The ethics board tasked with investigating Gwinnett County Commissioner Tommy Hunter plans to subpoena him to testify at an upcoming hearing in the case.
At the board’s brief Tuesday morning meeting, chairman David Will said attorneys for the woman who filed the ethics complaint against Hunter had requested the commissioner be subpoenaed. Gwinnett’s ethics ordinance grants the ethics board the power to issue subpoenas, which Will said would be enforceable by the county’s court system.
That means Hunter could be forced to testify in a process that he has thus far declined to participate in in any fashion. He's also said very little in the months since his Facebook post calling civil rights leader and U.S. Rep. John Lewis a "racist pig," which is the subject of the ethics complaint.
The board scheduled the hearing — the final, formal chance for both sides to make their arguments — for May 31.
“We’re looking forward to seeing what [Hunter] has to say,” Will said.
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The ethics complaint against Hunter was filed Feb. 6 by local attorneys Helen Kim Ho and Christine Koehler, on behalf of Atlanta resident Nancie Turner. The ethics ordinance does not require complaints to be filed by Gwinnett residents.
Turner's complaint claims that Hunter's social media activity — including the Jan. 14 post about Lewis, in which he also referred to Democrats as "Demonrats" — violated multiple tenets of the ethics ordinance. The ordinance, adopted in 2011 amid a corruption scandal that ended in the departure of three commission members, primarily targets conflicts of interest and shady land deals.
Turner’s complaint, however, focuses on portions of the ordinance that do things like urge county officials to “never engage in conduct which is unbecoming to a member or which constitutes a breach of public trust.”
Hunter's consultant and spokesman, Seth Weathers, has called the ethics complaint and Gwinnett's ordinance "entirely unconstitutional," and the commissioner has declined to participate in the process. Hunter did not make the ethics board appointment afforded to him and did not file a formal response to the complaint.
Weathers has pointed to a recent court ruling in DeKalb County — which deemed the use of ethics board appointments from non-elected officials unconstitutional — as a victory for Hunter's case. But, as of Friday, the Hunter camp had not filed any sort of legal challenge to the complaint against him.
Weathers did not respond to requests for comment this week.
A representative from Koehler's law firm who attended Friday's ethics board meeting declined to speak to a reporter. Neither Koehler nor Ho immediately responded to requests for comment.
After the hearing scheduled for May 31, the ethics board will decide if the complaint should be upheld or dismissed and issue a recommendation on the case to the Gwinnett County Board of Commissioners.
Will said he would expect the ethics board to make a speedy decision.
If the complaint is upheld, the only penalties that could be recommended against Hunter are “written warning, censure or reprimand to be issued in public.”
Tuesday morning’s meeting lasted less than half an hour and was mostly procedural, but several of the anti-Hunter protesters who have attended Board of Commissioners meetings since his controversial Facebook posts came to light were in attendance.
Susan Clymer was one of them.
“[Hunter] was hired by the ethics code, and he needs to abide by it,” she said. “...He’s actually putting a thumb in people’s eye, saying , ‘No, it’s not something that I’m going to abide by.’”
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