VALDOSTA — Members of the Hospital Authority of Valdosta and Lowndes County, along with county government officials and staff, completed an open records and open meetings training session Tuesday.

The workshop was presented by Jim Zachary, The Valdosta Daily Times editor and regional editor for its parent company Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc.

Zachary has conducted open government symposiums across the state of Georgia, is the director of the Transparency Project of Georgia, a member of the board of directors of the Georgia First Amendment Foundation and holds the David E. Hudson Open Government Award, along with having received multiple awards from the Associated Press Media Editors and the Georgia Press Association for open government work.

The session focused on what Zachary called the implied sixth right of the First Amendment and on being a true public servant.

The implied right is a citizen’s right to have access to the government’s business and the documents associated with it or, as Zachary explained, the right for the public to have access to the public’s business.

Zachary said the government is simply the public, serving the public. So, the business government performs is the business of the public, and the public has the right to access government documents and meetings. 

Other topics included how to handle meeting minutes, public notices, agendas, executive session laws, how to better serve the public and what is considered a government record.

A government record is any document, email, thumb drive or text from a cell phone that is used to perform government business, Zachary said.

“If we text using a government phone, that’s a record,” he said to the room of elected and appointed officials. “If we text using our own phone doing government business, it’s a record.”

Zachary suggested government agencies that have a question about whether something is in compliance with open record or open meeting laws should ask the entity that enforces and interprets the law: The Attorney General’s office.

“Don’t ask your lawyer, the media or an open government advocate,” he said. “Ask the person who enforces the law.”

Throughout the presentation, Zachary reinforced that Georgia’s open record and open meeting laws are intended to be interpreted in the most narrow sense. To bring the point home, he ended the training by giving attendees a test to give themselves before taking any action.

The test is comprised of how a government official is framing a question about open record or open meetings legislation. If the question a government official is asking is “can we,” then the wrong question is being asked, Zachary said. The question should always be “should we?”

Zachary used the test to illustrate that, while there are loopholes in the laws, the purpose of government is to serve the public. And if the public would be better served to have information available or to have government act in an open meeting, then ethically the best course is to make the information readily available to those that it belongs to — the public.

About 23 government officials and staff were present for the training. 

Jason Smith is a reporter at The Valdosta Daily Times. He can be contacted at 229-244-3400 ext.1256.