•March 16, 2007: An internal report found the former dean of Kennesaw State University's school of education facilitated payments to his wife's company, granted questionable out-of-state tuition waivers worth $75,438, and authorized spending $115,000 with little oversight. He resigned.

•March 24: Four prison guards have lost their jobs and one was demoted following the serious beating of an inmate at a state prison.

•April 24: Two Atlanta city employees were fired after an internal investigation determined they defrauded the city of $39,000 by filing an insurance claim on the cancer-stricken daughter of one of the women even though the employee wasn't enrolled in the insurance program.

•May 3: Powder Springs officials issued 23 code violation warnings on three duplexes owned by Cobb County Commissioner Annette Kesting, who also failed to pay property taxes on those units.

•May 9: An Atlanta police officer accused of raping a woman was subsequently arrested for outrageous off-duty behavior that got him banned from three Virginia-Highland bars.

•May 10: In his first 15 months, Atlanta Police Chief Richard Pennington had accumulated 799 hours in compensatory time — or the equivalent of 20 work weeks, according to his office's time sheets.

•May 15: An internal report by the University of Georgia's office of legal affairs detailed a pattern of inappropriate behavior by the university's women's golf coach. He later resigned.

•June 3: Eighteen months before Atlanta narcotics officers killed a 92-year-old woman in a bogus drug raid, police investigated six of the same officers for allegedly inappropriate conduct. The cursory investigation missed the chance to scrutinize the narcotics team and its methods.

•June 11: Six months after that fatal raid, records show police had not conducted any more "no-knock" searches.

•June 27: A Fulton deputy frequently used her Taser on jailed inmates, including once when she shocked a prisoner twice within moments, the second time while he was sitting with his hands cuffed behind him.

•July 24: One of Georgia's biggest road-building companies said it would stop bidding on Gwinnett County contracts as a result of a new county policy meant to crack down on illegal immigrants. Their position was revealed in an Open Records Act request on the response to the policy.

•Aug. 15: Hundreds of thousands of dollars in accounting irregularities have been discovered by Fulton County auditors in several bank accounts Sheriff Myron Freeman keeps for jail inmates. Findings don't suggest illegal activity, but point out a chronic lack of oversight, spotty compliance with policies and inadequate financial staff.

•Aug. 16: Three appointed Gwinnett County officials quietly settled a Taser-related wrongful-death lawsuit by paying $100,000 to a victim's family without a public vote or discussion.

•Aug. 28: A year after three high-ranking Gwinnett County fire officials lost their jobs for repeated failure to inspect all public schools, each campus has been checked and judged safe. However, no school was found to be completely up to snuff.

•Sept. 12: The Fulton County district attorney's office used more than $11,000 that was supposed to help crime victims or go to enforce drug laws and instead spent it on such things as banquets, balls and balloons.

•Sept. 30: A Gwinnett County internal audit raised sweeping concerns about the ability of mechanics to repair and maintain public transit buses.

•Oct. 12: DeKalb County police officers were justified in two non-fatal shootings, the first time in more than a year that DeKalb police have released the results of internal investigations of shootings by officers.

•Nov. 3: Even as Gov. Sonny Perdue touted water-saving efforts at the Governor's Mansion in the face of the state's historic drought, a water meter serving the guard barracks on the Buckhead property had been broken for more than two years, meaning the building's water use could not be monitored.

•Dec. 2: Taxpayers picked up a bill of about $19,000 for a recent economic development trip to South Korea by Cobb County political leaders and representatives of local public schools and universities.

•Dec. 12: If he decides to break his seven-year contract, new Georgia Tech football coach Paul Johnson will pay a $750,000 buyout if he leaves in the first year, $500,000 after that. If Tech fires him without cause, it will owe him 75 percent of the remaining value of the contract.

•Dec. 14: Two DeKalb County officials authorized 26 separate $49,000 payments to a technology consultant, just below the $50,000 threshold that triggers a requirement for competitive bidding.

•Dec. 24: An analysis of every SEC football coach's contract revealed Louisiana State University's Les Miles was playing the championship game for $530,000 in contract bonuses.

•Jan. 24: An internal Clayton County school board investigation revealed an intimate relationship and attempted cover-up between high school football coach Donald Shockley and assistant principal Josette Franklin, whose duties included oversight of athletics. Both resigned.

•Jan. 10: Atlanta Information Technology Department workers are no longer on the city payroll after accepting an all-expenses paid trip to Las Vegas in October from a company hoping to do business with the city.

•May 10: In the face of a formal request made under the state's Open Records Act, Gov. Sonny Perdue's office reluctantly surrendered a copy of the written apology offered by House Speaker Glenn Richardson after he angrily declared Perdue had shown "his backside" during their bitter standoff over the 2007 budget. The word "backside" does not appear in the apology.