Forsyth County Commissioner Patrick Bell has withdrawn a request for a record of all the emails of state Attorney General Olens when Olens was chairman of the Cobb County Commission from 2002 to 2010.
Bell confirmed this week he withdrew the request a few days after making it in August when Cobb officials told him it would take about six months to process and would cost Bell about $4,400.
Bell's request was in response to what he claimed was a misreading of the open records laws last summer when the attorney general's office ruled that four members of the Forsyth County Commission violated the laws when the commissioners met, two at a time, with Cumming city officials last February.
Cobb keeps a two-year tape archive of its emails, so messages beyond that period would be unavailable, Cobb spokesman Robert Quigley said. There are 270 archive tapes, requiring four hours to retrieve data from each tape, making it a 135-day job. A county staffer would then be tasked with combing through the messages to ensure they contained no privileged information, which would take between 40 and 60 hours for a single person.
Forsyth County, in comparison, keeps deleted emails 120 days due to storage capacity, according to a county spokeswoman.
Bell, who made the request as a citizen, not a commissioner, said he still disagrees with the ruling and how it's played out.
“It’s a great way keep people from getting public records, don’t you think, charging $4,400,” Bell said.
The commissioner, who has been outspoken in his disagreement with the ruling since it was issued in July, said he made the request for Olens' email records to “confirm that Olens complied with the laws he’s been opining about when he was a commissioner.”
Lauren Kane, communications director for the attorney general's office, said Monday that when Olens became aware in August that Bell “had a concern about our office” regarding the Forsyth ruling, Olens called Bell and left a message on his voice mail that "offered to discuss the issue with him."
According to Kane, Bell did not return Olens' phone call, and then submitted the open records request to Cobb County. Bell said this week he also tried to call Olens and left a message but Olens never called him back.
Forsyth County, over the past year, has become the focus of activists who have complained the county has not given sufficient notice of public meetings, in violation of state open records laws. Olens has made enforcing state open records and meetings laws one of his priorities since he took office in January.
The state is on track to field about 400 complaints about violations of open records and open meeting laws this year, Kane said. Senior Assistant Attorney General Stefan Ritter handled the Forsyth complaint, which was filed last April by former County Commission candidate Terence Sweeney, who also filed one with the county Board of Ethics.
The local ethics board dismissed the complaint in July, but two weeks later Ritter's letter arrived telling commissioners they had broken laws and asking them to take corrective action to see it doesn't happen again.
Forsyth County Attorney Ken Jarrard directed boards and other committees in the county not to meet in subgroups of less than a quorum for the purpose of avoiding calling a meeting.
"The attorney general takes a dim view of such meetings," Jarrard said Tuesday.
Sweeney, for his part, said he's not surprised Bell disagrees with the attorney general's ruling. "Patrick Bell obviously is in favor of secretive government," Sweeney said.
About the Author
