ATLANTA — The push to put a referendum against the future Atlanta Public Safety Training Center is in legal limbo. It could take weeks to start verifying signatures on a petition to put the measure on a ballot.
Meanwhile, that verification process generated an outcry among activists on Friday as they said the city recklessly included unredacted personal information online when they posted scans of the signed petitions.
The Atlanta City Council had voted to put those petitions online - to try and make the process transparent.
You can now find those thousands of signatures posted online at a public city website. Organizers say there are at least 116,000 – and on the copies posted to the city website, personal information including someone's signature, their printed name, address and phone number is all still included. Birth dates have been blacked out.
In a statement, the Vote to Stop Cop City group called it "intimidation and suppression" of their political organizing.
Their statement noted that the City Council had passed a resolution providing for the digitizing of the signed petitions that directed the municipal clerk to "redact the personally identifiable information as required by the Georgia Open Records Act."
"The municipal clerk blatantly ignored City Council's instruction," the Vote to Stop Cop City statement said, "... in effect doxxing all signers of the Cop City referendum petition."
"The City irresponsibly published this information without any commitment or timeline to begin the promised verification process, which was the intention of the initial resolution," the organizers further argued.
City Council President Doug Shipman spoke to 11Alive's Joe Ripley and posted a statement online. He said he worried the easily accessible and vital data being posted could violate personal privacy.
"I had asked that as they were posted that there were steps taken so they weren't easily downloadable, they weren't easily scraped as they say," Shipman said. "This is a way that identity thieves use programs to gather up lots of information."
The City Council president also posted on X, Shipman added:
"Upon subsequent review by the Law department, the Council resolution passed was deemed to require following State Open Records law. As requested the City Clerk has taken steps to help make the data more secure as posted."
He did not elaborate on the city Law Department's determination about following state open records laws.
The Vote to Stop Cop City statement alluded to this as well, calling the Law Department's advice to the municipal clerk on the matter "highly inappropriate, because the city's Law Department is not chartered to provide legal advice to the municipal clerk: their legal counsel is for the Mayor's Offices and City Council."
Organizers are requesting the municipal clerk to take down the unredacted info, recuse themselves from any matters related to the referendum and hire outside legal counsel.
Shipman says there were limits on printing data, and the clerk's office took steps to discourage identity theft. The city clerk did not respond to messages from 11Alive.
Once given the greenlight, the city would have 50 days to verify signatures.
If the referendum made it to the ballot and passed, it would revoke a measure that was passed earlier this year to provide for a portion of the funding for the public safety center's construction.