In a busy election year, the one office in the state charged with enforcing ethics and campaign finance laws is the political equivalent of a tire fire: a hot, stinky mess.
The state ethics commission has made no progress on any of its 169 open ethics cases in nearly a year. It has yet to release even the first draft of regulations governing lobbying reforms passed more than a year ago. And although the law requires the commission to inspect every campaign finance form submitted to it, the small office staff does not even attempt it.
Last week, Gov. Nathan Deal delivered the coup de grâce: Deal called the office “broken” and riddled with “confusion, dysfunction and inefficiency,” consigning the beleaguered state agency to irrelevancy in a year in which Deal and hundreds of candidates will be running for state offices.
Deal and his opponents are vowing reforms, elevating the commission to election-year campaign fodder, but none that would be implemented now. That means the agency, formally known as the Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commission, will have no new money, staff or leadership to clear its backlog or police this year’s state elections.
Read the full story Sunday on MyAJC.com.
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