Nathan Deal
The governor faced complaints that he personally profited from his campaign’s aircraft rentals from a company he partly owned, that he illegally used state campaign funds for legal bills related to a federal ethics investigation when he was a member of Congress and that he accepted campaign contributions that exceeded limits. The state ethics commission cleared Deal of major ethics violations in July 2012 while finding he made “technical defects” in a series of personal financial and campaign finance reports. Deal agreed to pay fees totaling $3,350.
Holly LaBerge
Before her appointment as executive director of the state ethics commission in August 2011, she was a lobbyist for the state Public Defenders Standards Council. She took the job after the governor’s counsel, Ryan Teague, contacted her about replacing Stacey Kalberman before Kalberman’s salary was cut and her top aide was dismissed. Staffers testified in Kalberman’s and Streicker’s whistleblower lawsuits that LaBerge said the governor owed her after the commission cleared him of major ethics violations in July 2012. LaBerge denied the claims in her own testimony. During the trial in Kalberman’s whistleblower suit against the commission, LaBerge testified that she found no budget crisis when she took over following Kalberman’s departure.
Stacey Kalberman
The former executive director of the state ethics commission was awarded $700,000 when jurors decided April 4 that she had been forced out of her position in 2011 for vigorously investigating ethics complaints against Gov. Nathan Deal’s 2010 campaign. Kalberman filed her whistleblower lawsuit in June 2012, about a year after she resigned following the commission decision, citing a budget crisis, to cut her salary by $35,000, or 30 percent. The move came about a month after she and her top deputy, Sherilyn Streicker, asked the commission to issue subpoenas in the Deal investigation. Kalberman said she twice asked the commission’s chairman, Patrick Millsaps, to sign subpoenas in the investigation.
Sherilyn Streicker
Streicker was Kalberman’s top assistant and the investigator in the complaints against Gov. Nathan Deal. Her position was eliminated as a result of the commission’s financial difficulties, then-Commission Chairman Patrick Millsaps said. She filed a whistleblower lawsuit against the ethics commission in June 2012.
Patrick Millsaps
Millsaps was appointed to the state ethics commission in February 2009. He was chairman of the commission when it cut Stacey Kalberman’s pay from $125,000 to $85,000 and eliminated Sherilyn Streicker’s position. Millsaps resigned from the commission in November 2011 after a dispute arose about whether he had exceeded the legal amount of time on the commission. He later joined the presidential campaign of former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, eventually rising to the position of chief of staff of the campaign. During the trial in Kalberman’s whistleblower suit, Millsaps acknowledged under cross-examination that if the governor’s office assisted in the recruitment of LaBerge to succeed Kalberman, “it doesn’t pass the smell test.”
Chris Riley
Chief of staff to Gov. Nathan Deal and a founding member of HRPW Investments, a Gainesville partnership that owns an airplane. Deal’s private business, Gainesville Salvage & Disposal, also was a co-owner of the plane through its subsidiary, North Georgia Aviation. Riley later dropped out of the partnership but was the pilot of the plane when it carried Deal throughout the state during his successful 2010 campaign for governor.
Elisabeth Murray-Obertein
Murray-Obertein was a staff attorney with the ethics commission who claims that Holly LaBerge intervened in Gov. Nathan Deal’s ethics case and repeatedly bragged of her relationship with the governor. She also said that she had recommended a $70,000 fine against Deal, but he was required to pay $3,350. Murray-Obertein was dismissed from her position in January after a Capitol police officer said he smelled alcohol on her on the morning of a workday.
John Hair
Hair is a former information technology specialist with the ethics commission who claims he was fired for “frivolous” reasons after he refused to remove documents from Deal’s ethics case file. He said he “blew the whistle” to reclaim his reputation. He filed his own whistleblower suit against the commission in March.
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