Gov. Perdue to state: Don’t do business with ACORN

By Ernie Suggs and Steve Visser

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue on Thursday ordered the state not to issue any more contracts to ACORN, the advocacy group whose workers in national offices were caught in a video scandal advising clients on how to lie.

Neither the governor’s office nor state legislators who asked local governments not to enter into contracts with ACORN gave any examples of wrongdoing by the liberal activists in the state.

Perdue’s office identified only one state contract with ACORN, a $104,000 one with the Department of Human Services.

The governor’s office noted that the contract was funded by federal dollars and a matching grant from a private foundation. The contract, let in 2008, expires at the end of September.

State Rep. Ed Setzler (R-Acworth) said guilty pleas and convictions of ACORN members on various charges in other states showed that local ACORN workers couldn’t be trusted.

“Our concern in this overall effort is there are states from the East Coast to the West Coast that have investigations against ACORN,” said Setzler, one of the legislators who released a statement calling on local governments to review their contracts for associations with the group.

But the governor’s order appears to be coming too late for much impact.

Brian Kettenring, an ACORN spokesman, said that managers in the national office decided about four months ago to close the Atlanta office. He said that one ACORN employee had been working from home to wrap up several projects.

“We don’t maintain an office at this time,” Kettenring said. “But we still obviously have members in Atlanta and everywhere in the United States. We just don’t have a paid professional there.”

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now is a grass roots community-based organization that advocates for low-income housing, voter registration and health care, among other things.

Often a target of conservatives, ACORN has been a media mainstay this week after a video was released showing employees in Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and Brooklyn, N.Y., advising two undercover conservative activists who were posing as a pimp and his prostitute.

On the videos, ACORN housing coordinators and office administrators urged the couple to lie about the prostitute’s profession, suggested they launder money and advised how to hide underage prostitutes.

On Monday, the Senate voted to cut off new federal money for ACORN that the group usually gets from the departments of Transportation and Housing and Urban Development. The measure passed 83-7, with Sens. Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson of Georgia both voting yes.

On Thursday, the U.S. House took the same action.

Also, the Census Bureau dropped the organization as a community partner after news of the sting surfaced.

“The Republicans have been trying to destroy ACORN since Obama won, because it is a powerful, grass roots organization nationwide,” said state Rep. Tyrone Brooks (D-Atlanta). “This is probably the end of ACORN as we knew it.”

Perdue ordered all state agencies that do business with ACORN to cut off funding unless it is legally obligated. He asked all state agencies and local governments to provide an accounting of obligations to ACORN by Sept. 23.

On Tuesday, association CEO Bertha Lewis announced that it was hiring an independent auditor to conduct an internal investigation because of the “indefensible action of a handful of our employees.”

ACORN has lobbied at every Democratic National Convention since 1980 and has been in the crosshairs of conservatives for years, especially after the group’s national political action committee endorsed Barack Obama in 2008.

Brooks, who has worked for civil rights, housing and labor groups for decades, said ACORN’s presence in Atlanta has faded.

“I haven’t seen any ACORN activists around here in a while,” Brooks said. “It seems to me that during the election, they moved most of their activists to places like North Carolina and Virginia, since they didn’t think they would win in Georgia.”