By Tom Bennett

Decatur, Ga., May 24, 2007 – There was a time just 15 years ago when a Georgia citizen desiring a public record trudged to the city clerk’s office wearing the doleful expression of someone about to receive a flogging.

That was then, this is now. A new generation of clerks who grew up using the Internet in school are taking charge, and their faces easily form smiles. They don’t fear the web; they know they can freeze their records as Portable Document Formats. Unexpected record-seeking visits by strangers not normally in the town’s loop don’t send these clerks into tizzies.

The attitudinal change has been so impressive that there are people on staff who are paid to give out news. Think of that!  "We are coming up on having 30 cities with public information officers," said Amy Henderson, public information manager of the Georgia Municipal Association.  Two laws caused this shift, which has been seismic for Georgia FOI.

Both got into the books through the iron will of Roy Barnes, governor from 1999 to 2002. The first is the clarification of our three-day rule for responding to open-record requests. The second is our requirement that public bodies sign affidavits proving an executive session they slip into is for one of the permitted reasons identified in Title 50. These laws’ passage together on a January afternoon in 1999 sent a message across 159 counties and 58,910 square miles. It is this: "Decide to be open."

Thurbert Baker, Georgia attorney general, is written up in the current University of North Carolina alumni review as a former champion fencer of the Atlantic Coast Conference. He’s still doing some of that. After moving from the legislature to become attorney general, the Emory Law grad swung his blade deep into the fog of Georgia government secrecy. He launched his open-government mediation program in 1998. He intended to sue sooner or later to teach a lesson to some especially recalcitrant agency. He did and won last year in an issue involving Atlanta’s gratuitous pursuit of sports extravaganzas. Baker filed suit and won. Any of the state’s 1,000 agencies could be next.

Open government mediation is quite an advance over the syrup-like procedure followed in many other states. In them, at a pace just a tad more frequent than Halley’s Comet appears in the sky, the A.G. solemnly opines -- at the request of a member of the legislature, and only under such circumstances -- upon some open-government issue.

Georgia’s top cop is Vernon Keenan, director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. He is a former FBI agent. Instead of constant sparring with reporters over information, he employs a trained agent as his public information officer and systematically responds to requests. More importantly, Keenan has voiced what the Georgia First Amendment Foundation has named the Keenan Principle of Open Government in 2003. Here it is: "A record is open unless it is specifically exempted from release."

The last 15 years have been sort of the Jamestown period of Georgia FOI.  Another of the three-dozen or so founders who sailed in and took a fair beating from natives but saw their culture survive has been David Milliron.

He was at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution from 1998 to 2007 as database editor, then director of computer-assisted reporting & analysis, director of database management and technology, and finally senior manager of the Internet Technologies Group in the information technology departmentMilliron taught Georgia reporters how to get databases, and the state’s public agencies how to produce them. There is not an electronic open-government advance in Georgia that he has not had a hand in.  "I am no longer with the AJC as I recently joined Caspio, Inc., provider of on-demand database services and rapid web application creation and deployment," David Milliron messaged me on May 11.

"As Director of Media Services, I am responsible for all aspects of the product development, implementation and maintenance for Caspio’s media clients. This is an exciting opportunity for me to combine over 20 years of database journalism experience with a company that is empowering the media to quickly create and deploy sophisticated web applications using step-by-step wizards and without programming. The company is located in Sunnyvale, Calif., although I am based here in Atlanta."  Gov. Sonny Perdue signed Senate Bill 212 on May 11. Yes, that was David Milliron’s Sunnyvale day.

Georgia’s top transparency killing law of 2007 was co-authored by Sens. Don Balfour of Snellville, Tommie Williams of Lyons and Chip Rogers of Woodstock. If only there were no rotten apples in the barrel of public employees of a southern state! Unfortunately, there are some. Yet the work of this openness-killing trio of senators, plus Gov. Barnes’ stroke of a pen, have cut off the means for reporters to expose foul-smelling apples.

This 2007 markup of an already virtually impenetrable code section has left 50-18-72(11.3)(A) a withering 267-word, 1,736-character run-on sentence of FOI gloom. Gone are the media’s access to (1) the social security numbers and (2) the day and month of birth of non-elected employees of cities, counties and the state of Georgia.

Citizen access to that data went down in flames years ago. However, andget ready, this will take concentration: The media – uncomfortably so, for it posts hundreds of editorials a year condemning exemptions – received its own, to the exemption for disclosure. That occurred in 2001.  I asked David Milliron for his view of what has happened this year, and here is what he messaged to me:

"Journalists have historically only used dates of birth and social security numbers to uniquely identify persons of interest with a particular article or larger investigation. The state legislature greatly eroded such access several years back when it eliminated such access with respect to public school employees. This was done on the coattails of two Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigations: One showing that three percent of Georgia educators have criminal records but failed to disclose them when they obtained their teaching certificate; Another that revealed as many as one in six public school bus drivers has a serious infraction on their personal or professional driving record but continue to drive Georgia children to and from school every day.

"The recent change in the law with respect to the news media access is a clear indication that the leaders of our state don't want journalists nosing around in their business. Yet no one -- including the members of the General Assembly -- can point to a single instance of where the media violated the public's trust by misusing the information for anything other than its intended purpose.

"There was no need to change the law, which already contained safeguards that ensured prosecution if the information was misused or released to a third-party."

The Senate vote on March 20 was 49-1, with two not voting and three excused that day. The House vote on April 20 was 95-53, with 25 not voting and seven excused.

Tom Bennett is a retired Atlanta newsman and writes about access issues for the Georgia First Amendment