Yes, The Mayor’s Spokesperson Lied To You

Kasim Reed, former mayor of Atlanta, has a reputation for interpersonal hostility, and that has little enough to do with his press release game. I have been told stories of tirades by staffers, by other journalists and by other politicians. I have personally heard him screaming at people who rubbed him the wrong way (looking at you, Tim Franzen.)

I whiplash between a grudging respect for his political accomplishments — including and especially those in which I was plainly wrong in retrospect, like the Mercedes-Benz stadium deal — and shuddering at the kind of Les Grossman-approach to the job the former entertainment lawyer embraced.

So I can only imagine the kind of PTSD-inducing apprehension his communications staff faced when WSB started nosing around his water bills. According to text messages received by WSB and the Dan Klepal at the AJC, the mayor’s communications staff told the water department to frustrate an open records act request. Former Watershed Department communications manager Lillian Govus — who is safely employed elsewhere now — apparently gave news reporters the texts unbidden.

The texts make it fairly plain that the mayor’s communications staff lies to news reporters. They are also hilarious. 

Text messages between mayoral spokeswoman Jenna Garland and Watershed Department communications manager Lillian Govus on March 7, 2017, reveal the mayor’s office instructed Govus to “be as unhelpful as possible” and to “drag this out as long as possible” when fulfilling the information request.

Garland ends the exchange by telling Govus to “provide the information in the most confusing format possible.” …

The two city spokeswomen knew immediately that there would be an issue with a Feb. 28 information request from Channel 2, asking for water billing information at Mayor Kasim Reed’s residence and a rental property owned by Reed’s brother, Tracy.

Govus sent a profanity-laced text to Garland that day.

“Big (expletive) problem,” Govus wrote. “Got an ORR for a few addresses. Turns out thousands in unpaid water bills. Properties owned by MKR (Mayor Kasim Reed) and Tracy (Reed).”

Govus went on to tell Garland that Mayor Reed’s property had a disconnect notice, and Tracy Reed’s property was “under investigation for water theft.” The records showed that Tracy Reed’s property had a $9,000 unpaid water bill, and had never been disconnected.

“Jesus Mary and Joseph,” Garland wrote. “Did you already respond?”

“(Expletive) no,” Govus wrote. “I ain’t stupid.”

The city turned over the water billing public records only after a serious threat of legal action by WSB, dragging out a request over more than a month that by statute has to be answered in three days. The AJC was polite in describing how Govus ignored requests. I won’t be: when you say you’ll respond on April 7 and it takes a threat to sue to get you to provide information a week after that, you were lying.

The text messages confirm all the fears every journalist has about the intentions of public officials when facing scrutiny — to delay, and obfuscate, and redirect, and deny. It’s part and parcel of the attitude that led the mayor to order 1.47 million pages of documents to be printed out instead of delivered electronically as requested by the media, filling up a room of City Hall with boxes of mostly-empty paper for journalists to riffle through like they’re looking for the Ark of the Covenant in an Area 51 warehouse.

This sort of thing is how a politician destroys a personal reputation. It’s not something journalists forgive or forget. It provides texture for every reporter who will ever cover anything Reed ever tries to do in the future. It permanently raises suspicion. And it is the answer to every charge of “media bias” ever leveled by Reed: this is why we do not trust you.

We are amid a war on the press by a Republican press, with his gun-brandishing allies making threats on journalists and the media. Reed’s failures here make it just that much harder for progressives to fight for access to information.