A review of the audio recording from the Cobb Commission’s chaotic first meeting of the year on Jan. 10 found that the audio had not been compromised or tampered with, according to a report summarizing the probe.
Commissioner Keli Gambrill publicly requested a forensic audit of the meeting’s audio recording, which captured the conflict between Republican and Democratic commissioners over the legality of operating under the district map passed by the board’s Democratic majority. Last year, the county overruled a map passed by state legislators that removed Commissioner Jerica Richardson (D-District 2) from her district midway through her term.
Gambrill previously said that the board improperly went into executive session without the required vote during the Jan. 10 meeting. She maintained that position and called into question the veracity of the recording after county staff played back the audio, showing the board did vote in favor of going into the closed-door executive session.
The recording software used by the county clerk, which is also used by court reporters, is provided by a vendor whose technical services staff said it is “near impossible” to alter files in the encrypted system. The company’s president and CEO also reviewed the file and found “there was no system failure. The audio ... was not edited or compromised.”
“Due to the file type and encryption of the file recorded within the CapturePro software, if the file was altered in any way, I would not have been able to play back the audio from within the proprietary software,” Joy Rhodes said in her review sent to the county manager.
Gambrill said the report does not resolve her concerns with the meeting’s audio.
“I still don’t understand how, if I was listening to an original tape, the audibility of it changed,” Gambrill said.
She said that she did not mean to suggest any “malfeasance” by county staff or the board, and reiterated that she “just found it interesting” that the audio’s quality changed at different points in the meeting.
County spokesman Ross Cavitt said the reason the audibility changed was that the commissioners were talking away from their microphones.
“When they talked about voting to go into executive session, they are all standing up, kind of away from their chairs, and then come back to vote by the microphones,” Cavitt said. “Where are we going with this? What is she claiming?”
Gambrill said the forensic review of the audio did not satisfy her concerns, but she will not pursue further inquiry at this time.
The county’s partisan divide has heightened since its map went into effect at the start of the year, with the two Republicans on the board arguing the map is unconstitutional. The commission’s Democratic majority passed its own electoral map to keep Richardson within her district after GOP state lawmakers’ map drew her out, which would have ended her term.
While the county is currently operating under its own map, several state officials have decried it as unconstitutional, and the county is waiting for an expected legal challenge.
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