All three candidates for Alpharetta mayor say they'll reimburse the city for the Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre concerts they attended at taxpayers' expense.
Their decisions follow a joint investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Channel 2 Action News that found that a fifth of the nearly $150,000 worth of tickets and VIP parking passes purchased by the city's Convention and Visitors Bureau in 2008 and 2009 went to the mayor and council members.
"If it's pointed out to them, and they're willing to go back and make amends, I think that's a good signal," said William Perry, executive director of the government watchdog group Common Cause Georgia.
The tickets were intended to be to distributed to hotels, restaurants, event planners and radio stations, among others, to promote sales tax-generating tourism. But several officials acknowledged attending concerts themselves.
Soon after WSB started asking questions, CVB President Janet Rodgers quit keeping records and didn't document what happened to another $127,600 worth of 2010 and 2011 season passes, the investigation found. At some point in 2010, she erased what data she had, a possible violation of a state law forbidding destruction of public documents.
David Belle Isle, a mayoral candidate and former councilman who took the least number of tickets of any elected official in 2008 and 2009, issued a news release last week saying he would pay back the money and challenging his opponents to do the same.
Both Jim Paine and Doug DeRito said they already planned to do that and criticized Belle Isle for making issue of the ticket controversy.
"Please know that this is a political grandstanding moment by Mr. Belle Isle," DeRito said in an e-mail.
He and Paine said they started making inquires about ticket values on Thursday, the day before Belle Isle's challenge. Paine said he wasn't planning to "make a political spectacle out of this."
"Whatever the fair share is, I'm more than happy to pony up and pay back as needed," Paine said.
Belle Isle will have the easiest time ponying up of anyone. He took just six tickets before leaving office to make an unsuccessful run for state Senate. He and his wife, Candice, attended the amphitheater's inaugural concert by The Eagles, then he later got two seats each for Bryan Adams/Foreigner, and Bob Dylan/John Mellencamp/Willie Nelson.
He said he wasn't questioning the integrity of anyone who took tickets or of the CVB.
"It really comes down to a matter of being beyond reproach," Belle Isle said. "There should not even be the appearance of impropriety."
Paine took 26 tickets, including passes to The Eagles, Rush and Styx/REO Speedwagon. He said he's been to a handful of other shows in the past two years, including a Roger Daltrey performance earlier this month and several Atlanta Symphony Orchestra performances.
DeRito took 12, including Boston/Styx; Bob Dylan/John Mellencamp/Willie Nelson; and Sugarland.
So far, no one else who took tickets has announced intentions to pay for them. Three other past and present council members partook of freebies, the records show, as did the mayor, city administrator, city attorney and public safety director. In interviews, several of them denied abusing tickets and said they were either passing them along to visitors or familiarizing themselves with the venue so they could promote it by word of mouth.
For those reimbursing, the tricky part will be coming up with values. Belle Isle said he cut a check to the CVB on Monday for $450, figuring that had he paid for the tickets himself, he would have bought lawn seats for about $75 each.
But the CVB's season passes put them in the center orchestra section, close to the stage, which are more valuable seats.
The tickets were also bought in bulk at a discount. Assuming they were all of equal value, based on the number of concerts each ticket would have been worth $144 in 2008 and $177 in 2009, or $159 across both years.
Values would also vary by show. Tickets to see high-profile rock acts certainly carry more worth than Atlanta Symphony Orchestra performances. Tickets to The Eagles had face values of $65 to $185, but could go for as high as $1,000 through brokers. Roger Daltrey tickets ranged from $40 to $126.
"If it turns out that's not the right calculation, then we'll fix it," Belle Isle said of the $450.
Unmatched coverage
A joint investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Channel 2 Action News found that Alpharetta’s mayor and City Council members took about $30,000 worth of taxpayer-paid concert tickets over two years that were meant to promote tourism. The Alpharetta Convention and Visitors Bureau’s president, who had tracked the recipients, announced she would stop doing so just nine days after WSB started asking questions. She then deleted all her ticket data sometime in 2010, which might have been illegal. Today, we hear from mayoral candidates who vow to reimburse taxpayers for the freebies they took.
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