Statement from Mayor Kasim Reed’s office:

It is deeply disappointing that Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc. would nominate Mayor Kasim Reed as a finalist for their 2017 Golden Padlock Awards considering that over the course of four months, the City of Atlanta has released over two million pages of documents related to a federal investigation and has done so without charging the press or public one penny for the records, despite the significant financial and personnel cost to the City to make these documents available online. If the organization’s mission is truly dedicated “to improving the quality of investigative reporting,” then this nomination is not only baffling, but an insult to the hard-working women and men of the Reed Administration who worked expeditiously to produce more than two million pages of documents without compromising an ongoing federal investigation and the privacy of innocent individuals.

The idea that the Reed Administration created an illusion of transparency in an effort to block the release of documents is patently false. The City of Atlanta first made 1.3 million pages of documents available for review to the press and the public within weeks of the U.S. Attorney’s announcement of their investigation. Baker Donelson, the City’s outside legal vendor responsible for producing documents related to the federal investigation, then redacted information that raised privacy concerns for innocent individuals.

At the exact time these documents were made available by Baker Donelson, the City provided them in an open and transparent fashion to the press and public. Despite this, the Atlanta Journal Constitution and Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc. have chosen to accuse the City of using this process as a tool to thwart access to openness and accurate information.

The City then made all of those documents available online in less than a month through a secure Online Document Repository (ODR). The ODR not only provides these documents for free to members of the press and the public, but the ODR system offers several features designed to make review of the materials user- friendly and accessible.

Once registered, a user can:

• Perform full-text searches;

• Instantly preview up to 400 pages of any document

 • Download any document

• Tag a document or folder as a favorite.

The ODR has saved members of the press and the public over $200,000 each in printing fees that could have been assessed through the Georgia Open Records Act, which authorizes governments to charge 10 cents per page plus administrative costs, had the City not made the documents available free of charge. The Administration will continue to work to ensure that the press and public have access to all non-privileged, non-exempt records produced for the federal investigation in a timely manner as those documents continue to be produced.

For a group dedicated to improving the quality of investigative reporting, the judges seem not to have done anything beyond a surface analysis. They incorrectly identify the address of City Hall as the reason why the name "Mitchell" generated so many documents, failing to realize that the individual who pled guilty is named E.R. Mitchell. This error and the list of finalists announced by the Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc. demonstrates a remarkable lack of perspective and an apparent need for “both sides-ism.” It is stunning for this group to compare a genuine, good faith attempt to provide the public with information with the actions of a Circuit Chief Judge who used racial slurs in her official capacity and then sought to cover up her flagrant misconduct by going so far as to jail a member of the press.

To suggest that this Judge's behavior is in any way comparable to the efforts made to share documents without compromising a federal investigation is over the top and absurd. The exact same is true when comparing the City’s transparency to the Pennsylvania state universities’ attempts to stonewall documents regarding the acts and allegations against Jerry Sandusky.

Mayor Reed has been an advocate for the release of public information throughout his time in public office. He supported every expansion of the Georgia Open Records Act that was put before him both as a State Representative and State Senator, and has a long standing record of supporting a free and robust open press. In addition, within his first two years in office, Mayor Reed also released more than one million pages of records detailing the procurement process at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. At the time, the AJC said that they could find “no evidence that other Administrations had gone through the expense and effort of releasing this many documents.” To be clear, no other Administration in the City of Atlanta has made more documents available to the public than the Reed Administration.

Yet just a few years later, the AJC flip-flopped, now finding fault with the same kind of production. In reality, the AJC and Investigating Reporters and Editors, Inc. seem to be setting an impossible standard for the Reed Administration: no matter how quickly records are provided, no matter how great the investment in providing the records using available technology, it's still not good enough. Meanwhile, other elected officials at all levels who do not share the same commitment to upholding sunshine laws and ensuring transparency somehow manage to avoid the same scrutiny and criticism.

The City of Atlanta's top priority is full cooperation with the ongoing investigation, and remains completely committed to full transparency. In this case, actions matter, and we will continue to match our actions to our values.