When the Atlanta City Council last June passed a controversial multimillion-dollar funding package for Atlanta’s public safety training center, they made a special request of the Police Foundation — that two members of the Council be able to sit on the Foundation’s Board of Trustees.
That request, a resolution that was approved in a 13-1 vote, followed another, earlier measure also intended to improve public transparency about the project.
In May, the Council voted unanimously to request that the Foundation, the powerful nonprofit organization in charge of the project, provide in-person, quarterly updates on the project to City Council.
More than nine months later, neither transparency step has been satisfied and the only city update on the project came in January from the mayor’s office that revealed the project costs have increased by $19 million.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reached out to Atlanta City Council and the Atlanta Police Foundation, who both expressed support for the transparency measures.
With both on board, it is unclear why neither has taken place. The mayor’s office, which has taken the lead on public communication, said that it’s the responsibility of council to request any update.
Still, it seems there may soon be some movement on both measures.
Council member Andrea Boone is the recently appointed chair of the Public Safety and Legal Administration committee, which would receive briefings from the foundation under the measures. She told the AJC that she will soon be reaching out to her fellow members for buy-in.
“I think that is something that we’re going to have to do,” she said. “I’m going to speak with members and see in what form they want to do it — do they want it to just be a committee report? Or should we have it for the public?”
“I think there are more (council members) interested in it than just the six or seven on committee,” Boone said.
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Foundation officials also told the AJC in a statement that the organization supports both regular briefings and council members sitting on its board.
Transparency around the project has been a long-standing concern. At the last update on the facility given to city council members in January, the city’s deputy chief operating officer, LaChandra Burks, said that construction is more than 75% complete.
But other than reporting on the progression of construction and updates on the price tag — which officials say are mainly due to increased security — the public has little insight into how the 85-acre facility is coming together in unincorporated DeKalb County.
Elected officials aren’t the only ones calling for more transparency.
A lawsuit recently filed by the University of Georgia’s First Amendment Clinic alleges that the Atlanta Police Foundation has ignored records requests made under the Georgia Open Records Act by media and data researchers.
First Amendment experts say Georgia’s open records law applies to any foundation, organization or agency working on behalf of a municipality, or if more than a third of their funding comes from government sources.
Richard T. Griffiths, president emeritus for the Georgia First Amendment Foundation, called the legal challenge against the police foundation a “clean case.”
“Anytime you have an entity, like this foundation, that is performing the work of government — whether you’re for or against the training center — you want to know that it’s being managed correctly, and well,” Griffiths said.
“And for that reason, alone, those records should be subject to the open records, as the law requires,” he said.
Credit: Jenn Finch
Credit: Jenn Finch
Council, APF on board with public briefings
During a presentation from the mayor’s office in January, Council member Liliana Bakhtiari — who authored the legislation requesting the briefings — questioned the administration about regular updates from the foundation.
“There are things that they need to be asked on the record to be accountable to,” Bakhtiari said during a finance committee meeting on Jan. 17. “Not in the privacy of closed doors or off the record.”
The east Atlanta representative said that she and some of her colleagues had previously inquired about the regular police foundation reports on the project that sits in the South River Forest.
The years-long project that officially began in 2021 will be a training hub for the city’s police officers, firefighters and medical first responders.
“There won’t be wrestling mats rolled out here and a fight of some kind — that’s not my intention in any way shape or form,” Bakhtiari said, hinting at the tension surrounding the facility. “The intention is to be able to question them on the record for transparency around this project.”
The requested in-person reports are supposed to include the project’s construction status, compliance with any legislated requests, updates on challenges or delays to the project and both projected and anticipated funding overages.
Credit: Jenn Finch
Credit: Jenn Finch
Burks, the city’s deputy COO, said in January that her report to the Finance Executive Committee should satisfy requested public appearances by the foundation and address any unanswered questions.
In a statement to the AJC, Rob Baskin, spokesperson for the foundation, said that the mayor’s office has been leading any updates to council on the project, but police foundation staff are willing to join in on any reports going forward.
“At the behest of the City of Atlanta, City officials have been delivering periodic updates to City Council,” Baskin said. “We are happy to join them in that effort going forward. However, the City has always had up-to-date information on the project, including construction status.”
The foundation also said it has no issue with integrating council members onto its Board of Trustees.
“APF’s Board of Trustees has agreed to accept two City Council members to serve on its Board. We’re waiting for Council to name their designees,” Baskin said.
Boone, who would be one of those members on the foundation’s board, said she also would like to see that through.
When asked if the mayor’s office supports public briefings from the police foundation, a spokesperson for the city said that no other requests from council for briefings have been made.
But the mayor’s office did not comment on whether or not it supported the idea of regular presentations from the organization.
Credit: Riley Bunch
Credit: Riley Bunch
Lawsuit wants project records released
The University of Georgia School of Law’s First Amendment Clinic filed its lawsuit on behalf of nonprofit journalism outlet the Atlanta Community Press Collective and Chicago-based research group Lucy Parsons Labs seeking public records from the Atlanta Police Foundation.
The suit says the Foundation has failed to respond to requests made last year for documents related to the project.
The lawsuit — filed in the Fulton County Superior Court— argues that since the police foundation is overseeing the project for the city of Atlanta that is partially funded by taxpayers, any documents related to the facility in the foundation’s custody are subject to records requests.
“APF’s failure to release ORA-covered records in its possession related to the Training Center deprives the public of vital information about how taxpayer dollars are being spent on the project,” the complaint says.
The Atlanta Police Foundation declined to comment on the pending litigation.
According to the filing, the Atlanta Community Press Collective submitted numerous records requests to the foundation that ranged from construction budget details to meeting minutes from their regular board meetings.
Lucy Parsons Labs also submitted a plethora of requests that ranged from documents related to environmental testing and business contracts to emails between APF President and CEO Dave Wilkinson and Robin Loudermilk, chairman of the organization’s executive committee.
The lawsuit says that the police foundation failed to even respond to requests and seeks the release of requested documents and financial penalties for each instance deemed a violation of the Open Records Act.
The lawsuit echoes one by the AJC and Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker against Central Atlanta Progress and the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce for their refusal in 2005 and 2006 to release records relating to the city’s efforts to lure the NASCAR Hall of Fame and the Super Bowl to Atlanta.
The city’s efforts were led by the civic organizations and involved the possible spending of millions of dollars of public money. The Georgia Court of Appeals ruled in 2006 that both organizations were acting on the city’s behalf and their records had to be made public.
The AJC has made multiple requests to the Atlanta Police Department and mayor’s office for access to the facility, but has been consistently denied. The city hosted one media tour of the project in DeKalb County last May.
Videos posted periodically on the Atlanta Police Department’s social media pages gives the public a small glimpse at its progress. In a video posted last week, the center’s “academic building” is already in construction.
“We are on schedule to cut the ribbon on the training center December of this year,” Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum says in the video.
Staff writer Reed Williams contributed to this report.
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