Lawmaker wants tougher school ethics rules

By Ty Tagami

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A DeKalb County lawmaker is proposing a crackdown on ethics in the county school system.

Rep. Kevin Levitas (D-Atlanta) said he will sponsor legislation creating new ethical rules for the DeKalb School System. The north DeKalb legislator said in a news release that he was prompted by an episode this year when a school board member who served concurrently on the DeKalb Development Authority was prepared to cast a vote that "presented a potential conflict of interest" between his duties to each body.

Levitas didn't name names, but in August school board member Eugene Walker resigned from the chairmanship of the development authority. He was slated to vote on a tax break for a developer who had given money to his school board election campaign the year before.

Walker said Thursday that the school system already has an ethics policy and that he didn’t' violate it. He said he disclosed all the contributions, which is why Levitas and others knew about them. Levitas said he wanted to clarify "ill-defined" guidelines and give school board members "a clear set of principles" to follow.