Legislature Considers Restructuring
Fulton County Commission
Posted March 19, 2007; additional hyperlink inserted March 21, 2007
A bill making its way through the current session of the Georgia Legislature
could, if passed, eventually reduce the number of Fulton County
commissioners and how they are elected.
The legislation, which calls for a study committee to recommend specific
changes later, is similar to the study committee created by the county
commissioners themselves several years ago. The commissioners, however,
ignored its committee's recommendations.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution recently
reported on the current status of the reform legislation.
This development reminds us of how the failure of the County Commissioners
a few years ago to acknowledge and eliminate race discrimination in the county's
library system eventually led - after an expensive federal court case - to
the Legislature's pulling the plug on how the library was governed. True,
the effort to pass reform legislation took four years to bear fruit, as
local legislators were initially successful in blocking a vote on the
proposed legislation. Given the growing disgust with the county government's continuing
incompetence - currently highlighted by (among other things) the county's
foot-dragging in complying with a federal judge's orders involving the
county's jail - it may not take the Legislature four years to lower the boom on the
county commission itself.
We hope not. At this point, any structural change in the county commission
is likely to have positive consequences for the governance of Fulton County,
which will ultimately be A Good Thing for the county's libraries. Stay
tuned.
Once Again, Garnes Trying to Win a Seat on ALA Council
Posted March 16, 2007
Yesterday, members of the American Library Association were invited to
begin casting their ballots for ALA's next set of officers and its governing body,
the ALA Council. Among the candidates for ALA's Councilors-at-Large is former
AFPL deputy director Carolyn Garnes.
Having served one three-year term on ALA's Council beginning in 2002, this
is Garnes' third attempt to land a second term. She failed to win a Councilor-at-Large
seat in 2005,
and failed again in 2006.
You can read Garnes's listing of her qualifications and her "statement of
professional concerns" here (scroll to page 15).
You can read everything AFPLWATCH has posted about Carolyn Garnes here.
What makes this year's Council elections particularly interesting for
current and former AFPL staff is the fact that one of the individuals
Garnes is competing with for a Council seat is AFPL director John Szabo.
Because there are numerous vacant Councilor-at-Large seats and the vacant
seats go to the top vote-getters, one possible outcome of the election
would be that both Szabo and Garnes could end up serving on the Council
together.
ALA members have until April 24th to cast their ballots, and the individuals
elected will be announced May 1st.
Once Again, County's IT Dept. Screws Up Big Time!
Posted March 12, 2007
The hundreds of Fulton County citizens - mostly school kids and their
parents or caregivers, and people working on their job resumes -
who were huddled around the doors of the county's eight public libraries
open yesterday, waiting for those libraries to open at 2 P.M., got a rude
surprise when they finally got inside those libraries. They were quickly
informed that they couldn't use those libraries' computers until they
waited 45 minutes.
And why couldn't library users log onto those dozens of county computers
immediately at Ocee, Sandy Springs, Roswell, Central, Auburn Avenue, East Point, South
Fulton, and Southwest?
Because the county's Information Technology Department had neglected to
re-set the computers' clocks to account for Daylight Savings Time, which - hello -
had started at 2 A.M. Sunday morning. Instead, the software that controls
access to public computers - still operating on Standard Time - forced library patrons to wait until
almost an hour after the libraries opened.
Library users who didn't leave immediately (and angrily) upon hearing the incredible
news that they'd need to wait almost an hour before beginning their work on
library computers milled around until they could use them, grumbling at the
incompetent library workers who were helpless to do anything about the
problem.
And why were library workers at the eight libraries open on Sunday
helpless to do anything about the problem? Because IT refuses to allow
library staff direct access to the software loaded onto the libary system's
computers.
Because IT staff are notoriously unavailable on evenings and weekends to
fix any county-wide IT problems occurring during those periods, hundreds of
people in Fulton County wasted thousands of hours waiting around because
of Fulton County IT was, once again, asleep at the wheel.
Surely Mr. Robert Taylor, who heads that county government department, or
one of his minions, knew far in advance that Daylight Savings Time would
begin earlier than usual this year? And therefore had plenty of
advance warning to plan for that fact's consequences for the library system's
computers? Or is Taylor so busy sending out his weekly "Re-boot Your
Computers!" email messages every Thursday that he got distracted and forgot?
Perhaps Mr. Taylor was out of town, accepting yet another award for service
excellence that he's so fond of telling us about?
Whatever happened - um, whatever the reasons for what didn't happen - Mr. Robert Taylor & Co.
were, as usual, not around this past Sunday to offer the annoyed public
their excuses for neglecting to deal with the time change before the
libraries opened. As usual, that job fell instead on the hapless library
system employees who had somehow heard about Daylight Savings Time,
and had trundled into work on Sunday as assigned.
Such a pleasant part of one's library chores, being forced so often to
offer lame excuses to the library's users of why the library system has,
once again, failed to deliver the service expected of it by county citizens.
Thanks a lot, Mr. Taylor. The library system's Sunday workers (and users)
have gotten used to contending with the once-a-month "routine maintenance"
computer shutdowns that - incredibly - IT continues to scheduled for all
county computers on Sundays when the county's libraries are open. Those
scheduled shutdowns sometime lead to zero public access to library computers
in those libraries on those Sundays. But with the Daylight Savings Time
issue - well, most library workers scheduled to work on Sunday, March 11th
sort of thought that IT would have addressed that issue beforehand purely
because of its predictability. Library workers, however, often forget how
customer service is simply not an obvious top priority for the county's IT
honchos.
And of course, it didn't help any that the Daylight Savings Time snafu came
at the tail end of several consecutive weeks of routine Internet slowdowns
at all county libraries due to a computer virus that took so long to be
acknowledged, investigated, and finally dealt with.
We have a theory that it's just way too easy for people (like Robert Taylor
& Co. - or, for that matter, library administrators) who aren't obliged to work evenings and weekends to assume that no serious
customer service problems occur after 5 P.M. or on weekends, or that
evening or weekend customer service failures are somehow less significant than those that might happen
on a weekday. Well, guess what? That's not what people who use county facilities
in the evenings or on weekends, when county libraries are open, believe.
We think Mr. Taylor owes several hundred county employees an apology and an explanation
for why this incident, which affected hundreds of people, ever happened.
We also would appreciate an assurance that this particular type of customer
failure will not be repeated. For starters, Mr. Taylor could specifically
assure the library that he will not allow the library system's computers to
automatically shut down an hour early when Daylight Savings
Time disappears this coming fall.
The humane alternative is one that we've suggested before: close the
county's libraries whenever there are not sufficient IT employees available
to adequately support library operations.
County's Chief Lawyer Announces Retirement
Posted March 8, 2007
The head of Fulton County's legal department, "O.V." Brantley, has
announced her retirement.
Brantley and her staff (or the law firms Brantley hired to handle the
appeal) unsuccessfully defended the county in the race discrimination
lawsuit filed seven years ago by
several AFPL librarians.
Brantley will be remembered by many for repeatedly denying - both in
courtrooms and to newspaper reporters - that race discrimination played
any role whatsoever in the personnel decisions that triggered the
lawsuit. Because of the stalling tactics used by Brantley and her staff,
the lawsuit was prolonged for several years longer than was necessary; the
county's commissioners eventually settled the suit for over $18 million. A
second lawsuit filed against the county by
two plaintiffs in the original suit was also eventually settled by the county -
that one for an additional $250,000.
Brantley's retirement was reported last week by both the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution and by the
Fulton County Daily Report.
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