The case against Ellis
A DeKalb County grand jury indicted CEO Burrell Ellis on 15 criminal counts last week, 14 of them felonies. The charges include theft, conspiracy and extortion. Ellis has yet to enter a plea, but he told reporters last week shortly after the indictment was announced that he is not guilty. Below is what the indictment alleges.
- Prosecutors allege in two counts that Ellis threatened to withhold county business from the IT vendor CIBER Inc. after an employee said she and the firm would not contribute to Ellis' election campaign. One charge claims Ellis told the worker he would report that she provided poor customer service if she did not give.
- Five counts accuse Ellis of making sure Power and Energy Services, an Austell equipment sales and service company, did not receive work with DeKalb after the owners and an employee either did not respond to campaign solicitations or declined to give. Two charges claim Ellis instructed the county's purchasing director to write a false note in the company's file, describing them as non-responsive to explain why they no longer received contracts.
- Five counts allege that Ellis ordered the purchasing director and department staffers to compile a list of county vendors for his use in campaign calls. Theft and fraud charges refer to stealing the workers' time — on taxpayers' dime — to do the work, as well as deliver the list to an off-site office. Two coercion charges claim Ellis forced those who worked for him to help with his political efforts.
- Three counts accuse Ellis of directing the purchasing director to stop honoring a contract with real estate firm National Property Institute of Ellenwood after the company did not give to his campaign. The counts also allege that Ellis ordered the county's community development director to arrange a meeting with the firm over the lack of donations.
Burrell Ellis
Age: 55
Residence: Stone Mountain
Occupation: Two-term DeKalb County CEO, first elected in 2008. The former partner at the law firm Epstein Becker Green also served two terms as a DeKalb commissioner.
Education: Undergraduate degree from Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Law degree from the University of Texas.
Family: Married to Philippa Ellis, a lawyer. They have twins.
Happy memory: In a 2009 story, Ellis recounted getting married four days after the Sept. 11 attacks. After the ceremony, the couple rode down Peachtree Street in a horse-drawn carriage, and people noticed. "They started applauding because it gave people a sense of normalcy," he said.
As DeKalb County CEO Burrell Ellis went into campaign mode in November 2011, he had concerns: Months earlier, the county had passed a steep property tax hike. Commissioners were often siding against him. And there was growing talk about doing away with his job — by dumping DeKalb’s unique CEO-style of government.
Ellis, a buttoned-down Ivy Leaguer, had won his first term as CEO in 2008 portraying himself as the sober, steadying hand who would reform a troubled government. Now facing re-election and sitting on a pile of campaign cash, Candidate Ellis began in earnest an aggressive fundraising drive to keep himself in office another four years.
It was then, an indictment released last week alleges, that Ellis had the county’s purchasing and contracting director compile lists of companies getting contracts from the county so he could call them for campaign contributions.
Building a formidable war chest to scare off potential challengers and making campaign calls to contractors are business as usual in Georgia politics. In recent years, DeKalb politics has increasingly gotten sharp-edged but the indictment, pursued by DeKalb District Attorney Robert James, paints Ellis as a petty, venal politician using government workers as campaign staffers, shaking down vendors for campaign cash and then retaliating against those who wouldn’t cut checks.
Ellis has forcefully denied the charges, which seem to come out of an investigation that started 18 months earlier with a grand jury probe of the water department.
“Mr. Ellis is absolutely not guilty of the charges,” his lawyer, Craig Gillen, said Friday. “He has done nothing wrong. He is continuing to work full-time on his job as DeKalb’s CEO. We expect to fight these charges in court.”
The indictment is a stunning and ominous development in a county that has become increasingly divided between north and south. Troubles in the school system have fomented rebellion among northern communities, some of which are now seeking to form their own cities.
Ellis was elected in 2008 in part to unify the fractured county and end the divisive politics of his predecessor, Vernon Jones, who became a lightening rod for critics.
The accusations against Ellis fly in the face of the low-key, wonky, above-the-fray image that he had carefully crafted and have surprised close observers of DeKalb government.
“I am so shocked, so hurt. I can’t believe them,” said Carleen Cumberbatch, a politically active DeKalb resident who volunteers with the county’s programs for senior citizens. “It’s so petty, so miniscule,” she said of the charges. “Whether I agree with his politics, he’s a good person with a good family; his heart is in the right place.”
Viola Davis, a local watchdog who has had disagreements with Ellis, has been digging into county finances, including contracting, for years and making her findings public.
