The DeKalb County Board of Ethics is scheduled to hold a final hearing Monday to determine whether Commissioner Stan Watson violated any rules by twice voting to award a $1.5 million contract to a company that was paying him for consulting.
The board may hear from both its investigator and Watson before voting on whether he crossed ethical lines. If Watson is found to have committed an ethical breach, the board then has the power to remove him from office, suspend him or take no punitive action.
Watson, who represents about 350,000 people in East DeKalb, didn’t return phone calls to his office.
The Board of Ethics decided on a 3-1 vote in May that there was probable cause to advance the case.
The board’s investigator said at the time that Watson had admitted he didn’t recuse himself when he voted to award a contract to APD Solutions, a property development company that was paying him more than $500 a month for his strategic advice. Watson received $19,800 from APD solutions from 2012 to 2014, said the investigator, attorney Robert Browning.
Watson didn’t disclose his relationship with the company before the DeKalb Commission voted unanimously April 10, 2012, to award a $1 million contract to APD Solutions to rehab foreclosed homes. Watson voted again nine months later to add $500,000 to the contract.
Watson apologized for his votes earlier this year during a brief interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Channel 2 Action News.
“I don’t remember doing that,” Watson said in February. “If I did, it was a mistake and inadvertent.”
Three board members — John Ernst, Edwinett Fay Perkins-Murphy and Susan Neugent — said at their May meeting that Watson had a conflict of interest.
Board member Clara Black-Delay said Watson should have recused himself, but his actions didn’t rise to the level of an ethics violation, especially since his vote didn’t sway the outcome of the commission’s 7-0 decision to award the contract to APD Solution.
The board dismissed other ethics allegations made by a DeKalb resident that Watson improperly charged the county for his personal cellphone bills and that he used county funds to to build a website where people could donate to his re-election campaign.
Browning said Watson used his cellphone mostly for county business, and Watson told him that he didn’t collect any money through his website’s link for campaign contributions.
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