Our city still suffers from a plague. We have people who willfully flaunt the law, breaking it without worry because they know nothing will be done. They run rampant over any who oppose them. They are, in short, criminals. The fact that they’re the city government is irrelevant.
Once again, City Manager Al Lott has decided that the Georgia Open Records Act doesn’t apply to him after the Journal requested information about a person held in an interview room overnight. While eventually someone from the city responded about there being an investigation into what happened, that doesn’t excuse the flagrant violation of the law. After all, no one was asking for records of the investigation, just records about what happened.
As of right now, the Journal is still waiting.
Laws like the Open Records Act were put in place to bring transparency to government. A transparent government is a government free of corruption for the most part. Open records requests are at the heart of what brought former downtown manager Don Buie crashing down, as private citizens and media both made requests for records that showed the depth of corruption in place.
However, Lott doesn’t seem to share the idea that a transparent government is a good government. In fact, he’s gone as far as directing assistant city managers to not respond to “interrogatories” from local media, despite the Open Records Act. I guess it’s good that at least he follows his own advice. It’s just too bad that it’s illegal.
The problem is that Al Lott and those of his ilk set the course for where Albany stands. Currently, we can trust that the people of Albany will continue to wallow in despair while Lott keeps going forward like the captain of the Titanic. The problem is that we’re the ones who will be going down with the ship.
As a community, there are things we need. We need to work towards having a more educated workforce. We need to bring in good jobs that will more than cover the cost of living and let people buy things that aren’t just the basic human essentials. We need jobs that will do well enough that the thugs and hoodlum wannabe’s will figure that it’s probably easier and safer to get jobs than to take up crime as a vocation.
However, those all important jobs will not come to town. Why would they want to when it’s clear that the community’s so-called leadership is leading us straight down the drain? We really don’t have enough going for us anyways, and ineffective government is yet another chink in the armor.
It’s long past time for Al Lott to update his resume and find new employment somewhere else. We don’t need someone who looks at requests for information, in accordance with state law, as “interrogatories” that can be brushed aside like yesterday’s fallen leaves. Lott, and those like him, are a sad commentary on Albany. Now, we need to change that commentary.
Written by Tom Knighton. Read his blog at TomKnighton.com, as well as SWGAPolitics.com. A lifelong political junkie, Tom started out his adult life as a journalism major at Darton College before leaving school to serve his nation as a U.S. Navy Corpsman. Through the years, he has watched government from outside and inside. A former Reagan supporter, then later a Democrat, Tom now finds himself quite comfortable as a card carrying Libertarian and currently serves as Chairman of the Libertarian Party of Southwest Georgia.
