SUMMER 2005 NEWSLETTER

GEORGIA FOI ACCESS

GEORGIA FIRST AMENDMENT FOUNDATION

By Laurie Lattimore-Volkmann

ATLANTA – July 19, 2005  – A three-word addition to an exemption in Georgia’s open records law during the recent legislative session signals a dangerous trend toward secrecy in state government.

Records containing personal identification information of law enforcement officials and public school employees were already exempt from the sunshine law.

But now thanks to House Bill 437, “all public employees” can keep records with personal information a secret.

While most of the hype during the 2005 session went to HB 218 and SB 5 – two bills related to the secrecy of state economic development that ultimately died – HB 437 quietly went into effect July 1.

Lawmakers sold the bill as a way of protecting employees from being contacted by union officials.

Opponents, including the Georgia First Amendment Foundation, spoke against the bill for its broad application that could hamper newsgathering as well as take away citizens’ rights to know what their elected officials are doing.

David Milliron, a reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, said the new law will prohibit the public from knowing who works for the government, preventing citizens from being able to find out what public officials are doing.

“If I wanted to do a story on public employee pay and follow government employees records for five years to look at any nepotism in government, I can’t do that,” Milliron said. “Is this a constraint on journalists? Absolutely.”

The new exemption also represents a chipping away of access to documents and meetings that should be open to the public.

“These are just ways to erode access to government,” says Walter Bush, a First Amendment attorney in Atlanta.

Bush says the main problem lies in the larger context of a state whose lawmakers are gradually taking away or attempting to take away public access to government.

“We saw in this last legislative session throwing anything into the hopper to erode the open records and open meetings acts,” Bush said, pinpointing among others HB 218 that would have closed records regarding state contracts with out-of-state corporations.

Milliron believes this new exemption to the sunshine law  is more than just a dangerous trend; he believes it has taken away all accountability by public officials.

“They just don’t want any scrutiny,” Milliron said, adding that the union reason was a non-issue. “Show me one person who has been harmed by being contacted by the union. There are laws that prohibit harassment and stalking, but [lawmakers] are limiting public information just because something is a nuisance.

“That’s a little far-reaching if you ask me,” Milliron said.

Kent Middleton, a media law professor at the University of Georgia in Athens, agrees the main problem with 437 is the exemption of elected public officials.

“This makes it more difficult for journalists to find a conflict of interest,” he said. “If a city councilman is engaged in a land deal, it would be hard to I.D. folks involved.”

Middleton believes for the average public employee the bill has some merit, but he is concerned with the bill’s impact on getting information about policy makers.  “One thing the Georgia Press Association could do is seek exemptions for the press. News reporters could get the names of employees at all levels for reporting purposes,” Middleton said.

Though the law professor is generally opposed to seeking special statutory treatment for the press, it could be better than nothing.

“If the press is going to be frozen in the cold, that may be the better way to go,” Middleton said.

Bush is concerned with the bill’s long-term impact on access generally.

“The problem is that everyone carves out their own innocuous exceptions that don’t do much damage by themselves,” Bush said. “But in totality, they can be quite a problem.

“Once you start saying, ‘open government is fine but not in this situation or in that situation, you go down a very slippery slope.”

Laurie Lattimore-Volkmann is a former state government reporter currently teaching journalism at Georgia State University. She became interested in access issues while working on a media law Ph.D. at the University of Alabama.