SPRING 2005 NEWSLETTER
GEORGIA FOI ACCESS
GEORGIA FIRST AMENDMENT FOUNDATION

The year of FOI in Georgia
Sen. Adelman fights for campus-police openness;
An editor asks, 'Do legislators get a jump in IQ?'

By Tom Bennett

Atlanta, April 5, 2005 -- A legislator stopped Hollie Manheimer at the state capitol and asked, "Aren't you the FOI lady?"

Meanwhile, Norman Fletcher accepted the Weltner FOI Award and, from the dais, the chief justice of Georgia criticized four bills in the General Assembly. House Bill 218, he said, could "pave the road to economic hell for our citizens."

Newspapers from the mountains to the coast waded into House Bill 218. The Perdue administration claims it will be at a disadvantage if there's disclosure how it offers incentives to companies to relocate here.

"Baloney!," wrote the Herald-Leader in Norman Fletcher's hometown of Fitzgerald. "Do state and local elected officials get such an enormous jump in IQ once elected that their lofty decisions are too far above our ability to grasp?"

Just three years earlier, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution had greeted the '02 legislature with this headline: "For many people, lawmakers' efforts worthy of yawns."

Not this time. The newspaper published 25 articles, seven editorial columns and five editorials about 2005 legislative open government issues. Often at odds, the columnists Cynthia Tucker and Jim Wooten locked arms to attack House Bill 218 Feb. 13. "Finally, something our opinion due agrees on," the newspaper headlined.

SPEAKING UP FOR OPEN GOVERNMENT, ABOVE THE BARKING AT THE CAPITOL

Sen. David Adelman (D-Decatur) is the minority whip. He is an Emory law grad; a former Georgia assistant attorney general; and a member of the Atlanta law firm Sutherland Asbill & Brnnan LLP. He holds the hopes of Georgia FOI for the '06 General Assembly, at least for now. His Senate Bill 153 to open private-campus police incident reports made it through the Senate this year.

Carolyn Carlson, an adjunct professor of political science at Georgia State and member of the board of directors, helped steer both judicial and legislative efforts this year to pry open those private campus records.

Atlanta lawyer Amanda Farahany's lawsuit, Farahany v. Mercer, won at the Superior Court level; lost in the Court of Appeals; and is before the Georgia Supreme Court.

Fighting for FOI takes a calm demeanor. As Adelman, Carlson, Manheimer and Farahany began their press conference at the capitol March 28. At that moment . Army troops in fatigues entered leading on leashes seven German Police dogs. They said they were there to celebrate, and help the governor issue his proclamation for, Georgia Military Dog Handlers Day. The dogs began barking loudly as they waited just outside the governor's second floor office. However, the FOI fighters were undeterred. They kept right on explaining why SB 153 is needed to open up the secret police of the private campuses in Georgia, from Mercer to Shorter to Savannah College of Art and Design.

Lt. Gov. Mark Taylor, a Democrat, and other leaders of the party now in the minority called a press conference March 2. They said they are prepared to seek a constitutional amendment voiding the exemptions to open government and requiring a two-thirds majority to put them back into the statutes. However, no bill to start that rolling was introduced this session.

Gov. Perdue issued a proclamation March 15 for "Sunshine Week in Georgia."  "As the terror ridden and despotic regimes around the world have shown, democracy cannot thrive when the public's "right to know" is compromised, eliminated or unduly regulated," the governor proclaimed.

'THE FOI LADY'

Nationwide, newspapers took part in "Sunshine Week" in mid-March. In Washington, D.C., the Freedom of Information Act got a hearing before a congressional committee for the first time in 13 years. Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vermont) is leading this current effort for a federal shield law and, among other reforms, an "ombudsman" for the FOIA.

The first Republican-controlled state government in Georgia since the Reconstruction era after the Civil War took a battering from print media. Nevertheless, when the smoke had cleared after 40 days they had put two harmful bills on Perdue's desk. The vigor of his "Sunshine week" proclamation notwithstanding, the governor told Jim Galloway of the Journal-Constitution that he's inclined to sign these bills.

Perdue favors House Bill 437 to extend to all state employees the privacy of their home phone numbers and addresses -- already enjoyed by judges, police and educators, and building steadily, menacingly, since 1981.

"The governor said all public workers deserve their privacy," Galloway wrote April 2.

And the governor supports House Bill 340 to shield information about donors to university foundations.  "These are people, generous philanthropists, who want to give money," Perdue told Galloway of the Journal-Constitution. "I don't think the public has a right to know who that anonymous donor is."

There were no exemptions signed into law in 2000; three in 2001; two in 2003; and three in 2004.

Tom Bennett if the Journal-Constitution is a board member and volunteer for the Georgia First Amendment Foundation, and Georgia sunshine chair for SPJ.