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Public gets a win for open government

By CAL BEVERLY

They should have known better, the Peachtree City Council members and especially their lawyers.

But they acted as if secrecy in conducting the public’s business is as natural as breathing.

And so they scheduled their 6 a.m. pre-sunrise Monday meeting and prepared to close the doors to the public while inviting into the secret session the Target developers, their lawyers, a homeowners association and their lawyers.

And they prepared nonchalantly to let the rest of us just sit outside in the cold predawn and wonder what was going on.

On behalf of the citizens of this county, The Citizen Friday demanded that the city obey the open meetings law and open their doors.

Fayette Superior Court Judge Christopher Edwards agreed with the newspaper that the city was about to violate state law.

“The [Citizen]’s application for temporary restraining order is granted to enjoin the defendant city of Peachtree City from conducting its noticed OCGA 50-14-2 (1) executive closed meeting at 6 a.m. on Oct. 18, 2004, with any persons present who are not attorneys representing the defendant city of Peachtree City, elected officials of Peachtree City, or employees of Peachtree City with an attorney-client relationship to Peachtree City’s attorneys due to their employment by Peachtree City,” Judge Edwards wrote.

The judge ordered that no third parties have any right under Georgia law to meet in secret session with any government body.

The judge properly ruled that the state-sanctioned secrecy between one lawyer and her client cannot be extended to include third parties, especially in closed sessions. Once a third party enters the closed meeting, any privilege is out the window and the meeting must be open to the public.

That seems like simple common sense, but it took a judge to force a local government to see the sunshine.

The ruling is the first in my memory in which a local government was ordered to open its doors to the public before they even tried to meet secretly.

It was a breath of very fresh air that all Fayette officials should inhale deeply.

I remember about eight years ago when the then-Peachtree City Council brazenly met in secrecy with the entire city Water and Sewer Authority to discuss buying a private sewer system from Georgia Utilities.

They used the same excuse then as this council did Friday: The attorney-client privilege.

Back in those days, the struggling new paper, not quite three years old, didn’t have enough money to hire a lawyer and seek to force the council to follow the law.

Even though we jumped up and down, the old council, ramrodded by then-Mayor Bob Lenox, met time and again in secret with no public accountability.

Amazingly, that council of the last decade even managed to secretly spend nearly $1 million in city tax funds on a pre-purchase study of the sewer system, even though they never took a recorded vote on spending the money and the $1 million expenditure itself never showed up in council minutes until after the sewer system buy-out was completed. It certainly was never budgeted.

That’s what can happen when you let a local government get away with secret meetings.

The judge’s unequivocal ruling Friday against Peachtree City and in favor of openness in government should demonstrate to every local official in Fayette County that secret meetings will be closely scrutinized and, when appropriate, challenged in a court of law.

It is not too much to expect that local government officials should bend over backwards to open every door to public participation.

We remind every local government in Fayette County: The law says you MAY close some limited parts of public meetings. The law almost NEVER says that any local government MUST close their doors to the public.

In local government, secrecy is almost always a choice, and almost never a requirement.

We think citizens should vote for politicians who strongly favor openness, and vote against politicians who regularly decide to exclude the very people who hired them.

In the future, we will name the names of local politicians who consistently hide behind their lawyers’ skirts in order to exclude the public from the conduct of public business.

We’d love to hear from you, the public, who the secrecy nominees ought to be. E-mail me at editor@TheCitizenNews.com.