Herald: City Council and Commissioners Need PR Officers

Not Even "Spin Doctors" Would Help Give the Sanford Herald Editorial Board credit for disclosing its own interests when it proposed that the city and county should hire "public information officers." Being in and around government, I have noticed that sooner or later these employees hired to get information out to the public turn into "spin doctors' just as sure as a cocoon turns into a butterfly. And the idea of adding such employees has Lloyd Jennings lamenting at his word processor, but Steve Brewer is salivating. It would be a good thing if the public "really" knew what was going on, but they won't get it from a public information officer with the current attitude and culture of the city and county. Of course, if more readers of the e-Lee Dispatch would let their friends know about this blog, at least a larger part of the public would know more! Just click that little envelop and send them a copy of this post! Now being a little more serious, The Herald's opinion that the city and the county do a poor job of keeping the public informed is absolutely right. And the city is much worse than the county. In fact, the very last post discussed the vision and wisdom of the county's chief technology officer in creating a web presence designed to make it much easier to keep the public informed than the traditional web page. [Important Correction: There was a serious error in the last post that its proof reader would not have known to catch. It said "Draughn was allowed to resign with much less fanfare than the school superintendent." It should have said "than David Smitherman was allowed to resign with much less fanfare than the superintendent." Our apologies to Mr. Draughn] And posts have already been planned to provide some examples of departments that are using the system well to keep the public informed and those that are not. There will also be some interesting comparison's between the city and county, too. They will just reinforce the point that adding a pubic information officer will not help--only changing the boards will help. The ruling majorities have no true interest in involving the public as discussed in the recent post (click here to read) contrasting the city and county searches for managers with that being done now by the schools. Here are some items that a public information officer would never been allowed to release to the public: Lee Senior High Renovations Stripped From Resolution Official Capacity Used To Influence CCCC Search Commissioners Dilute Board of Education MeetingNo Jobs Guaranteed for $70,000 Incentive Many posts here are opinionated but many also disclose information that would otherwise go unnoticed or unknown. And does any one believe that a City Public Information Officer would have issued a press release giving the evidence that two Sanford police officers were called to the scene on the drug bust? The city's website is a static site that is three or four generations behind the times. The difference between the Chief of Police's web site and that of the Sheriff's Office make quite a contrast and will be analyzed in a future post. What the public needs to get more information out of the board of commissioners and the city council is to vote the incumbents out and elect individuals capable of leadership. After all, Commissioner Reives will not even allow the Finance Committee to be recorded and posted on the county site. Next time you see Jerry Lemmond ask him why he hasn't made a motion to open those meetings. Editor's Note: Coming later this week the one document the commissioners did not want you to see.