Watchdog groups demand more money for ethics board

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By Chris Joyner

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A coalition of watchdog groups said Friday cuts to the state ethics commission's budget have hobbled the agency and resulted in a backlog of unresolved complaints.

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With the State Capitol in the background, William Perry, Common Cause Georgia Executive Director, talks during the Georgia Alliance for Ethics Reform press conference in front of the James H. "Sloppy" Floyd Building Friday afternoon in Atlanta, Ga., February 10, 2012.

Jason Getz, jgetz@ajc.com With the State Capitol in the background, William Perry, Common Cause Georgia Executive Director, talks during the Georgia Alliance for Ethics Reform press conference in front of the James H. "Sloppy" Floyd Building Friday afternoon in Atlanta, Ga., February 10, 2012.

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"This agency has basically been crippled and is literally in a crisis of ethics because their budget has been so cut, they are so understaffed and underfunded that they have not been able to do the job that is laid out for them by law," said William Perry, executive director of Common Cause Georgia, a member of the Georgia Alliance for Ethics Reform.

Since 2008, the commission's budget has been sliced by 42 percent, leaving the office with a fraction of its staff and making "a joke" of its mandate to enforce ethics rules, he said. Legislative officials say the cut has been overstated.

To bolster his claim, Perry provided a report by the secretary of state's office showing complaints filed before the commission have increased from 88 in 2008 to 200 in 2011 while the number of cases resolved have not kept pace. In 2011, 75 cases were closed, compared with 109 in 2008.

The commission now has a backlog of 135 ethics complaints dating to 2003, said Elizabeth Poythress, president of the League of Women Voters of Georgia.

"The Legislature can fix this with funding, and that's what we are asking," she said. "The cuts made to the ethics commission far outweigh the cuts to other agencies."

Budget comparisons provided by the groups show the Legislature has cut its own budget by 7 percent since 2008, compared with the larger cuts to the ethics commission. Gov. Nathan Deal has recommended a modest increase of about $59,000 for the coming budget year. The commission's fiscal 2012 budget is $1.1 million.

Legislative officials have claimed the ethics commission was mismanaged under former Executive Director Stacey Kalberman and returned money to the budget that could have been used to send required notices to lobbyists and officials accused of violating ethics rules.

They also say the cuts to the agency budget are overstated, claiming the agency's 2006 budget was increased for a one-time technology purchase and the increase was carried over several years. However, even factoring out that increase, the ethics commission's budget has shrunk by a quarter since then, state budget documents show.

Marshall Guest, spokesman for House Speaker David Ralston, said his boss is interested in strengthening the ethics commission by restoring rulemaking power stripped from it in prior years and is open to increasing its budget.

The group timed its news conference to coincide with the one-year anniversary of a complaint filed by Common Cause against the lobbyist who took Ralston, his family and staff members to Germany in 2010 to tour high-speed rail facilities. Perry said the commission has yet to act on it.