Perdue didn’t disclose vacation home purchase

Gov. Sonny Perdue spent $550,000 on a vacation home and property last year on Lake Jackson but failed to disclose it in July as required by law.

Butts County records show Perdue bought the property on Sept. 27 of last year. He was supposed to include the purchase on the annual personal financial disclosure that all state politicians and board members must file each year.

Perdue spokesman Bert Brantley called the omission a staff oversight.

An amended disclosure was filed Tuesday, after the error was brought to light.

In that disclosure, Perdue lists 11 pieces of property, including land near Disney World in Florida and at several sites in his home Houston County. They are valued by local assessors at about $5 million.

Democrats said Perdue’s failure to disclose the property shows he is out of touch with average Georgians.

“You’ve got a governor who spent half of the (2008) session traveling the globe and can’t remember how many houses he has, meanwhile folks out in Georgia are trying to pay the mortgage on the one they do own,” said Martin Matheny, spokesman for the Georgia Democratic Party.

Perdue’s personal disclosures have been in the spotlight in the past.

In 2006, when Perdue was running for re-election, he disclosed he had paid politically connected developer Stan Thomas $2 million for land near Disney World.

That purchase led to calls for an investigation after it was revealed that lawmakers passed a special tax break that helped Perdue defer taxes on the sale of land he used to pay for the Florida property.

That same year, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Perdue did not include his interest in a family land partnership in financial disclosures while he served as a state senator from Houston County. He listed the information only after he became governor in 2003, according to state reports.

Democrats made an issue of Perdue’s land deals in the 2006 campaign and filed State Ethics Commission complaints against him. But Perdue easily won re-election and the commission dismissed the complaints against him. A majority of the commission is appointed by the governor.