The publisher of an online news site who, despite no formal legal training, won a Georgia Supreme Court decision forcing the Atlanta City Council to stop holding unrecorded votes has dismissed his claims, declaring total victory and pocketing a total of $1,000 to cover his expenses.

Matthew Cardinale, the 31-year-old webmaster and main reporter for the Atlanta Progressive News website, was beaming last week as he entered the Fulton County Courthouse to file his notice of dismissal.

In 2010, Cardinale filed suit against the city arguing that members of the City Council violated the state Open Meetings Act by failing to record the names and votes of members during a retreat in 2010.

Arguing his own case, Cardinale failed to persuade a Fulton County judge and the Georgia Court of Appeals that the law mandated that such votes be recorded, but in February 2012 a narrowly divided Georgia Supreme Court agreed with Cardinale, earning praise from state Attorney General Sam Olens and other open government advocates.

In 2012, Cardinale filed another suit claiming that the City Council routinely violated the law by closing committee briefings to the public. Earlier this year, the council’s seven committee chairs voluntarily agreed to open all briefings to the public.

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A federal judge in Albany has affirmed the constitutional principle that Georgia courts should be open to the public in a suit
challenging courtroom closures in the Cordele Judicial Circuit.

In a 27-page order, U.S. District Judge Louis Sands refused to dismiss a civil rights case against the circuit’s three judges – John Pridgen, Bobby Chasteen, and T. Christopher Hughes – brought by the Southern Center for Human Rights on behalf of a number of people who said they were barred from attending court hearings in the Ben Hill and Crisp County Law Enforcement Center courtrooms.

The suit claimed that the judges and county sheriffs, who were also named as defendants, systemically barred the public from attending court unless they were related to the defendants who appeared and those defendants were entering guilty pleas.

The judge rejected as “unpersuasive” the arguments put forth by the state attorney general, who is defending the judges. State lawyers argued that the judges were not closing the courts when they restricted access for reasons of space or security. Sands also rejected an argument that the public had no constitutional right to attend arraignments.

“Prohibiting the majority of the public from these proceedings often bars them from observing the entire justice system,” Sands wrote. “To deprive the public [of] the right to attend proceedings during which that process occurs could undermine the public’s faith in the modern criminal justice system.”

Southern Center Senior Counsel Gerald Weber called Sands’ ruling “a “public welcome’ sign for Georgia courtrooms that have presented citizens with untold hoops and hurdles to public access.”

Lauren Kane, a spokeswoman for Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens, said the office declined to comment because the matter was still ongoing.

The Daily Report will have a full story on its website late this afternoon.

A Georgia woman who was stopped from video recording a Cumming City Council meeting in April filed a civil rights suit in federal court on Wednesday against the city, its mayor and police officials.

Nydia Tisdale’s suit claims Cumming Mayor Ford Gravitt ordered Police Chief Casey Tatum to remove her camera from the meeting and ignored her assertion of her rights. It further states the chief and deputy chief Walter “Clyde” Cook forcibly removed her from the meeting, after which she  was allowed to return but was again ordered to cease recording.

The suit claims violations of the state’s Open Meetings Act, which expressly permits audio and video recording by the public of government meetings, and charges city officials with false imprisonment, battery and harassment in violation of her First, Fourth and 14^th Amendment Rights. Tisdale is seeking damages as well as injunctive relief.

“The actions of defendants caused Tisdale physical pain, emotional distress and humiliation as she was physically removed from a public meeting for exercising her constitutional and statutory rights to file a public meeting,” the complaint states. “She is filing this lawsuit so that she can obtain court orders allowing her to film upcoming meetings in the next month.”

Tisdale’s attorney Gerald Weber said it is not common for members of the public who feel their access to government has been illegally restricted to file suit in federal court.

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In a 4-3 decision by the Georgia Supreme Court, Atlanta blogger Matthew Cardinale, who is not a lawyer, won a case before the Georgia Supreme Court challenging the Atlanta City Council’s vote-recording process.

We will have more on the court’s decision later in the day. You can watch the oral arguments by Cardinale and the city’s lawyer  here (or click the picture).

Testifying in a hearing in which a failed airport concession vendor is seeking more information about the bidding procedures for contract awards worth more than $3 billion, Deputy Atlanta City Attorney Peter J. Andrews estimated that the city will spend at least $800,000 responding to Open Record Act requests filed by disappointed bidders.

During testimony Tuesday afternoon in Fulton County Superior Court, attorneys for Atlanta said that in the wake of last month’s contentious round of contract awards, the city began researching, vetting and printing hundreds of thousands of documents and put together a crew of more than 60 people, including 45 city and private lawyers , to compile and vet the materials.

Andrews said the city had been billed $300,000 by Global Legal Discovery to print and preserve in e-format hundreds of thousands of documents, and that he expected the city to be billed “in excess of $500,000 from private attorneys” hired to handle the document requests so far.

“I don’t want to be around when we get that one,” said Andrews.

The hearing was called by one of the unsuccessful bidders, international airport concessionaire SSP America Inc., to address the company’s assertions that the city had failed to completely respond to a judge’s order earlier this month to provide Open Records Act materials it needs to prepare an appeal of the denial of its bid.

SSP’s attorney, Ashe Rafuse & Hill partner Kenneth B. Hodges III, asked Judge T. Jackson Bedford Jr. to hold the city in contempt and rule that it was in violation of the ORA. But Greenberg Traurig partner Mark G.  Trigg – an outside attorney the city hired Monday– said that the list of documents and materials Hodges was seeking had largely been provided, did not exist, or were protected by attorney client privilege.

Bedford called a halt in the proceedings late Tuesday afternoon when a court staffer had a private emergency.

Gov. Nathan Deal told publishers at a meeting this morning at the Capitol that Georgia’s open records law is undermining the state’s efforts to lure the “biggest new business opportunity since KIA.”

“We are having our biggest competitor file open record requests to find out what Georgia’s offer will be. They do not have in their state an equivalent law in place that allows us to find out what their offers are. That’s not a very good playing field,” Deal said.

Deal said the state Department of Economic Development is meeting with representatives of the Georgia Press Association to “see if there is a middle ground” in disclosure of economic development information.

He suggested it might be appropriate to place restraints on disclosure on all or part of such information until a deal is “sealed.” At that point, all information would be available for release, he said.

The governor emphasized that his administration is working with the Georgia Press Association to find a “reasonable compromise.”

“But when your competitors know what cards you’re holding and you don’t know what cards they’re holding, it’s a one-sided game.”

Attorney General Same Olens has proposed a broad re-write of the state’s open government laws, and his proposals are contained in HB 397, sponsored by Rep. Jay Powell. Deal said he didn’t know if Powell’s bill would address his concerns but added that “I know this is an area of interest for him.”