The small city of Cumming is facing a double-fisted fight with Attorney General Sam Olens over an alleged open-meetings violation last year.
The attorney general has threatened to level “six-figure” attorneys’ fees against the city for tossing a woman from a city council meeting last year after she refused to turn off her video camera.
The case has garnered national attention on news websites, not only because it is the first test of Georgia’s new open-meetings law, but because of the videotape of the incident and subsequent antics of longtime Mayor Ford Gravitt.
Oral arguments are scheduled for 9 a.m. Thursday in Forsyth County Superior Court.
City officials did not respond to requests for comment but have argued the incident occurred the same day, April 17, 2012, that a revised open-meetings law was signed, and there may have been confusion as to what it allowed. Gravitt also told reporters he was concerned the camera and tripod, operated by Roswell activist Nydia Tisdale, may have presented a safety issue in the council chambers.
In filings with the court, the city is arguing it has sovereign immunity in the case, a legal protection meaning it is immune from civil and criminal prosecution.
But Olens said audio and video recording had been allowed under the old law and are still allowed under the revised law. What has changed, he said, is that governments found in violation can now be assessed attorneys’ fees as well as fines, and those can mount into six figures.
“We had numerous emails and conversations with the city attorney seeking to do what we regularly do, which is to resolve these disputes,” Olens said. “They could have signed a document approved at a meeting and been done with it.”
Instead, what the mayor did next made Cumming the only government in Georgia facing an attorney general’s lawsuit.
At a city council meeting a month after the incident, Gravitt received a phone call while presiding. He told the audience it was the “attorney general wanting to know if we were having an illegal meeting.”
It wasn’t.
“That to me is not taking Georgia law seriously,” Olens said. “This is not a personal issue at all. It’s a legal issue, and I expect all local governments to comply with the Sunshine Laws.”
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