Letter to the editor: City places burden on residents to access meeting recordings

The City of Sumter's City Council meetings are recorded by audio only, as opposed to video recordings of public meetings conducted by the Sumter County Council and the Sumter School District's Board of Trustees.

These aforementioned video recordings are easily accessible to the public on the YouTube Channel. This availability of public records just by the click of a mouse or via typing on a cellphone or other device makes obtaining information about public meetings more user-friendly and doable for the average younger generation, as well as for senior citizens.

In stark contrast, the City of Sumter requires the person(s) who desire access to the City of Sumter's City Council meetings to (1) Go online to the City of Sumter's website; (2) Click on Freedom of Information Request for Public Records; (3) Print this form; (4) Fill out this form; (5) Scan this form; (6) Go to your particular email and attach this said form to an email which is to be sent to the following email address: foia@sumtersc.gov. (7) This emailed form then goes to the Freedom of Information officer(s) at the City of Sumter's administration. Then, (8) These Freedom of Information officials look over the Freedom of Information Request for Public Information Form that was forwarded to them. (9) These City of Sumter administrative officials will then (10) forward the Freedom of Information Request for Public Records to the City of Sumter's attorney for review. Then ... step (11) comes when all of the involved City of Sumter's Freedom of Information officials are to respond to the Freedom of Information Request for Public Records. Next, once the requestor of the records gets the approval of the aforementioned officials, then the requestor may get the records that he or she seeks in the form of a hard copy or by email correspondence. (12) If the requestor of the records decides on getting the audio via an email link, the requestor must then sign on to "Dropbox," a cloud storage service. (13) There is a "free" 30-day trial period with "Dropbox," but that depends on how much information the requestor gets. Then the "Dropbox" services will lock the requestor out until he or she joins one of a host of options ... all of which come with a price. The cheapest or most inexpensive "Dropbox" fee starts at $119.98 per year. The other options range as high as $300 per year for "Dropbox" access to the City of Sumter's City Council meetings audio recordings!

I am usually present at the City of Sumter's City Council meetings as well as those of the Sumter County Council regularly scheduled public meetings. On occasions, though, I miss some of these gatherings. That is the reason why I opted to obtain copies of the meetings that I had missed. It was then that I realized the enormous and tedious maze of events that are involved in obtaining copies of the audio recordings of the City of Sumter's City Council meetings! My discovery of this ordeal was eye-opening, highly disappointing and shocking to say the least!

My nonprofit, charitable organization, The Family Unit Inc., in order to have access to the audio recordings of the City of Sumter's City Council meetings for one year, paid the least expensive, "Basic Plan" of the "Dropbox" Company totaling $119.98 yesterday via our nonprofit organization's VISA card. This expense was taken on by our organization on behalf of the membership of great people who are of low to moderate income and who are unable to pay the fees which are prohibitive to the vast majority of them. One hundred percent of the individuals of whom I speak do not own credit or debit cards and do not have checking or savings accounts!

It is important to note that two individuals, both African Americans, who are of low income and reside in a low- to moderate-income community, Mrs. Lottie Spencer, and Mr. Anthony Robinson, are enthusiastic about the opportunities to vote next year and want to learn as much as possible about the political happenings in the City of Sumter, but are unable to attend the vast majority of the Sumter City Council meetings. To add insult to injury, both are unable financially to pay money to have access to the minutes of the City of Sumter's City Council meetings and do not have access to computers, copiers, scanners or printers that are needed to satisfy the myriad tasks necessary to file for a Freedom of Information for Public Records Form required by the City of Sumter.

The substantial burdens that the City of Sumter places upon the shoulders of the citizenry of the City of Sumter, in its exhaustive procedural process of obtaining audio recordings of the City of Sumter's Public Records, are discriminatory and prejudicial and violate the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution pertaining to Equal Protection Under the Law. These violations of the 14th Amendment in actuality are blatant evidence of and are characteristic of tactics used in voter suppression.

These aforementioned residents of the City of Sumter are voters who cherish and respect the rite of suffrage. They rely on the information on voting rights and other civil and human rights issues that The Family Unit Inc. provides through a host of avenues such as face-to-face discussions, telephone conversations, educational videos on The Family Unit Inc.'s Facebook, Instagram pages and YouTube Channel, informative literature on how the local, state and federal government operates, and educational brochures and pamphlets imbibed with legal documents such as the U.S. Constitution and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The Family Unit Inc. respectfully requests that the South Carolina Election Commission conducts a full and comprehensive investigation inquiry and evaluation of the actions of the City of Sumter in regard to the substantial burdens its governmental officials have placed upon the shoulders of the citizens of the City of Sumter that pertain to Equal Protection Under the Law and to Voting Rights of American citizens.

Your attention to this matter is urgent and would be greatly appreciated.

BRENDA C. WILLIAMS, MD

The Family Unit Inc., a 501(c)(3), nonprofit, charitable organization

Sumter