Chairman Called Out on Transparency

Citizen Billy Hopkins wants to know why he can’t find the Fannin County Budget on the county website. During the Fannin County Republican meeting Monday night, Hopkins posed this very question to current Commission Chair Bill Simonds.

Responding, Simonds said it will be available and on the website the first of August.

“But what about the last three years?”

Hopkins persisted. Simonds responded simply that it should be there.

“I had to go through Ms. Davis (Rita Kirby) to get those,”

he protested,

“I had to have those emailed to me.”

Here, County Clerk Rita Kirby (formerly Davis) interjected that the county is

“working on it right now.”

It was unclear, though, if Kirby was referring to the budget or the process of revising the website to show the county’s budget for the last three years.

Currently, the only documents posted on the Fannin County Board of Commissioners’ (BOC) website are the Lodging Excise Tax Ordinance and the 2006 through 2008 Financial Summaries.

Hopkins’ comment, though, brings to mind recent revisions to the Open Records Act, HB 397, passed this session by Legislature. Signed by Governor Nathan Deal on April 17th, the legislation is a set of revisions to an existing law. The revisions include changes to the manner in which executive sessions for city, county and state entities are conducted. According to HB 397, these entities must now document minutes in executive sessions and designate an open records clerk, meaning one person who processes records requests. But, the legislation also states that these entities must post meeting agendas on their websites. In a talk to the Board of Education (BOE) about these changes, County Attorney Lynn Doss noted,

“Not all organizations were previously doing that,”

but stressed that the BOE was not one of them. The BOE has utilized the E-Board website which lists agendas, minutes, and other public information.

The BOC, however, does not post its meeting agendas on its website. Based on the new legislation, this will change.

But, Hopkins’ concern was about the availability of the budgets. He said he wanted to be able to access the current and previous years’ budgets on the website, explaining that according to Georgia’s Sunshine Law he should be able to get the information he wants. HB 397, though, does not require these entities to post budgets on their websites, only to make them available upon request.

“For the past three in a half years,”

he said,

“the budget is not there (on the website) for this county. For every other county in the state of Georgia it is.”

The BOC typically presents the proposed budget during its meeting before its approved by handing copies to those in attendance. Another copy is handed out during the meeting when it is scheduled to be approved. As Hopkins mentioned, the budget is not posted on the county website. This method limits the time citizens have to scrutinize the budget and formulate questions to ask the commissioners.

In a conversation with FYN, Hopkins said he did not know whether absence of the budgets on the website was an oversight or administrative error, but he said he feels it should be corrected.