Wednesday, January 30, 2002

Lawyers tell the public to stuff it: No records, no open meetings

By CAL BEVERLY
Publisher

They could have put themselves on your side, these four governing bodies we all elected.

But their chosen mouthpieces, Peachtree City City Attorney Richard Lindsey and County Attorney Dennis Davenport, doing the heavy lifting for our spatting governments, have chosen to spit back-room cigar smoke at every one of us.

In response to The Citizen's Open Records requests for materials related to their secret tax negotiations, attorneys Lindsey and Davenport say, No way, nothing, nada, zippo. We ask for tax negotiation documents relating to the way our tax money is getting spent and bargained over and these lawyers being paid with public tax money say to the public Take a hike, go fish, sit on your request.

The story of what happens when lawyers and judges start running things is detailed on this page.

And by the way, what is this guy Lindsey doing still running Peachtree City? Two years ago, with the connivance of then-Mayor Bob Lenox, he stood up in City Council chambers to slam The Citizen and a then-unknown gadfly named Steve Brown and announced he was filing a libel suit against both of us.

The reason: Brown had written letters to The Citizen suggesting it wasn't proper for the city attorney to sit on a bank board with the city's major developer and simultaneously defend the city against a suit filed by that developer. That mayor and council voted to keep Lindsey and his law firm, despite the possible appearance of conflicts of interest.

Two years later, the libel suit has been utterly dismissed, the council has two fresh faces on it, Steve Brown has been elected mayor, and the guy who sued him is STILL calling the legal shots for Peachtree City. What gives with this new council? Have they developed ethical amnesia?

The two attorneys must have cribbed from each other's responses: They both dislike our use of the word "secret" in describing the secret meetings going on among representatives of our public elected bodies.

Let's review this for them. The judge ordered all tax talks to be conducted in utter secrecy. No one outside the judge and the lawyers and the appointed representatives knows where the meetings are conducted, how often, who attends, what is being discussed, what citizens' monies are being bargained and traded for, what information is being used to come to decisions nor even what our elected representatives think about the whole process.

The judge, signing off on orders drawn up by the publicly paid lawyers, has told our elected representatives: Shut up. Don't say a word about what you are doing to the people who elected you. Don't even hint what is on the table for negotiations. Shut the doors and keep the whole nosy, taxpaying public out.

Attorney Lindsey, paid for with public tax money, says in his brief to keep the doors and records shut: "Your choice of the word 'secret' totally mischaracterizes the court-ordered mediation and I believe is used to inflame conditions."

County Attorney Davenport, paid with your tax money, wrote: "Your characterization of court-ordered mediation as being 'secret' meetings is objectionable. You have placed a negative connotation on what has been a process which has been conducted consistent with law."

We strongly disagree. That's why we have asked for a court order halting the secret meetings. We think Visiting Judge Stephen Boswell of Clayton County is wrong in his closure ruling. We think he disregards clear state law regarding quorums and committees of governing bodies.

Merriam-Webster defines "secret" this way: "Kept from knowledge or view: hidden; marked by the habit of discretion: closemouthed; working with hidden aims or methods: undercover; not acknowledged: unavowed; conducted in secret; remote from human frequentation or notice: secluded; revealed only to the initiated: esoteric; constructed so as to elude observation or detection...."

Which definition do you suppose these taxpayer-money-paid lawyers object to?

The Citizen continues to pursue through a court challenge to the judge's closure order a fresh breath of sunshine into those lawyer-guarded closed rooms. Meanwhile, those taxpayer-paid lawyers are piling up the billable hours trying to keep you out of those closed, "secret" meetings and to keep closed the records of how your tax money is being bargained over.

How do you like that expenditure of your tax dollars?

One judge and two lawyers all on your payroll have told us taxpayers to get out and get over it.

And which one of our elected representatives on the Fayette County Commission, the Peachtree City Council, the Fayetteville City Council and the Tyrone Town Council is going to wake up, discover some courage on behalf of the public and throw the doors open to the taxpayers who elected them?

Is there anybody in charge at those governing bodies? Do our elected officials approve of this secrecy, as their attorneys suggest? Or have the taypayer-paid lawyers taken over?

We will continue to press for answers and openness in government and report to you our progress in reminding our public officials that they work for the public.

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