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WINTER 2005 NEWSLETTER
GEORGIA FOI ACCESS

GEORGIA FOI CONFIDENTIAL

'While we achieve reform, end access to all records about it'

 By Tom Bennett

Atlanta, Dec. 29, 2005 – The only FOI-killing bill to be pre-filed in the General Assembly as of this writing is House Bill 955 of this biennial session. It seeks to exempt "records of the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority relating to the development and implementation of the TransCard or SmartCard fare payment systems."

It is co-sponsored by the chair of the MARTA Oversight Committee, Rep. Jill Chambers of DeKalb and Rep. Harry Geisinger of Atlanta, who is one of the four members of Chambers’ committee.

Like the 2003 law ending access to records of individual farms’ water use, as metering began in an effort to end a legal battle among three states’ over water in seven rivers, this bill would draw a cocoon of secrecy around a critical procedure. It is one being carried out by public employees to clean up a mess, and all these persons are paid by you and me as taxpayers. This time the target is to seal up records of the legislature’s attempt to clean up MARTA.

Georgia has 155 sunshine-law exemptions scattered in 28 titles of the state code.

RECOGNITION FOR MANHEIMER

In 2005, Atlanta magazine and the Atlanta Business Chronicle named Hollie Manheimer one of the city of Atlanta’s top lawyers. The Emory law graduate became the first and only executive director of the Georgia First Amendment Foundation in 1996.

ACADEMIC AND SPEECH FREEDOM IN GEORGIA

A "small band of control-oriented fundamentalists have gained ascendancy" in the Georgia Baptist Convention. That is the view of Kirby Godsey, who is retiring as president of Mercer University. Now the GBC has announced that it will sever ties with Mercer. To keep it endowed and strong with vigorous academic and speech freedom in the historic campus at the heart of Georgia, the board of trustees has turned to David Hudson.

The Mercer and Harvard Law graduate is a member of an Augusta firm and represents the Georgia Press Association. He guides the responses sent to often beleaguered editors who turn to the firm for legal advice, especially about open meetings and records. Hudson also is a board member of the Georgia First Amendment Foundation.

"As trustees and friends of Mercer, we have great challenges and opportunities in our collective future," Hudson told the Mercer trustees Dec. 2 when he was installed as chairman.

"We will be supporting and encouraging a new president beginning in July. We will adapt as may be necessary to uphold the founding principles of our Baptist heritage, and we will continue to serve as a lighthouse of learning and freedom for people of faith."