The Sunday Paper has learned that the committee to find Atlanta’s next police chief has been appointed and met in secret last week. The identity of the members has also been kept secret. This violates Georgia’s Sunshine Laws. Committee members should be publicly disclosed before the committee meets.

The most important role of transparency in government is in allowing citizens to know whether someone’s own selfish interest is being put before the best interest of the public. No process within the City of Atlanta is more closely tied to the best interest of the public than the search for the city’s next chief of police.

Mayor Kasim Reed said during his campaign last year that a national search would be conducted to find the next chief, and the job of narrowing the field of candidates would fall to a committee made up of police and residents. Several times on the campaign trail, Reed indicated that the International Brotherhood of Police Officers would “be at the table”—meaning the police union would have a place on that committee. The IBPO would be there, he said, to ensure that rank-and-file officers have some say-so in the process. He also frequently alluded to neighborhood and citizens’ groups having slots on the committee.

Soon after his election, Reed designated Lisa Borders, who ran against him for mayor and snared a measly 14 percent of the vote in the general election, to co-chair the transition team that oversees not only the police chief search but the efforts of all the search committees charged with helping to fill the city’s high-profile vacancies. Her co-chair is attorney Lawrence Ashe, the same man who directed the team that brought Atlanta its former police chief, Richard Pennington.

A couple of weeks ago, some citizens contacted me with concerns that the police chief search committee had been secretly appointed and that members of the committee had been required to sign a confidentiality agreement. Having consulted with attorneys, I am confident that the committee with its confidentiality agreement is not in compliance with Georgia’s Sunshine Laws. 

It is of the utmost importance that the citizens of Atlanta know who is serving on the committee so they will know if a particular committee member is being wined and dined—bought, or influenced in any way, by a candidate for the police chief’s job. It is equally important that members of the committee feel free to go public if they believe deliberations are being unduly swayed by factors other than the citizens' best interest.

A couple of weeks ago, I called Ashe and left a voicemail asking whether the committee members had been appointed and if confidentiality agreements had been required of them. Borders returned my call. She denied that was the case, acknowledging that a search firm had been chosen to find the initial pool of candidates, adding, “It is the same process that was used under Mayor Franklin.”

Then she demanded to know who had told me about the appointments. I laughed and said it must have been someone who thought they should be on the committee. And it was: Atlanta’s citizens and police should have a place on that committee. We ended the call.

Borders’ interest in finding out who had talked to me says a lot: If it’s not true, then why would it matter? No one cares if people babble about a nonexistent committee. But it might matter if, in fact, someone had been required to sign a confidentiality agreement. But, I learned on Feb. 5 that the committee not only exists, it has met.

Wrapping the committee in secrecy is a slap in the face to the 42,549 voters who supported Reed based on his call for transparency and community engagement in determining who our next police chief will be. Appointing Borders to oversee the mayor’s transition team is also an affront to democratic principles. Borders was soundly rejected by 86 percent of the voters, and yet she is in charge of shaping Reed’s administration. That is really what appointing search committees to find candidates for high-profile positions is—that’s how an administration is put together. Atlanta voters stated clearly at the polls that they did not want Borders in charge, and yet she is. That is especially insulting to the 41,835 Atlantans who cast their votes for first runner-up Mary Norwood. 

On Feb. 2, The Sunday Paper submitted an open records request to the City of Atlanta and Borders under the Georgia Open Records Act for any memos, e-mails, recordings, faxes, or other documents in either electronic or hard-copy form related to the appointment of any and all members of the police chief search committee.

Borders should be quite familiar with the role of transparency in government. After all, she was investigated for a transparency issue by the notoriously weak state ethics commission. She was accused of lobbying the legislature in 2007on behalf of her then-employer, developer Cousins Properties, without having registered as a lobbyist. State law requires lobbyists to register and wear an ID badge so the public can know which interests are schmoozing which legislators.

Borders claimed she didn’t have to register because she was not there as an employee of Cousins. Instead, she said she was there in her capacity as Atlanta City Council president. Yet the City of Atlanta had no interest in the legislation under consideration, a bill backed by a coalition of developers.

Last year, when Reed was running for mayor, his supporters distributed a Sunday Paper column about the Borders ethics investigation (“Lisa Borders’ Ethics Problem,” Sept. 20, 2009).

The ethics commission dismissed the claim against Borders, just as the understaffed and underfunded commission has dismissed so many claims before and since. But it is to be hoped that Borders took to heart the lesson of the importance of transparency in government, particularly since she and Ashe have been entrusted with overseeing the committee that will help find Atlanta’s next police chief. SP