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Friday, November 2, 2007
An attempt to remove the Clinch County judge — for spending money without authority, and for being a stick-in-the-mud
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Last July, we told you about the scrutiny that one of rural Clinch County’s most powerful politicians, Superior Court Judge Brooks E. Blitch III, was under.
It’s gotten worse for him.
He’s been notified that the state Judicial Qualifications Commission has started proceedings against him to determine whether he is guilty of “willful misconduct” that “brings your judicial office into disrepute.”
This is a rare action. Perhaps five judges have been ordered dismissed by the JQC in the last 20 years. And it’s much more serious than those noises by House Speaker Glenn Richardson to have a Fulton County judge impeached.
The Clinch County commission claimed Blitch had usurped its control of the county budget by holding back thousands of dollars in court fines and fees and dictating how those funds are spent.
The JQC has gone much further, hitting Blitch, chief judge of the Alapaha Judicial Circuit, with 58 counts of alleged misconduct — including giving preferential treatment to family and friends, and generally acting like a crabby old man.
You can see the entire document here.
Specifically, the JQC says this to Blitch:
“You issued court orders and other official documents directing the collection of fees from defendants in criminal proceedings and directing the payment of funds from those fees without lawful authority and contrary to state law, during the period including, but not limited to, 1992 to 2006.”
This is Count 27:
“You exhibited intemperate and injudicious behavior by stating to [Circuit Court Administrator Berrien] Sutton that he should inform his wife, Lisa Sutton, court administrator, that her assistant, Kalynn McLaine, should be fired for alleged criticisms made against your son by Ms. McLaine’s friend. You further stated she was a ‘concubine’ and that her friend was a ‘stupid son of a bitch.’
Things get pretty rough down in Clinch.
On the Speaker’s new GSU connection
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
House Speaker Glenn Richardson (R-Hiram) now has another reason to smile on Georgia State University lobbyists when they come knocking on his door.
Richardson is a GSU grad. And now he’s got a GSU employee in the family.
Our colleague James Salzer found out the speaker’s son, Bryn, 23, began working this week for the school. Bryn, a UGA graduate, was hired as a $32,000-a-year fulltime temporary employee — meaning he won’t get benefits — to work on the school’s student recruitment portal.
DeAnna Hines, assistant vice president for media relations at Georgia State University, noted that the job is temporary. “His background is in telecommunications. I’m happy to give someone a chance to get experience in an area they enjoy working in,” she said.
Longtime Capitol lobbyist Tommy Lewis is GSU’s vice president of external affairs, which is over the department Bryn Richardson was hired to work in. Lewis said he’d met the speaker’s son at the Capitol, where Bryn served as an intern.
Lewis, former chief of staff to Gov. Joe Frank Harris, also knows Richardson’s wife’s family.
Lewis said he talked with Bryn Richardson about jobs at the school, but he added that being the speaker’s son didn’t have anything to do with him getting hired.
“The speaker’s one of our grads, he’s a good guy,” Lewis told Salzer. “When I talked to him, the only thing he said was that he appreciated me talking to [Bryn].
“He did not say, ‘hire him.’ “
Richardson’s spokeswoman, Clelia Davis, said much the same thing. “[The speaker] had nothing to do with it.”
But when asked if Bryn Richardson’s hiring will help Georgia State’s lobbying efforts at the Capitol, Lewis replied, “It depends if you make this a headline.”
If they’d asked Antonin Scalia, we wouldn’t have this problem
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
State Sen. John Douglas (R-Social Circle) doesn’t like the people that state Supreme Court Justice Robert Benham is hanging with.
Next Wednesday, Benham is scheduled to officiate at the swearing-in ceremony for the officers of the Rockdale County Democratic party. Douglas has asked him to cancel, according to the Newton Citizen.
In an Oct. 30 letter, Douglas advised the justice — who is up for re-election next year — that because his position is nonpartisan, Benham’s participation would be inappropriate.
“Coming to Rockdale for this particular purpose puts you in a partisan position and gives citizens who are not part of the Democratic Party the idea that you may favor Democrats over Republicans,” the letter states.
We share a cafeteria with Benham, but haven’t seen him lately. In fact, if memory serves, the last time we ran into him was in July. At a Cobb County meeting of the Georgia Republican Foundation.
Sue Everhart ran the show, but didn’t need any swearing in. She was already the state GOP chairman.
Perdue and the water talks: ‘It was pleasant to some degree’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sounds like Thursday’s water meeting in Washington was as much fun as jumping into a stand of cactus.
And in an interview on WSB radio this morning, Gov. Sonny Perdue admitted that he did some of the needling.
The governor was asked about the tone of the three-state summit. Listen to most of the interview here.
“It was pleasant to some degree,” Perdue said. “Certainly tense more so from Alabama’s perspective. Their concern was that the Chattahoochee-Apalachicola was being addressed without the [Alabama-Coosa-Tallapoosa River Basin.]
“That’s the watershed that I’d met for over a year with Governor [Bob] Riley on and we came to an agreement.
“And he was to fly here to Atlanta and sign that agreement, and then backed out. And I pointed that out.
“So we had frankly — some very frank and candid discussions. Not 100 percent agreement, but we did come away with an agreement that it is really up to the three states, the three governors, to resolve this.”
Perdue also said he won’t withdraw his request to President Bush for a disaster declaration.
“But I have indicated that as long as we continue to make movements — productive movements in the direction we need, I’m not going to push that and continue to press the president for an answer there,” the governor said.
Perdue also said he sensed a change in attitude in the U.S. Corps of Engineers toward the construction of more lakes to store water. “Frankly, the Corps has indicated and implied more friendliness toward reservoirs than they have in the past,” he said.
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