At least two more members of DeKalb County’s ethics board have resigned, including the group’s vice chairman — who called the current working dynamic on the board “irreparable” and suggested the remaining members should step down too.
The resignations of vice chair David Moskowitz and colleague Candace Walker follow that of ethics board chairwoman Alex Joseph, who departed last week after she accused yet another board member of alleged “bullying, undermining, and attempted manipulation.” Joseph’s proposal to oust that board member, Bill Clark, failed to garner full support, which led her to resign.
Three of the ethics board’s seven regular members have now stepped down, though the panel also has two alternate members. Clark is one of the alternates.
In his Thursday morning resignation letter, Moskowitz expressed support for both Joseph and her proposed motion to remove Clark. Moskowitz agreed that Clark’s purported comments “crossed the line and were totally unacceptable.”
“As I represent individuals in my day to day practice of law that are bullied and mistreated, I could not in good conscience participate in an organization that would allow such conduct to go unpunished,” Moskowitz, a longtime labor and employment attorney, wrote.
Citing “a great deal of havoc and dissension,” Moskowitz also wrote that now was “a perfect time for the entire board to resign and start anew.”
The comments in question were allegedly made by Clark in a Jan. 12 closed-door executive session. In a memo attached to an agenda item that would have ousted Clark, Joseph quoted him as saying to her: “I have been a lawyer for more than three times as long as you have so your hanging your hat on your minute as a baby lawyer carrying someone’s briefcase as a government lawyer adds no validity to your opinions.”
Moskowitz isn’t the first person to suggest disbanding all current members.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution obtained Thursday a chain of recent emails sent between several ethics board members and Bonnie Levine, their attorney.
In one email, Levine wrote that she didn’t believe “anyone [could] make unconflicted decisions in the board’s interest any longer.” Joseph has suggested that Levine was also a target of the “rhetorical cycle of toxic axe-grinding” allegedly perpetuated by Clark and two other unnamed colleagues.
Implying that Candace Walker made the initial suggestion, Levine said she agreed that a “fresh start” could be the best path forward.
She wrote that she would “be happy to be part of that joint resignation.”
The DeKalb ethics board is, of course, an entity tasked with investigating potential ethical missteps among the county’s thousands of employees and elected officials, making the current questions about its internal culture all the more striking.
State Rep. Viola Davis, D-Stone Mountain, who crafted the legislation that currently governs the ethics board, told The AJC that she was “disappointed” and called the situation “very troubling.”
“I don’t want to speak for the whole [DeKalb County] delegation, because we have not spoken on this issue,” Davis said. “But this would need to be something that we look into, considering the number of people who are asking questions.”
Disarray, though, is also nothing new.
The current iteration of the ethics board was revived in early 2021, after more than two years of dormancy triggered by a lawsuit that successfully challenged how some of its members were appointed.
Several board members have departed even before this month’s resignations.
With her term nearing completion, longtime ethics officer Stacey Kalberman — a full-time employee responsible for fielding complaints and referring them to the volunteer board — stepped down early last year. The county commission took months longer than expected to confirm the ethics board’s chosen replacement, effectively leaving it on another unplanned hiatus.
Now-former deputy ethics officer Latonya Nix Wiley also accused Kalberman and others of racial discrimination and retaliation. An independent investigation subsequently found those allegations to be unsubstantiated. Wiley, who had been on paid administrative leave for months, was let go in January.
Just last week, she filed a new federal lawsuit based on similar allegations.
Mary Hinkel, the leader of DeKalb watchdog group DeKalb Citizens Advocacy Council, agrees that the ethics board’s remaining members should probably go ahead and step down. But, she said, they had a tough job, and meeting exclusively in a virtual setting due to the pandemic likely didn’t help calm any interpersonal issues that arose.
But there’s plenty for which to hope, Hinkel said.
“In the midst of this chaos, we have a terrific new ethics officer. This board did clear a lot of the backlog of ethics cases,” Hinkel said. “... We have the structure. We just don’t have the right people in place.”
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