After the Georgia Attorney General’s Office determined that there was no violation of Georgia’s Open Meetings Act at a September meeting of Hall County Planning Commissioners, a third-party investigator hired by the county has determined that other meetings over the past year were violations.
Buford-based Carothers and Mitchell, LLC, Attorneys at Law, said Planning Commission Chair Chris Braswell held regularly scheduled sessions with staff to discuss items on upcoming meeting agendas.
Braswell reportedly invited other planning commission members to the pre-meeting sessions, with some of those reportedly having three planning commissioners present, enough to constitute a quorum of the five-member board.
“There is little doubt that there were at least two and perhaps as many as five (or more) meetings in 2025 at which a quorum of three planning commission members gathered and staff ‘presented’ information related to the business agenda items scheduled to be heard at the next meeting,” the investigation report said.
The investigation noted that in all of the meetings that are believed to have been improper, the planning commissioners present were Braswell, along with Stan Hunt and Frank Sosebee. The investigation noted that planning commissioners Shannon Davidson and Andre Castelberry were not believed to have been present at the meetings in question.
Davidson told WDUN earlier this year that he witnessed a meeting he believed to be improper on Sept. 15. That meeting, however, was later determined by county officials not to violate the Open Meetings Act.
Hall County requested recommendations in response to the findings, but the investigator did not recommend specific consequences, only possible avenues of response.
The report states the county should provide annual training regarding open meetings, open records and the code of ethics.
If training is considered inadequate, then the Board of Commissioners has the authority to remove any member of the planning commission according to Hall County Code of Ordinances 11.1.B.3.
The report references past terminations of public officials, such as Glass v. City of Atlanta, upholding a termination for violating department policy.
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