The May 14 regular meeting of the Fayette County Board of Commissioners was conducted with two members absent, meaning there was a quorum but just barely.
Chairman Charles Oddo announced at the start of the night that commissioners David Barlow and Pota Coston would be absent. County attorney Dennis Davenport informed Oddo before any agenda items were addressed that the board’s procedures require three affirmative votes to pass any measure, meaning anything done that evening would require a unanimous vote.
Nearly everything brought up at the meeting got exactly that, with one notable exception begin the continued discussion regarding how the meeting minutes are handled.
County staff was seeking direction from the board on how to handle the minutes after the previous meeting’s lengthy debate over whether minutes are verbatim and when certain items should be read into the record and added to the minutes later from the electronic version of that text.
Commissioner Steve Brown charged after the last meeting that the minutes are being censored and it is part of a continuing effort to stifle free speech in meetings.
This most recent discussion of the issue began with Oddo’s effort to table the issue since Barlow and Coston were absent, but he was unable to get a motion for that. Brown noted that several people were likely in attendance to speak about the issue and he didn’t want to see their efforts wasted. Commissioner Randy Ognio added that he felt the discussion should move forward right then.
Ognio moved to continue producing the minutes the same way as the past two years, and Brown seconded. Brown then reaffirmed his stance in favor of open government and free speech, saying that anything taking that process backward is not good.
Oddo said he does not oppose free speech or transparency, but the problem he sees is consistency and a neutral way to present what occurred. Transparency is not an issue because the meetings are preserved on video, he added.
“I didn’t run for public office to be neutral,” said Brown. “I ran on certain principles and was elected on those.”
He added that if he expresses an opinion in a meeting then the minutes should reflect that. Items are read into minutes in every governing body from the U.S. Congress all the way down to local government and it is a normal occurrence, he noted, adding that it is not inconsistent with anything Fayette County has done in the past. He said all of the board members’ opinions are important and they should be expressed in the official record of the meeting.
Martine Yancey of Peachtree City spoke during the audience’s comment time on the issue, and she said she is greatly disappointed at where the board is headed. She said there has been a series of “significant setbacks” in the past few months since Oddo became chairman and this would be one more of those.
Referring to when Oddo refused to allow Brown to make his presentation on the transportation referendum a few months ago and even gaveled him down when he spoke, Yancey called Oddo’s behavior “childish” and “a disgrace.”
On the issue at hand, Yancey pointed out that in 2013 Oddo read his position on the water system crisis directly into the minutes and Brown, then the chairman, allowed that to happen with no controversy at all. She called Oddo’s current stance hypocritical in light of that previous action.
Oddo did not comment on Yancey’s remarks, but immediately after she spoke Oddo’s wife Pily stood up in the audience and suggested that Yancey did not write her own speech. “Someone else wrote that for you,” she said before Oddo asked her to stop.
Pamela Kemp of Peachtree City suggested that more detailed written minutes could be advantageous in that a digital search of a specific text item would be much faster than sorting through hours of old video.
Linda Flowers of Peachtree City said having only minimal meeting minutes would be a disservice to the county in the case of a legal issue. She said having a hybrid situation (of verbatim and summarized minutes) has been working and saw no need to reinvent the wheel.
Denise Ognio encouraged the board to consult Robert’s Rules of Order and see how that document addresses meeting minutes, saying that the present system has worked but the board needs to work together to continue operating smoothly.
“I hate these comments about non-transparency. This board is a transparent group,” she said, adding that people need to come to the meetings if they want to know what is going on. “It is important to keep transparency open but also important to work together.”
Brown said Yancey had called and complained to him previously about this issue and he had met with her to show her where things had been read into the minutes in the past.
“I have a sincere problem with some things that have been going on,” he said. “You can make things more transparent or go the other way, and I never want to go the other way.”
At the conclusion of the discussion there was no resolution. The vote on Ognio’s motion was 2-1 with Oddo voting against, so it did not pass.
