Role model for Georgia
Rome News-Tribune
Posted 01/04/07

GEORGIANS need only look south of their state border to get a lesson in sharp contrasts where the public’s right to know is concerned.

In this state, under Gov. Sonny Perdue and his see-no-evil cronies, the approach has been that “what the public doesn’t know can’t hurt the officeholders.” In fact, rumors abound that in the upcoming General Assembly session the Republican ruling class will try to make sure the public knows even less.

In Florida, conditions have recently been much the same under Gov. Jeb Bush, who’s much like his big brother, President George W. Bush, in that regard. An odd family trait until one remembers that daddy, former President George W.H. Bush, spend some years as head of the CIA where being secretive is the way of life. Guess they’re chips off the block.

Now, this has been turned on its head in Florida by the arrival of a new governor, Charlie Crist, also a Republican like all the others but also a former attorney general who has won honors for his fierce advocacy of open government. He’s a believer in “what the public doesn’t know causes it to distrust government.”

RIGHT OUT of the chute, Crist created a new, staffed Office of Open Government to both guide and train those in government to fill public-record requests speedily and do everything they’re supposed to. Enforcement against violators will be a snap as in Florida it is the governor who imposes penalties for violations.

Under Jeb Bush, despite Florida having what once was considered the nation’s model for open-records, open-meetings laws, the governor never disciplined local officials who violated the law (he can suspend them from office) which, needless to say, encourages thumb-your-nose attitudes toward both the public and the press.

According to Barbara Petersen, president of the First Amendment Foundation, “Charlie gets it. Some people embrace open government because of political expediency but Charlie truly believes in open government.”

Which is why, in 2005 as attorney general, Crist received the foundation’s Pete Weitzel/Friend of the First Amendment award for efforts to preserve public access to government records.

Of course, that didn’t stop Jeb Bush and the legislature from doing just the opposite.

SIMILARLY, in Georgia, Attorney General Thurbert Baker is known as a friend of open government but there’s only so much he can do when the governor and ruling party are often of a much-different mind.

Perdue would do well to look south of the border and consider creating a similar open-government policing office for Georgia — fully staffed and funded, not simply paid lip-service to as with the state ethics commission.

As Crist appears to most refreshingly know, government belongs to the people. It doesn’t belong to the politicians. But when possession is nine-tenths of the law and the key to the house is held by the bureaucrats, then the people don’t own their own house any longer.