Sneaky People Gonna Sneak Around
Last week, I published a story about finding out in an Open Records Request that the developer for case RZ-22-006 (66 townhouses and 12 single-family detached houses next to Warrenton and across from Arbor Clos) had sent separate emails to the Mayor and all the members of the City Council requesting a "phone call, a Zoom call, or in-person meeting" to discuss the case privately before the official public meetings.
Only Council Member Marc Cohen responded to the request. Subsequent ORRs showed that no other elected officials responded (at least with their City email addresses) and that if Cohen discussed the meeting with the others, he didn't do it using City email addresses.
While I am surprised I found evidence of this exchange, I am not the least bit surprised that it happened. I am also not surprised who did it.
For four years now, I have written many times about the City of Sugar Hill government's need to do so many things away from the public eye. That's one of the biggest reasons why I started this project.
Marc Cohen has probably complained about my documentation and criticism of the City more than any other elected official here. I anticipate another grand show of fakely righteous anger over my latest article, so I'm going to go ahead and tackle it, at least for the first time. Depending on what he says, I may come back and say more.
I've consistently criticized elected officials' lack of serious public discussions. Council Member Marc Cohen consistently defends this practice. In private discussions that I figure were intended to get me to change my opinion, or to simply back off, he has told me that he and the other Council Members are friends. He has asked rhetorically if he and Taylor Anderson are walking around the neighborhood, should they not say anything about a case. (ME: No. Save it for the public meeting.) He has told me how the City Council did not get along when he first started. He seems to think the lack of public discussion is a mark of civility.
To me, it's clear that he just doesn't think that what he says or does for his job here is any of the public's business. Recently, he defended this behavior at the City's 2023 budget hearing after I criticized the Mayor and Council for not asking any questions about the budget. I have him on video defending it.
I just have to wonder why the execution of his publicly paid job, which is to look out for the public interest and determine the use of public funds, cannot be done almost completely in public as prescribed by state law, and recommended by his beloved Georgia Municipal Association?
In City meetings, he consistently rails about people talking about the City on social media, and encourages people to instead ask him individually about the City's business. That's just an obvious attempt to take conversations offline to engage people in private, untracked conversations. Every time he does this, I have to wonder: Why does his "truth" have to be told in the shadows?
A person who is proud of his work and knows he's doing the right thing would not feel such a powerful and consistent need to hide what he says and does. Whether you agree with my analysis or not, I back up what I say using records I obtain FROM THE GOVERNMENT, and I say it in front of God and everybody, many times. I'm pretty damn proud of what I do.
The emails I showed between him and developer Patrick Bell were obtained through a legal Open Records Request from the City servers. The City Council's record of approving almost every development that comes up is a verifiable fact. The impression I take from that is not unfounded, nor is it unique. It's just the way most people see it when they have the facts.
He likes to complain that things are taken out of context. But here's what I find interesting about that. He has access to all of the same records I do. Plus, he has an "advantage" that I do not: he knows EXACTLY what records are there without having to ask and dig for them the way I do. Anything subject to discovery by an Open Records Request could be voluntarily disclosed. If there were records that provided additional context and painted them in a better light, he and the City are free to share them in response to my requests, of which he is probably very aware from the time the City receives them.
No matter how much he complains, he's just not handling this well. The best defense against the criticism always would have been to simply open up, a course of action he consistently avoids. Is that shadiness, ego, or maybe just really poor problem-solving? And do ANY of those have a place in "public service”?