Tuesday, March 4, 2008
News Atlanta won't show CL the money
Posted by Andisheh Nouraee on Tue, Mar 4, 2008 at 10:29 PM
Government operating budgets are, by law, public information.
Decatur posts its budget online. So does the state. Even the $3 zillion federal budget is available online.
The city of Atlanta's budget is not online. Worse yet, the city will not show it to me.
On Feb. 21, I called several people at the Department of Finance. No one with a copy of the budget picked up the phone or returned my calls.
Last week, I complained to Mayor Franklin's office, which prompted a phone call from Margaret Crenshaw, director of the office of administrative and legislative services in the finance department.
Crenshaw told me I'd have to pay a per-page fee, even for a digital copy of the budget. She also asked me to submit a written Open Records Request.
I sent such a request to Crenshaw on Feb. 26. She has not yet responded.
According to the Georgia Open Records Act, Crenshaw's office had three days to honor my request, or cite a provision under state law that would prevent her office producing the public documents I requested.
Whether it's the result of incompetence, malice, or a combination of both, the city's failure to share public information is obnoxious. The city is facing a budget crisis brought on, at least in part, by mismanagement. With severe budget cuts on the way, the public has an interest in knowing how the city is spending public money.
Is the city hiding the budget from everyone? Is it something I said? Are they waiting for someone from the Geek Squad to show up and teach them how to e-mail PDFs?
For now, all I can do is complain. Sadly, the Georgia Open Records Act is toothless. The fine for hiding public records is a measly $100.
Comments (5)
Showing 1-5 of 5
Find out how many pages there are. Then, make individual open records requests for each page. Then, when the City doesn't respond, they can be fined a measly $100 per page.
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I'm not really into conspricay theroies, but do you think the Mayor posting a commnent on one of the CL stories last week was part of an effort to hopefully soften up the coverage a little? Obviously it failed, I won't link to all the blog and articles CL has done since then about the mismanagement, but there were more than a few.
I don't believe they're hiding the budget from us specifically. I believe they never got around to posting it online and don't appreciate that public information should be made available to the public without hassle.
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