The right of Georgians to know about the workings of their government came under siege last month. In two instances, it was dealt serious blows.
On April 11, Gov. Nathan Deal signed a bill that allows public college athletic associations to sit on requests for public records for 90 days, instead of the three days mandated by Georgia's sunshine laws.
Then on Wednesday, Deal signed legislation that gives state officials permission not to disclose income they earn from state agencies on the public document where, for the past 30 years, it has been required to be disclosed.
In other news, AJC reporter Mark Niesse reported last week that the newly created DeKalb County ethics board entertained and then abandoned a rule to withhold from the public complaints made against public officials until after they’d been investigated.
Why care?
The Founding Fathers enshrined in the First Amendment the notion that democracy cannot survive when government operates in secret.
This principle is the foundation of Georgia’s laws guaranteeing the public access to government meetings and government records.
The journalists at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution report every day on the workings of government. They also embrace a civic duty to sound the alarm when government infringes on your right to be fully informed. American journalists have carried this responsibility since the founding of the Republic.
It’s a responsibility that requires constant vigilance because, sadly, the tendency of government power is to serve itself, and not the interests of the public. Too often, public officials view the requirements of open government as burdensome to themselves or counter-productive to some lesser purpose. And they succumb to the urge to shield themselves from embarrassing decisions or unpopular positions taken behind closed doors.
In DeKalb, the argument was that ethics complaints can be filed to do political damage to undeserving public officials, so it’s best to keep them secret until after due deliberation.
But sunshine is the antiseptic for false claims, too. Those claims will be circulated regardless of whether the ethics board makes them public, and only by the board knocking them down as not credible and publicly dismissing them does the truth win.
Fortunately, the ethics board backed away from the proposal after the state Attorney General’s Office told it that ethics complaints were public records.
The AJC paid its attorney, Lesli Gaither, to make that case to the Attorney General’s Office. That’s how seriously we take our responsibility to safeguard these freedoms.
A 90-day exemption for athletics
The 90-day delay for turning over athletic records surfaced after UGA head football coach Kirby Smart said he was asked about it during a visit to the state Capitol. Smart previously coached in Alabama, where weak public access laws (among the weakest in the country) only require that athletic records be turned over in a "reasonable" amount of time.
UGA Athletic Director Greg McGarity told the AJC’s Greg Bluestein that the university had nothing to do with the sudden change to the state’s open records law, but noted that it would help his department “tremendously.”
McGarity said UGA received 100 records requests during the first three months of the year.
“They’re very lengthy and it takes a lot of time,” McGarity said.
He’s right. It does take time. But that’s part of the cost of operating a democracy. Athletic departments at major public universities such as UGA have become enormous operations, spending tens of millions of dollars on facilities and recruiting.
That’s what the UGA athletic association paid the rapper for a 13-minute set before the spring G-Day game at Sanford Stadium April 16. We know that from a contract provided by the association under the Open Records Act. (The contract also required the association to provide Ludacris with two bottles of his own label of cognac, T-shirts, deodorant and a box of condoms.)
Under the new law, UGA will now have a 90-day window to conduct that and other business in secret.
“It would make secret contract terms, letters of complaint or inquiry from the NCAA, plans for the expenditure of university and athletic association funds, and even more,” Hollie Manheimer, legal director to the Georgia First Amendment Foundation, told the AJC. “No other public agency in Georgia is given 90 days to conduct its business in secret.”
Weaker disclosure for public officials
Which brings me to Senate Bill 199 and perhaps the most shameful attack on your right to know.
In January, the AJC reported that Georgia's new House Majority Leader, Rep. Jon Burns, R-Newington, failed to report income that his private business earned from the Department of Natural Resources on the annual statement that public officials are required to file with the state ethics commission.
The purpose of disclosing such income is to reveal potential conflicts of interest that an official might have between his or her public duties and his or her private business. In Burns’ case, the undisclosed income was particularly relevant; he served on the House committee overseeing DNR and was its chairman.
Burns said he didn’t need to disclose the income because he’d reported it separately on something called a business transaction report, a requirement that all state employees — not just public officials — have had since 1983.
The state ethics commission doesn’t share this interpretation, and told the AJC that income from state entities must still be disclosed on the annual personal financial disclosure statement, where it is readily accessible to the public.
After the story ran, Burns could have amended his disclosure statement to include his income from DNR (he included his part-time state salary, even though the law doesn’t require that). Or he could have sought an advisory opinion from the ethics commission to test his understanding of what the law requires. He did neither.
Instead, a House member negotiating a compromise to a bill about elections inserted a provision to Georgia's ethics code saying officials no longer have to disclose income on the personal financial statement if they report it separately on the business transaction report, effectively changing the law to suit Burns' interpretation of it.
The change to the law, which the ethics commission itself didn’t ask for, occurred on the last day of the General Assembly, without any public hearing and, literally, in the dead of night, securing final passage after midnight as the session expired.
The conference committee meeting where the negotiating took place, incidentally, was held behind closed doors because the General Assembly long ago exempted itself from Georgia’s open records and meetings laws. But that’s another story.
Now, anyone examining Burns’ financial disclosure statement and arriving at Section IX — “ANNUAL PAYMENTS RECEIVED FROM THE STATE OF GEORGIA” — will encounter a blank. Not just for Burns, but for every other public official who wants to keep it off the form and limit the disclosure to the separate business transaction report.
The form won’t say, “Please refer to the Business Transaction Report for details.” A citizen will just assume there isn’t anything to disclose and be none the wiser.
“Our elected officials now have cover to be less forthcoming about their business dealings,” Brinkley Serkedakis, executive director of Common Cause Georgia, told AJC reporters when we reported about what happened last month. “In the interest of transparency, it should be easy for constituents to locate and understand this type of information — and that means disclosing every potential conflict of interest, all in one publicly available document.”
Fortunately, Burns and other Georgia officials won’t get off that easily. AJC reporters like James Salzer, Greg Bluestein, Kristina Torres and Aaron Gould Sheinin down at the Capitol know all the disclosure forms, and how to find them.
You can count on them to hold Georgia officials accountable.
It’s what we do.
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