“At no time did we get information about Burrell Ellis,” she said. “It’s hard for me to see Burrell Ellis as a thief. You’ll have to have it on tape.”
Davis, who attended many candidate forums during the 2012 campaign, said Ellis was often a no-show. Even if there were political issues that could be used against him, Ellis was running against two little-known candidates, she noted. “He wasn’t worried about the 2012 elections. It’s hard for me to believe that Burrell would have to go to that degree to get people to contribute to his campaign. A lot of this doesn’t make sense.”
But the charges make a lot of sense to Jerome Edmondson, a DeKalb businessman who ran against Ellis in 2012.
“The indictments show it wasn’t a free and fair election,” said Edmondson in an interview Friday. “If he didn’t cheat and employ his illegal tactics, then there would have been a runoff.”
Edmondson finished third in the July 2012 Democratic primary, which was, in essence, the election. Ellis finished with 60 percent of the vote and later won in November without opposition. Edmondson and ex-cop Gregory Adams (who gained traction sharing the same name as a longtime DeKalb judge) each got about 20 percent of the vote in the primary. A runoff is needed in Georgia if a candidate doesn’t receive more than 50 percent of the vote.
Edmondson said potential contributors told him repeatedly they were afraid to give to his campaign because Ellis might retaliate.
“Business people in DeKalb were afraid to write checks to me. Vendors were coming to me,” he said, “saying they were afraid to give me money. If I had a check from every person who said they would have liked to give me money but were afraid, then I would have had a chance.”
When Ellis ran for CEO in 2008, the DeKalb commissioner portrayed himself as straight shooter who was equally comfortable among DeKalb’s diverse constituencies, a man focused on results, not controversy.
“When he was running in 2008, he was coming in to clean up the process, it was a hot-button issue then,” said Davis, who ran for a commission seat that year and lost in a runoff.
A videotape of a candidate forum that year has Ellis making a strangely prophetic statement about the county contracting process. In 2007, numerous contracts for $49,000 were issued on the same day to a single vendor, an amount just below the $50,000 threshold that requires competitive bids.
Asked about it, Ellis said: “If the DA wants to do an investigation, I say, ‘Go ahead. Let’s bring everything to light.’”
In 2008, Ellis faced four challengers and ultimately beat Stan Watson, a former legislator, nearly 2-to-1 in a runoff. But Ellis became CEO in a harsh climate with a housing crisis causing a plummeting property tax digest and growing deficits. Ellis and the commissioners battled over how to cut millions from the budget. By early 2012 the county had a small surplus.
While kicking his 2012 campaign into gear, Ellis, according to the indictment, put a hook on county purchasing director Kelvin Walton to compile an insider’s list of contributors. Walton is the same official who cut the $49,000 checks in 2007. At the time, he said he was ordered to do so by a higher-up.
By November 2011 Ellis had already been in serious campaign mode. An election disclosure from June 2011 showed he raised $184,000 in the previous reporting period. Six months later, he reported pulling in another $163,000. During this time his campaign spent nearly $120,000 — $71,500 to his former campaign manager Kevin Ross, an attorney who also has been named in the ongoing DeKalb grand jury investigation but who has not been indicted.
In early 2012, Edmondson, a former restaurant franchise owner who runs a company training entrepreneurs, started making calls to potential donors. He raised $117,000 in the first three months, although more than half was money he loaned his campaign.
Ellis’ campaign started reaching out to potential contributors, who were a who’s who of business and political leaders, as well as contractors — nothing surprising for a sitting public official. But the indictment states the CEO started using heavy-handed, illegal tactics.
In late February 2012, as Ellis and county commissioners wrestled over the county’s budget, he allegedly threatened to end a technology company’s contract with the county for not contributing.
In late June 2012, with the primary election a month away, Ellis allegedly threatened to end another contractor’s county business after the business owners declined to contribute. During that time, commissioners had moved to end Ellis’ plans to build a Soapbox Derby track. Ellis had recently been called before an ongoing grand jury. He went before the panel without an attorney, later telling the media he had nothing to hide.
In July 2012, Ellis handily won the primary. A second term was virtually assured, but prosecutors allege Ellis was not done with his illegal campaign. Between Sept. 27 and Oct. 1, he allegedly told Walton to bar from further county work the owners of two companies who declined to donate.
That week, The National Association of Minority Contractors’ Georgia chapter honored Ellis for his record of helping minority contractors receive a fair shot at earning government contracts.
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