EDITORIAL: Coleman apparent board scapegoat

As Dougherty County School System Superintendent Ken Dyer and the Dougherty School Board have conducted damage control in the wake of this newspaper’s revelation of the Epiphany Educational consulting contract, one thing has become clear. Some members of the board are looking for a scapegoat.

And it appears that School Board Attorney Tommy Coleman has been targeted.

Board member James Bush publicly chided Coleman at the body’s last meeting, saying, “I just wish Mr. Coleman had called you (Dyer) before he made his remarks (to The Albany Herald). All of this didn’t have to happen. I think that if there had been a call from Mr. Coleman to Mr. Dyer, this would all be moot. Now we have had a week of this — letters, calls to the Squawkbox from unidentified people. To me, this has been a smear job.

“I have one question I want to ask you, Mr. Coleman: Can you work with Mr. Dyer?”

When Coleman answered that he could indeed work with Dyer, Bush added, “We hired Mr. Dyer to run our school system Monday through Friday and be on call on the weekends. I don’t go into schools and make remarks that are untrue. You work for us. Mr. Dyer works for us to run the school system. We pay you to steer, Mr. Dyer. We just can’t continue this. I remember years ago we had to hire an attorney because we didn’t trust you. This is something that needs to be said publicly.”

The cause for Bush’s outburst? A comment made by Coleman in response to an Open Records request by The Herald.

Asked about the legality of an unsigned contract that he said he had not yet seen, Coleman replied, “Whether it’s a city, a county or a school board, it doesn’t matter, administrators cannot obligate the elected board without some authority from the board. A better term than ‘illegal’ is ‘unenforceable.’ There has to be a meeting of the minds of at least two people. The superintendent, or the city manager, or the county manager cannot obligate government without that government giving some authority. In this case, (the contract) is so large the board would have to vote on it.”

Some school system officials have suggested that it was Coleman who informed the newspaper of the Epiphany proposal. Their reasoning? He dared respond to the Open Records request, as the law requires. In other words, Coleman told the truth.

While this newspaper doesn’t doubt Dyer’s assertion that he acted solely in what he considered the best interest of the school system in seeking the contract with Epiphany, it does question some officials’ attacks on Coleman. And while we in no way are obliged to — nor would we — reveal sources of information, we will unequivocally state for the record that Coleman was not an initial source of information in this matter.

This newspaper’s efforts to obtain information through the state’s so-called Sunshine Laws pretty much always requires contact with individuals’ or agencies’ legal representatives. Since some requested information may not be subject to the laws, it usually falls on attorneys to determine what information is released. If The Herald files an Open Records request with the city of Albany, its reporters contact City Attorney Nathan Davis. County Attorney Spencer Lee is contacted for matters that have to do with Dougherty County.

So it should come as no surprise to any board member or school system official that Open Records requests involving the taxpayer-funded system would go through Coleman.

Bush’s comments to Coleman at the open School Board meeting carried with them a thinly veiled threat. That seems a bit severe given the fact that all Coleman did is respond to a legitimate question for which the public is entitled to have an answer. Have we now reached a point where elected officials threaten employees for telling the truth?