SUMMER 2006 NEWSLETTER
GEORGIA FOI ACCESS
GEORGIA FIRST AMENDMENT FOUNDATION

The forgotten fathers of Georgia open meetings and open records laws, including two Robert Lees

How the lid once closed on the records of water meters, and what exactly was a "book"?

By Tom Bennett

Lilburn, Ga., May 24, 2006 -- Georgians’ rights to inspect public records, and also to pay only 25 cents a page for copies of them, are no Johnny-come-lately provisions of state and location government. In fact, they’re 175 years old, dating to 1831.

Meanwhile, the years of 1959 for the passage of our Open Meetings Act, and 1965 for the passage of our modern Open Records Act, have been affirmed.

All this important new research in open government is in "A Timeline of Georgia’s Open Government Laws."   Click here to access it.  Stefan Ritter, Georgia deputy attorney general, edited this work. It’s yet another indication of just how seriously he and his boss, Attorney General Thurbert Baker, are taking open government.

Ritter heads a section of the Attorney General’s office at 40 Capitol Square in Atlanta. Although his section has a lot of work to do in other areas of the law, it has taken on the Open Government Mediation Program, too. Baker wrote the law for it in 1998, and made it a permanent part of his Law Department.

Baker and Ritter are batting 1.000 in open government lawsuits. They won in court this year when they sued to pry open further the records of often-gratuitous bids that Atlanta and sports committees make for big sports events and sports museums.

Now with Ritter’s work on the history, taking it 175 years deeper into the past than it has gone before, just means there will be a greater understanding of this important aspect of good government.

 "The excellent legal historical research by Assistant Attorney General Stefan Ritter reaffirms Georgia’s tradition of openness, not only in the General Assembly as early as 1831, but in the clear decisions of the Supreme Court of Georgia as early as 1874," said F.T. "Tread" Davis of McKenna Long & Aldridge law firm of Atlanta. "Both the judiciary and the legislative leaders of Georgia have a long tradition of openness concerning the people’s business."

 NOTHING CAN DISLODGE THE RIGHT OF INSPECTION

Georgia county and city clerks, and school superintendents, you will want to take note of the Act of Dec. 29, 1831.

As Ritter’s document shows, the act required county officials way back in 1831 to "keep books of account." Unfortunately, the name of the sponsor is lost to history, but whoever he was, he set the stage for FOI advocacy in our own century.

"During the legal office hours, all persons shall have access to and a right to inspect the aforementioned books," the 19831 law states. Furthermore, we have the right to "take extracts" from the books. When we do, the law states: "The person keeping the books shall be entitled to receive 25 cents for each inspection."

This means Georgians have had the rights to inspect public records and get copies of them for the last 175 years. Furthermore, the inspection provision went in and held fast. It could not be wiped out by the Civil War; the suspension of habeas corpus by wartime Gov. Joseph Brown; or Reconstruction. As the Ritter document shows, the seceded state of 1863, and the restored martial-law state of 1868, both kept in place the inspection statute, albeit inexplicably dropping the cost provision. The latter came in for a good deal of sparring over the next century, but has been at 25 cents a page at least since 1982.

This is state in which a case involving a McFrugal Auto Rental agency often is cited in FOI disputes. So it's an area of Georgia law that turns on some odd questions at times. For example, in Atlanta v. Hawkins in 1932 in a personal injury parole evidence case, the court said that the records of the repairs to water meters were not "public records about which extrinsic evidence was admissible." In Grizzard v. State Revenue Commissioner in 1933, the court held that a list of all the automobile owners in the state was not a "book."

STARTING POINTS FOR 20TH CENTURY ADVOCACY

The 1959 open meetings and 1965 open records provisions were bare-bones starting points for work on FOI in the 20th Century. They were signed into law by Governors Ernie Vandiver Jr. and Carl E. Sanders, respectively. Sketchy and sparse, they were like sheep for the slaughter. As soon as they were passed, the state’s special-interest groups went on alert, and their car engines began to rev. The lobbyists began motoring to Capitol Hill in Atlanta every year to talk into the law the sea of open-government exemptions we now have. These now number 155, and are scattered in 27 titles of the law.

Those first efforts at open government entered the Georgia Code during the centennial of the Civil War. So it’s probably not surprising that two of the seven sponsors were named Robert Lee. With an affirmation from the Ritter document that these were the century’s starting points, our own research turned up the following about the two laws.

1959 OPEN RECORDS ACT

Senate Bill 78 of 1959 was co-sponsored by Sens. Eldridge W. Perry of Buena Vista, Robert E. Lee Culpepper Jr. of Camilla, Clarence R. Vaughn Jr. of Conyers, Asa M. Mitchell Jr. of Eatonton and Robert Lee Slade Jr. of Hawkinsville, according to the Senate Journal.

It is "a bill to provide for the inspection of public records." It received a do-pass from the Senate Judiciary committee. The Senate Journal of that year notes intriguingly that the committee "struck the words ‘shall be subject to removal or impeachment’" and added that inspection of records shall occur "at a reasonable time and place."

Culpepper must have had a key role, for he was Gov. Vandiver’s floor leader. Culpepper attended law school for a year, according to the Georgia Statistical & Official Register. He became a lawyer and at the time this bill was passed, was the Mitchell County attorney.

1965 OPEN MEETINGS ACT

House Bill 287 of 1965 was sponsored by Rep. Willis J. "Dick" Richardson of Savannah. The bill received a do-pass in House Judiciary, which was chaired by Rep. J. Robin Harris of Decatur. Harris was the grandson of Joel Chandler Harris, who was an Atlanta Constitution folklorist and author of the "Uncle Remus" stories.

Willis Richardson was informed about government and its records, and he also knew something about the use of force to open up things. He was a retired FBI agent who had been a member of the University of Georgia’s 1942 Rose Bowl team and then a B-17 bomber navigator in Europe during World War II.

 THE CODIFICATION of Title 50 in 1982 moved the Open Records Act there from O.C.G.A. 40-2702. The same reorganization and new printing moved the Open Meetings Act to Title 50 from O.C.G.A. 36-80-1, according to the Ritter document.

The pride of Mableton, Roy Barnes, was a legislator from 1976 to 1998 and governor from 1999 to 2002. He and his fellow media lawyers have fought to protect the new sunshine title. For example, the legislator Barnes wrote the three-day rule for permitting inspection. Then as governor, he wrote another law strengthening and hardening that provision. The result was to wipe out the ambiguity of the 175-year-old act’s language about "reasonable time." (This is a vague and rubbery provision still in place in Florida and Tennessee.)

In addition to Barnes, Thurbert Baker, his aides Kathryn Allen and Stefan Ritter, plus all the plaintiffs willing to tough it out and sue to get records, and the justices and judges such as Charles L. Weltner… they are among the Georgians who have protected FOI lately. So, too, have the print and broadcast bosses and their editors and news directors who pay the media lawyers. Hollie Manheimer of the Georgia First Amendment Foundation and her board members are in the twelfth year of a program of education for Georgia citizens about open government.

All owe a debt to figures in the state’s history that, as the Ritter document proves, had their own strong interests in open government. These were the founding fathers of Georgia FOI.

Tom Bennett of Lilburn is a GFAF volunteer.