so taxpayers could comment. She did refer people to last year’s budget. The slides that Finance Director Stephanie Black presented do provide an interesting high level overview. Other than Commissioners and very few staff, the only people in the room were VDT reporter Joe Adgie, someone unidentified, and Gretchen taking these LAKE videos so you can see what happened. Continue reading →

Budget Work Session @ LCC Budget 2015-05-18

Update 2015-05-18: Still no agenda posted as the meeting starts; not online; not on the outside of the building; not on the inside of the building. Is this legal?

An all-day Commission meeting with no agenda. And no draft budget that the public can see.

PUBLIC NOTICE-BUDGET WORK SESSION

Date: May 18, 2015
Time: 8:30 AM – 5:00 PM
Location: Lowndes County Commission Chambers
Address: 327 N. Ashley Street, 2nd Floor
Valdosta, GA 31601

The Lowndes County Board of Commissioners has scheduled a Budget Work Session for Monday, May 18, 2015, at 8:30 a.m. For questions please call County Clerk, Paige Dukes, at 229-671-2400 or pdukes@lowndescounty.com

Over on the Finance Department web page, it Continue reading →

LAKE in the VDT @ LCC 2014-11-21

First time ever the VDT mentioned LAKE, so far as I can recall. And we’ll see if the new VDT editor’s honeyed approach works this time with the Lowndes County Commission.

Joe Adgie, VDT, 23 November 2014, Watchdogs use open government laws to the fullest,

Not everyone at the Open Government Symposium on Friday were affiliated with a government.

Some of them, like John and Gretchen Quarterman, serve as watchdogs for the government. These watchdogs attend the open, public meetings held by governing bodies, acquire the documents and records of these meetings and other governmental affairs, and serve to make sure our local governments behave like they should.

The Quartermans run the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE), a repository of Continue reading →

Open Government Symposium @ LCC 2014-11-21

Not the Onion: VDT front page Saturday 15 November 2014, County plans open government meeting Friday,

VALDOSTA — An Open Government Symposium this Friday in Valdosta will be hosted by the Lowndes County Board of Commissioners.

Valdosta Daily Times Editor Jim Zachary, director of the Transparency Project of Georgia, will be joined by Hollie Manheimer, executive director of the Georgia First Amendment Foundation, for the open government training event.

Lowndes County leaders approached Zachary and Manheimer about bringing the symposium to Valdosta after they attended the first in a statewide series of open government training sessions held in Macon at the Center for Collaborative Journalism Oct. 17.

The article noted that Commissioner Clay Griner was among the attendees at the previous symposium in Macon and had asked for this local meeting.

All the events are Continue reading →

Transparency in government is essential to the public trust –VDT

VDT editorial yesterday, Violating public trust,

Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens successfully fought for and implemented changes to the state’s Open Records law, believing that transparency in government is essential to the public trust. The law passed in 2012 states, “The General Assembly finds and declares that the strong public policy of this state is in favor of open government; that open government is essential to a free, open, and democratic society; and that public access to public records should be encouraged to foster confidence in government and so that the public can evaluate the expenditure of public funds and the efficient and proper functioning of its institutions.”

The VDT asked for records from the Lowndes County school system and didn’t get them. Their experience sounds quite similar to many LAKE has had with the county government in particular, with records not being provided in the statutory three days, and sometimes not even an excuse or a list of what might eventually be available.

That plus failure to make even agendas for the Planning Commission available in a timely fashion so citizens can see whether they need to attend (somebody explain to me the expense of agendas; clearly I don’t understand this Internet suff), and even in response to open records requests returning paper when the documents are obviously composed in electronic formats, agendas for County Commission meetings that are just plain incorrect, resulting in people taking time off from work to show up unnecessarily for a Sabal Trail pipeline item that didn’t happen, a public hearing that wasn’t listed as such on the agenda, a secretive retreat “work session”, and not even being clear about what tax dollars for SPLOST would go for. That’s not even all; just a sample of county government lack of transparency.

And it’s not just the County Commission. Look at Continue reading →

The sun came up on a different world —Julian Assange

Julian Assange of Wikileaks spoke from the Ecuadorean Embassy in London today (video, text):

The next time somebody tells you that it is pointless to defend the rights we hold dear, remind them of your vigil in the dark outside the Embassy of Ecuador, and how, in the morning, the sun came up on a different world, and a courageous Latin American nation took a stand for justice.

The British government made a stunning mistake in throwing away the worldwide goodwill just gained through the London Olympic Games, by actually beginning to storm a sovereign embassy in violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations that was observed throughout the Cold War. How could they be so foolish? This man, this reporter and publisher, they think is somehow more dangerous to them than the armed might of the Soviet Union was? This is as if JFK arrested MLK after John Glenn’s first orbital flight (a step which JFK fortunately did not take).

There is something you can do, even when the world is turned upside down:

Continue reading →

Private companies are not subject to sunshine laws —VDT

The VDT reminds us of an important distinction in yesterday’s editorial,

Citizens entitled to open government,

All governmental entities supported by tax dollars are subject to the laws. Private companies are not.

As the VDT knows better than anybody else around here, getting informaiton out of Valdosta State Prison or the Georgia Department of Correcions (GDOC) is very hard. The VDT has been trying to find out what’s going on at Valdosta State Prison for years now, and getting the runaround and hitting stone walls.

Florida has a law that says private prison operators have to comply with Continue reading →

Georgia takes steps towards more open government; could take more

The state of Georgia may improve open government with HB 397. While the steps it takes are welcome, the bill could go farther.

Kay Harris wrote for the VDT today, Georgia AG works to boost Sunshine Laws, quoting State Attorney General Sam Olens:

“The legislature has given the Attorney General’s office the jurisdiction to enforce the Open Records law and this bill will give us the tools to do so.”
Olens said the AG’s office receives an average of 400 complaints each year of Open Records violations by governmental entities in the state. The bill strengthens penalties and gives the AG more tools to use to prosecute violators.
Subsection 50-14-6 changes the fine for knowingly violating the law from $100 to $1,000 and allows the court to impose a civil penalty as well.
The bill also strengthens the guidelines for posting notices on websites and clarifies the rules for social events that may attract a quorum of officials. Also, destroying public records can be prosecuted as a felony.

The bill ( Here’s HB 397 on the legislature’s website) includes some welcome requirements about meeting times and public records officers having to be posted on a body’s website, but builds in a huge loophole: Continue reading →

Citizens to be Heard will get moved back earlier —George B. Rhyne s

George Rhynes said he’s positive Citzens to be Heard will get moved back earlier in the agenda. The VDT quoted that part, in a story that doesn’t appear to be online yet. He also criticized the VDT for printing more about animals than about jail deaths.

Here’s the video:

Citizens to be Heard will get moved back earlier —George B. Rhynes
Regular Meeting, Valdosta City Council (VCC),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 4 June 2011.
Videos by Barbara Stratton for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

Here’s George’s own video and writeup of what he said.

-jsq

On the LAKE front

Citizen dialog for transparent process by the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange