The Georgia ethics commission can’t produce records showing that it notified three Atlanta City Council members of late fees for not filing their campaign finance disclosures on time before putting them on a public list of Atlanta political candidates who had fines for filing late or not at all.
All three city council members, Matt Westmoreland, Jennifer Ide and Joyce Sheperd, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in December that they only learned of their late fees when the AJC contacted them.
At the time, David H. Emadi, the commission’s executive director, insisted that the commission had notified the candidates.
“As part of this effort, we have called, emailed, and sent postal correspondence to the addresses and numbers they have registered on file with the Commission,” he said.
But when the AJC filed a public records request for all the notices sent to the 62 candidates on the list, the Georgia Government Transparency & Campaign Finance Commission — often referred to as the Georgia ethics commission, turned over 223 pages of records that did not include notifications to Westmoreland, Ide and Sheperd.
An ethics commission official said that the agency doesn’t always retain notices.
“Given the volume of notices that go out, we don’t always keep every notice, especially if the amount that is owed is outweighed by the cost of collecting,” said Robert Lane, the commission’s deputy executive secretary.
The commission claimed that the three owed fines of $125.
