Some Clayton County citizens are angry about what they say is county officials’ efforts to suppress public comments made during the county commission meeting.
County commissioners recently decided to stop airing the public comment segment of their board meeting on the county’s taxpayer-funded television station CCTV 23. The board meetings will continue to be broadcast on the television station. It will also no longer be lived-streamed during commission meeting. Public comments will still be held during commission meetings. The station is financed through the county’s general fund.
The citizens plan to hold a 2 p.m. press conference Wednesday at the county administration building, 112 Smith St in Jonesboro, where the commission meetings are held.
“This is suppression of citizens comments,” said Jeff Benoit, president of The Clayton Henry chapter of the National Action Network, a civil rights group. Benoit will be at the press conference.
“As a taxpayer, I feel like CCTV is paid for by the taxpayers,”said Rex resident Gayle Beddingfield, organizer of the press conference. “ You have a lot senior citizens and sometimes you have folks who are handicapped or working and can’t get to the meetings. So their outlet to be able to see the meetings is CCTV which helps them to keep up with what’s going on at meetings and in the community. We can still continue to speak but our comments and opinions are no longer viewable to the citizens of Clayton County. They’re suppressing the ability of the citizens of Clayton to see the opinions of other people who live here in the county.”
Beddingfield said she learned of the county’s decision to stop airing public comments on the TV station’s Facebook page.
Chairman Jeff Turner told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Wednesday that the decision to no longer broadcast public comments was made after the Feb. 7 commission meeting, which had a particularly raucous public comment segment. Commissioner Michael Edmondson broached the subject with the county’s chief operating officer Detrick Stanford who then polled the commissioners on whether to remove the public comment segment. Turner was the only one who opposed removing the public comments.
Efforts to reached Edmondson Wednesday were unsuccessful.
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