While using his position and legal loopholes to earn nearly as much as the U.S. president, Fulton County Tax Commissioner Arthur Ferdinand has also reaped myriad perks from his office.
He has soaked up luxuries at taxpayer expense, an Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation found. Ferdinand also leaps at nickels and dimes, even pocketing county money as reimbursement for expenses he may not have had.
“If he can find a way to squeeze another dime away from the Fulton County taxpayer, he’s going to do it,” said Atlanta-based tax activist R.J. Morris, who ran unsuccessfully against Ferdinand last year, “and nobody’s going to do anything about it because they’re scared of him.”
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Financial documents show that during the roughest years of the Great Recession, when other county offices were scrambling to cut expenses, the tax commissioner took his five highest-paid staffers to lake-front luxury lodges for their “budget planning” sessions. Taxpayers picked up bills of as much as $295 per night for each.
When Ferdinand has taken unidentified individuals for what his expense reports list as “business lunches,” the county has repeatedly paid his tab. Lunches for two at the restaurants he frequents — The Commerce Club and Legal Sea Foods downtown and Chops Lobster Bar in Buckhead — have cost from $47 to $86.
Car washes for his county-funded, take-home vehicles have cost $11 to $25. His latest take-home vehicle, a 2013 Ford Explorer, cost taxpayers $39,000.
For years, when he went to out-of-town conferences, he collected daily meal allowances from the county — even though many meals were already included in registration costs. County policy forbids such double dipping.
Meanwhile, at county expense, he showed up for conferences on Sundays, a day early, when the only thing on the Monday agendas were golf and evening receptions.
“My goodness, it never ends,” state Rep. Wendell Willard, a Sandy Springs city attorney who has tangled with Ferdinand over the years. “This guy will find every possible way to milk the taxpayers.”
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Ferdinand declined an interview request but answered some questions sent to him in writing. On the staff budget-planning overnight trips, he said, “Our planning sessions are justified based upon the financial results they deliver.”
As to why he collected the county meal per diem for conferences where many meals were provided, Ferdinand said “county policy also allows for employees to eat outside of the conferences when the meals served are not suitable to the individual’s dietary needs.”
He did not respond to questions about whether he has any such needs. The policy the AJC obtained from the county Finance Department doesn’t list such an exception.
Assistant Finance Director Sharon Whitmore said in an email that it has been an “administrative practice” to allow for outside meals if someone submits a doctor’s letter and gets approval from the county manager. She said, through a spokeswoman, she was not aware of any such letter from Ferdinand.
Regardless, he told the organizers of the 2009 Georgia Association of Tax Officials conference that he didn’t have any food issues. The registration form asked, “Special dietary restrictions?” He checked “no.”
For that conference in Athens, he took $140 to cover 12 meals, or three per day for four days. Based on the session times, meals provided and county rules, he was entitled to just $60.
Shielded from budget cuts
Most county commissioners have been hesitant to reel Ferdinand in over the years, crediting his methods for quickly capturing any unpaid taxes to help fund courts, the county jail, libraries, senior services and health programs.
The commission has also given him leeway in managing his overall budget. And when other county divisions were being ordered to cut spending, Ferdinand’s office didn’t suffer from the same constraints. The past two years, when other departments have been asked to reduce their budgets by up to 5 percent, the Tax Commissioner’s office has been among the few exempted.
Ferdinand has planned his office budgets at posh locations. In 2009, for example, he took his five top aides to an overnight budget-planning trip to the Ritz-Carlton Lodge at Reynolds Plantation. From 2010 to 2012, the budget was planned at the Legacy Lodge at Lake Lanier. The trips cost taxpayers about $1,700 to $2,000 — as much as $295 per person for single rooms.
“It looks to me like a thinly-veiled boondoggle,” Jim Honkisz, the interim president of the Fulton County Taxpayers Foundation, said. “The question is whether that’s a fair use of taxpayer dollars.”
That’s also a question when Ferdinand has billed the county for meal per diems — $35 a day for three meals — for the three to four conferences a year he regularly attends at public expense.
Financial records show the conferences provide breakfast, lunch or dinner on some of the days. But Ferdinand repeatedly collected the full per diem.
For example, he received $175 for five days for the four-day 2009 TC Tech conference, at the King and Prince Beach & Golf Resort on St. Simons Island. The conference opened Monday with golf, and Ferdinand arrived Sunday. Breakfast and lunch were provided Tuesday and Wednesday, and dinner was provided Wednesday, according to the agenda.
For the 2012 GATO conference in Athens, he received a meal per diem of $140 for four days, even though it started at 4 p.m. on Monday and ended at noon on Thursday. The registration fee of $230 included lunch Tuesday, lunch and a banquet Wednesday and a buffet breakfast Thursday.
For 2013’s GATO conference, though, his $140 per diem request was cut to $60. Who made the change isn’t clear.
The county policy on meal reimbursements says, “Generally, employees will not be provided the full per diem amount on the departure and return dates … An employee cannot ask for per diem on a meal that is covered as part of the registration fee.”
However, the county apparently didn’t question his meal spending for years, even though conference information attached to his expense reports often listed the meals provided.
Picking up the check
Nor did the county question his requests for reimbursement for business lunches.
He charged the county repeatedly for lunches at the exclusive Commerce Club on the 49th floor of 191 Peachtree Tower, often ordering crawfish chowder, pink lemonade and the spinach and rocket salad.
On payment vouchers, he did not say who he ate with or what business purposes the meetings served, and no county policy requires that.
Ferdinand wouldn’t tell the AJC who accompanied him or why. “All documents required by the county were sent to Finance for processing,” he responded. “All other questions have been answered.”
Commissioner Bill Edwards said there’s nothing he can do about how Ferdinand spends his department’s money.
“I am not the authority to really chastise him, because he is a constitutional officer,” Edwards said. “That’s up to the people.”
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