City Struggles with Transparency

In its first official meeting the Dunwoody City Council faced two issues related to transparency.

First was the selection of a legal organ. There is a universal desire to reward Dick Williams for his unwavering support of cityhood, but the Crier is a weekly and that doesn't suit the council's desires for advance public notice. (You decide why.) It was proposed that there be two : the AJC, allowing for as short a notice as legally allowed, and the Crier for the aforementioned reasons. Everyone happy? Not so fast. A strong suggestion was made to get a city website in place ASAP. It was a well-reasoned, informative suggestion and did not meet with the resistance one might have expected. Let's all hope it happens.

Surprisingly (or maybe not so), this meeting saw the first open records request. What is certainly surprising is the respondent: John Heneghan! Perhaps it was an ethical contact high, but Councilman Heneghan had to discuss the matter before determining the document under question was indeed a public record. The document? It starts like this:

MEMORANDUM

TO: Mayor and Council, City of Dunwoody
FR: Dan Weber
DATE: Tuesday, September 30, 2008

RE: Hybrid Budget

To assist in your decision making process, ...

How could anyone think that a memorandum addressed to the Mayor and Council regarding the most significant issue facing this city, with the stated intent of influencing their decision, could be seen as "a private conversation between two individuals"??!

Folks, it isn't that hard, at least not if you really believe in transparency. There are only two rules:

1. If the council is discussing employee pay, promotion, discipline, or dismissal, it is private as is other employee personal information.
2. Everything else belongs to the public and should be provided for public review, preferably on the internet---it is the 21st century after all.
   

The latter should include all communications, written, email, telephone and oral. Yes, oral. If lobbyists knew that officials were publishing a meeting report to those they serve (remember us? the citizens? the voters?) politics might be a better thing. All memos, all source material under review, all RFPs and responding proposals, and all email correspondence should be promptly and in some cases automatically, posted. It should also include all phone records, calls received and placed, parties on the call, duration, purpose of the call, and topics of conversation.

The technology is there to make this happen. Do it.

TOD