SUMMER 2005 NEWSLETTER
GEORGIA FOI ACCESS
GEORGIA FIRST AMENDMENT FOUNDATION

GEORGIA FOI CONFIDENTIAL

Nominate now for the Weltner Award

By Tom Bennett

Atlanta, July 15, 2005 -- Georgia Chief Justice Norman S. Fletcher testified to Charles L. Weltner's positive influence upon his career when Fletcher received the Weltner Award March 4.

And Leah Sears, soon to succeed Fletcher as chief justice, talked about HIS good influence upon her own career as she videotaped a tribute.  So the principles of Charles Weltner are alive and well. They can be summarized this way:

The government at all levels should be transparent and ethical.

The former congressman and subject of a chapter in John F. Kennedy's "Profiles in Courage" for his civil rights stand, Weltner later served on the Georgia Court from 1981 to 1992. He was chief justice the last year.

That his legacy would live on was assured in 2002 when the Georgia First Amendment Foundation, with his family's permission, began presenting the Weltner Freedom of Information Award.

Nothing was easy for Weltner as he tried to lodge the principle of accountability in the minds of Georgia public officials. It hasn't been easy for GFAF, either, yet it has succeeded with the banquets despite a terrorist attack that stalled all public events for a time, and on another occasion, an ice storm hit Atlanta. The night of freedom of information in Georgia, as it has become, is thriving despite all its travail. Now it's coming up on its fifth anniversary.  The four honorees to date have been Eason Jordan, chief of newsgathering for CNN, 2002; Thurbert Baker, attorney general of Georgia, 2003; Roy Barnes, former governor, 2004; and Fletcher, 2005.

Now is the time for you to nominate the person you feel has done the most for freedom of information. This need not be a written request and if it happens to be, you can scrawl it upon a grocery bag, or on the back of your utility bill. The records of the administration of it are open for inspection. They will be turned over in three business days, probably faster. In other words, everything about the Weltner program mirrors GFAF's dreams for the public records of Georgia.  A secondary award recognizes the "hero," of open government, the everyday person working the hardest to achieve transparency in Georgia public life.

To nominate, telephone 404-525-3646. or FAX 404-377-0486. or e-mail info@gfaf.org; or snail-mail GFAF at 150 East Ponce de Leon Avenue, Suite 350, Decatur, GA 30030.

THE REPORTER WHO BECAME CHIEF JUSTICE

"I wrote very briefly for the Columbus Ledger," Georgia Chief Justice Leah Sears told the Atlanta Press Club July 13. "I'm not sure I wrote fast enough or quick enough." 

The Cornell, Emory Law and University of Virginia Law grad became the first female African-American member of the Georgia Supreme Court in 1992; presiding justice in 2001; and chief justice June 28.  "What Justice Fletcher did in indigent reform, I hope to do on the civil side," she said, citing Georgia's "domestic relations caseload explosion."

Hours after her swearing-in by Andrew Young, and as U.S. Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas looked on, Georgia laws grew by 98 on July 1. The chief justice promised to keep the court independent and condemned labeling of anyone simply trying to do their job well as "activist."  "We don't have police power, or the power of the purse, as in the executive and legislative (branches)," she said. "The judicial power we have comes from this and this alone: The people's trust and confidence in what we do."

 THE GOOD THAT CAN COME FROM PUTTING CHICKEN GRAVY ON FISH

John Shurr is the AP's South Carolina bureau chief and author of his state's open-government guide. He is so attuned to freedom of information matters that President Tom Curley has selected him to guide the global news network's efforts in FOI around the nation.

"Every AP bureau has to have an FOI program," he told the annual meeting June 16 during the Georgia Press convention at Marriott Sawgrass Resort in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla.  "The new coalition in Washington is made up of AP, NAA, ASNE, SPJ, RTNDA and the Reporter's Committee," he said. "It started the Sunshine in Government Initiative and created the web site sunshineingovernment.com.  It did so because the Reporter's Committee could not lobby and maintain its 501(c)(3) status."

A South Carolina innovation that could be copied in Georgia is its $20,000 legal defense fund. This was created to come to the aid of South Carolina papers and reporters fighting for access. It began with a banquet whose main course went wrong, badly wrong, but it all worked out well in the end.

"This grew from three thousand dollars that a restaurant re-paid after it put chicken gravy on fish," Shurr said.  If only courts' ordering of payment of attorneys' fees were more of a problem. When it DOES occur in South Carolina, Shurr said, "the money goes back into the pot."

FOI IS IN THE SPOTLIGHT IN GEORGIA

Speaking of the Georgia Press convention, FOI was on everyone's lips.

The Alltel Corporation, which provides local telephone, wireless, long distance, Internet and paging service, handed out t-shirts. On the front is the word "Alltel" and on the back, "Let the sun shine in."

David Hudson of Hull Towill et al in Augusta is the association's lawyer and defender of Georgia newspapers' freedoms of speech and the press. He addressed a large crowd at his annual legal briefing. He told the journalists that when the states of Alabama and South Carolina lavished tax breaks and other amenities upon auto-makers, they "sold out."

The Georgia Press Association again gave away pewter paperweights inscribed with the First Amendment to first-place winners in the Better Newspaper Contest.  The Columbus Ledger-Enquirer received a standing ovation when it received the FOI award for its successful fight to acquire the records related to a police shooting.

The "red book" and "blue book" were everywhere. The "red" has Title 50 of Georgia law, and the "blue, " now out in a second edition, is the last word on Georgia law enforcement and open records.

Finally, Georgia AP coverage of an ill-timed Atlanta Press Club FOI workshop in Atlanta made the Georgia edition of the Florida Times-Union, and copies traveled across the state line to Ponte Vedra.  It's a far cry from conventions of the early 1990s at which Hudson and attendees for his legal briefing could have met in a restaurant booth.

THE BIG GUNS ARE FIRING AT A SECRET MEETING IN SOUTHWEST GEORGIA

The Talbot County School Board met in secret July 12 to air a proposed site for a new elementary school. It is adjacent to and near three tracts where hunting clubs use high-powered rifles throughout the hunting season, according to Harry Franklin of the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer.

The enigmatic school superintendent (a) announced that the board would enter executive session: (b) told five local citizens they could stay; and (c) told Franklin and two other reporters to leave.

The board acted illegally, and reporters should follow up on the affidavit of the closed meeting, said Press Association lawyer David Hudson. The reporters then will be able to see what the superintendent states under oath is his justification for calling that executive session.