Cagle's view on secrecy bill is encouraging
Editorial, Athens Banner-Herald
Posted 11-27-06

If Georgia Lt. Gov.-elect Casey Cagle wanted to position himself for a run at the governor's office four years from now, he could hardly have chosen a better way to signal that intent than the laudable position he's taken on House Bill 218.

Here's the background: House Bill 218 would exempt a number of the records kept by economic development agencies, such as the economic development authorities and foundations found in many communities around the state, from disclosure under terms of the state's open records law. The bill would allow those agencies to keep secret the names of any businesses or individuals with whom they might be corresponding - or from whom they might be getting inquiries - regarding economic development projects. It also would allow those agencies to keep records of any negotiations with business or industrial prospects out of public view.

In practical terms, the bill could provide cover from public scrutiny for developers considering all sorts of troublesome land uses - things like private landfills, railroad switching yards, or noise- and traffic-generating manufacturing plants, sports facilities and the like. It also could provide cover for negotiation of tax exemptions and massive taxpayer-funded infrastructure improvement projects an industrial or business prospect might want as a condition of locating in a given community.

Proponents of the bill argue that it wouldn't apply to clearly public matters like rezoning or environmental permitting. But, if negotiations can proceed in secret up until the point a rezoning hearing or an environmental permitting hearing is necessary, the public would be left with little or no time to effectively block plans for a problematic land use in their community.

Mercifully, the bill died in the 2005 state legislative session. It won approval in the House, but was stalled in the state Senate and never even brought up for a vote, after a massive outcry from the media and the public. Lawmakers opted to keep the bill on the shelf for this year's legislative session, but Rep. Glenn Richardson, R-Hiram, speaker of the House, has indicated it will be back up for consideration in the legislative session convening in January.

Because the bill never came up for a vote in the Senate, there's no record of whether Cagle, a Republican senator from Hall County before being elected lieutenant governor, would have supported it in 2005. But in recent statements, Cagle has indicated a clear distaste for the bill, telling the Marietta Daily Journal before this year's election that he would actively work against it. "I'm not making a half-hearted commitment against it," he told that newspaper.

That's particularly significant because, as lieutenant governor, Cagle presides over the Senate. If he is able to overcome any partisan pressure to get the bill through that body, remembering that his first allegiance ought to be to the people of this state, Cagle will go a long way toward showing himself as the kind of elected official that Georgians might be willing to put in the governor's office.