When Roswell Withholds Information, its Citizens Lose

The city of Roswell has prided itself on conducting its governmental affairs in an open environment, providing its citizens with easily attainable public access to meetings and documents. It’s been a staple of the process of government during Mayor Jere Wood’s regime.

Concerning the staff report on the Charlie Brown project last week, this environment of “openness” took a back seat to politics.

Here is a quick recap of events: The staff report was six months in the making. Considerable city staff time had been invested, and it was continually cited as the benchmark of the city’s take on the proposal. With the report’s completion imminent, Mayor Wood called a town hall meeting in lieu of a normal work session (also open to the public) to let Roswell citizens hear the report presentation to make comments and ask questions regarding the findings. Fair enough.

The town hall meeting was scheduled for Thursday, July 19th.

The staff completed the report and Roswell City Administrator Kay Love released it to Mayor Wood sometime on Monday, July 16, a full three days before the public meeting. At the very moment this report was given to Mayor Wood it became a public document and should have been released to the citizenry. After all, Roswell residents paid for it (with their tax dollars). This is clearly covered under Georgia’s Open Meetings Act, found at O.C.G.A. § 50-14-1, which in part refers to, "closed meetings which engender in the people a distrust of its officials who are clothed with the power to act in their name." McLarty v. Board of Regents, 231 Ga. 22, 23 (1973).

The report was then given to City Council sometime late Monday afternoon. So in essence, our local government officials had it, but the people who they represent didn’t.

Wood and Love decided to willingly withhold it from the very people they serve for four days, not planning to release it to the public in hard or electronic copy form until Friday morning, July 20 – the day after the town hall meeting.

Essentially, those who wanted to attend the meeting and prepare for it in order to potentially ask questions were denied this right.

So why the cloak and dagger secrecy? After all, it was only the longest awaited analysis of the biggest land development proposal in the history of the city, right?

Call me cynical, but I have learned the hard way after a media career spanning nearly three decades that when government officials don’t immediately release information to the public, something clandestine is usually afoot. History has clearly shown that decisions like these are most often politically motivated.  

Such may have been the case last week inside Roswell city government. Was there some kind of spin going on? Was it given to preferred recipients to better prepare? Who knows? Who cares? The simple fact of the matter is that a decision like this raises questions in the public’s mind.

The Beacon was made aware the report was released on Monday by credible sources inside Roswell city government. As a free press the Beacon is an ardent defender of First Amendment rights, the Open Meetings Act and the Freedom of Information Act. Period.

I called Kay Love early Tuesday morning, July 17, and requested a copy under the “Open Meetings Act” cited above. Ms. Love refused, explaining that it was a first draft, that certain pages might be changed or updated, and that elected officials should get a chance to study it before the people saw it. She was concerned that “they [Council members] would be deluged with calls.” Huh?

The bottom line is the city’s top administrator chose the politicians over the public. The reasons that Love and Wood gave were that people might have too many questions and that the report might change before the meeting. This is a dangerous precedent with an ominous tone.

At the town hall meeting itself, Council members who had seen the report in advance asked very incisive questions that clarified some significant issues in the report.

After the Council’s questions were completed, the mayor asked the 400 members of the public who were in attendance if they had any questions. Not one person raised their hand.

The mayor termed that, “amazing.”

Why was that amazing? The public didn’t have a chance to read the report, so how would they know what to ask?

On Tuesday late morning the Beacon received a hard copy of the document from a reliable Roswell city government official. From the moment the report was identified and verified for authenticity the Beacon did not hesitate to make it public. What it said or didn’t say is moot and irrelevant.  Our job is to make it available to the public and let the people decide. Once the city determined to withhold it, they in fact politicized it.

The Beacon posted the report on its internet site, beaconcast.com, on Tuesday afternoon and we emailed its availability to everyone on our list. The mayor subsequently released an email of his own imploring certain groups with email lists not to publish our “alert.”

Is this a case of much ado about nothing? What’s the big deal?  In this case, maybe nothing. What about the next time, or the time after that?

"A government by secrecy benefits no one. It injures the people it seeks to serve; it damages its own integrity and operation. It breeds distrust, dampens the fervor of its citizens and mocks their loyalty." -- 110 Congressional Record 17, 087 (1964) (Statement of Senator Long, D-LA.)

The Beacon has a covenant with you, our readers, which we take very seriously. We may not always get it right, but you have a right to know, whatever it is. If we get it, you will have it. If we uncover it, you will know about it.  If we find it, you will read it.

This is a sacred covenant that I promise to always honor and protect.