This hullabaloo about how Tim Lee handled the Atlanta Braves deal is over. The Big Guy said so himself. So, please, move along.
The county ethics board punted on two of the complaints against the Cobb County Commission chairman. At that point, Tom Cheek, the citizen who had filed the allegations reluctantly dropped the third, knowing he was rolling a heavy rock uphill.
Ethics board members weren’t exactly finding Lee faultless. In fact, the board said allegations that Lee conspired to avoid the state’s Open Records Act should be in front of a Superior Court judge, not a collection of civilians who gather to determine if politicians’ actions pass the smell test.
But once the board set aside that portion of his complaint, Cheek clearly lost heart. “I thought it was unethical to break the law, and I thought the Open Records Act was a law,” he said, expressing the same surprise any of us non-lawyers might feel in the face of the board’s decision.
Shortly thereafter, Cheek pulled the plug on the rest of his complaint, saying the “apology” Lee had issued earlier sufficed.
I put quote marks around the word apology because it was a classic, you’re-still-wrong-but-I’m-sorry-you-feel-that-way atonement.
Cheek is no camera-hogging nutcase, no self-appointed watchdog type, not the sort who routinely haunts city councils, school boards and county commissions. He’s a square fellow who has successfully tilted at other windmills. Earlier this year, he pushed county officials to shake up the medical examiner’s office after his son died in a fire and he felt the office botched the investigation.
Cheek was not available Friday, the day after the board hearing, but I talked with him a few weeks ago and he called the whole thing with Lee “surreal.” He said he was willing to drop his ethics complaint if Lee just fessed up and admitted he bent the rules by taking it upon himself to bring in a well-connected bond lawyer to parlay in secret with the Braves.
Individual Cobb commissioners can't hire a lawyer to work for the county, and for the longest time Lee steadfastly insisted he had done no such thing. However, the AJC kept digging up records that showed the opposite.
Lee was also reminded of the truth by Cobb's gutsy county attorney, Deborah Dance. After conferring with Dance, who reminded him what had actually happened, Lee changed his story, delivering a classic bit of unabashed balderdash. "It is now my understanding," he said, that the lawyer in question, the lawyer he personally brought in to negotiate, "was acting on the county's behalf."
It was that story that seemed to spur Cheek to bring his complaint, which also contended that Lee ignored open records requests and used personal email accounts when dealing with the Braves so his communications would stay secret.
Those complaints could be brought before a judge, as the ethics board suggested, but I don’t suppose anyone will bother. Politicians know the state’s Open Records Law has the sting of overcooked spaghetti slapping the back of their pinstriped suits.
To his credit, Lee kept his game face throughout the proceedings. “I’ve always been confident, very confident, I did not violate any law, any rules or any code,” Lee said of the deal that may one day consume as much as $400 million of public money.
Lee's justification for pushing legal and ethical boundaries is that he had to get inventive during the effort to separate the Braves from Atlanta. And his defense was top-shelf. In fact, his lawyer, Ben Mathis, who heads a prestigious law firm and the county's Chamber of Commerce, brought in Cobb's Favorite Son, former Gov. Roy Barnes, to tell the ethics panel how secrecy is vital to all economic development ventures. The two also explored the vagaries of legal terms like shall, should, oughta and mighta coulda.
I’ve seen Barnes argue in court, testify at a hearing and address the Legislature. Each time, the folksy barrister from Mableton sounds like he’s delivering an after-dinner speech at the Elks Club. Thursday was no different, although the board members somehow withstood Barnes’ charm, refusing to dismiss the case outright.
In the end, it wasn’t high-powered lawyering that got Lee off the hook. According to Cheek, it was The Big Guy’s so-called apology letter.
Which is, admittedly, a masterpiece. It starts with a campaign speech about how Lee got the county $1 billion of this and $130 million of that and a ball team and a AAA bond rating and … Heck, after reading the preamble, I wanted to move to Cobb and vote for Tim Lee!
Then he deflected the “criticism regarding a lack of transparency,” saying “I believe much of that criticism is politically inspired or is being used as a subterfuge to attack the Braves project merely because they disagree with the decision.”
(Several weeks back, Cheek went before the commission and ticked off the taunts publicly thrown his way by Team Lee: Malicious. Have a vendetta. Against everything. Bitter. Demagogue. Hidden agenda. Disingenuous. Desperate. And petty.)
Then, having basically demeaned his critics, Lee held his nose and kept typing: “I unfortunately forgot some people like Mr. Cheek may be zealous in their opinions, but not wrong in their motives,” he wrote.
That was it. No admission of wrongdoing. No real repentance for his actions. Just the backhanded acknowledgement that someone who questioned them mighta coulda been sincere.
As Thursday night wore on, Cheek shook Lee’s hand and walked off into the darkness. Lee ambled over to face the media.
“I don’t think there’s any vindication,” Lee said in answer to a question. “This is a great country we live in, where citizens have the opportunity to question their government and how they go about doing business.
“I’ve learned a lot from Mr. Cheek.”
Now, please, everyone move along.
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