The top two officials at the state ethics commission are on their way out, but there is disagreement over whether the executive director resigned or was fired.
Commission executive secretary Stacey Kalberman and her deputy, Sherilyn Streicker, are out of a job June 30, the end of the fiscal year. Kalberman told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Monday that she and Streicker had been fired "for financial reasons." Kalberman would not comment further.
But Patrick Millsaps, chairman of the commission's governing board, said he and commissioner Hillary Stringfellow met with Kalberman last week to tell her that Streicker's job was being eliminated and that her salary was being cut from $120,000 to $85,000.
Kalberman said she could not work for that and left the room, Millsaps said. The following day, Millsaps e-mailed Kalberman to tell her the commission accepted what he believed to be her resignation.
The chairman, who has said in the past that the commission didn’t have enough money to fulfill its duties, noted that the salaries of Kalberman and Streicker account for about 20 percent of commission’s budget.
“We needed to cut some salaries. We were looking for common-sense solutions to tighten our budget because I didn’t want to have to say we couldn’t do our jobs anymore,” he said. “For us, it was not about the people, it was about the money.”
The appointed Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commission oversees the fundraising and campaign spending of state and local elected officials and regulates lobbying. The five-member commission is authorized to investigate political spending and issue fines for violations of state ethics laws. Kalberman and Streicker oversaw the agency's day-to-day operations and reported to the commission.
Millsaps said in the future that the deputy’s position Streicker held may be filled with a staff attorney for less money.
Kalberman asked lawmakers this year for more money, saying that ethics legislation passed the past two years have increased its workload while the agency's budget has been cut more than 40 percent since 2008.
The news of Kalberman and Streicker's departure does not sit well with William Perry, executive director of Common Cause Georgia, a government watchdog group.
"Stacey and Sherilyn have done a great job in trying to protect the interests of citizens and make sure the state operates in an ethical and transparent way," Perry said.
Kalberman and Streicker are the commission's only staff attorneys and "if you take away that knowledge base the commission is basically useless," Perry said.
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Commissioner Kevin Abernethy described the situation as “fluid.” However, he said he thinks that Kalberman resigned and was not fired.
“Her position is being changed because of budgetary constraints. The issue is we have to make cuts,” he said.
Staff writer Chris Joyner contributed.
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