Digging deeper
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has aggressively reported DeKalb County’s political woes. Today’s story stemmed from an exclusive AJC investigation March 23 that uncovered how a county commissioner charged personal expenses to her county-issued purchasing card.
With its CEO awaiting trial for corruption and school officials convicted of malfeasance last year, DeKalb County faces a new crisis with revelations that a commissioner repeatedly charged personal expenses to her county Visa card.
On Tuesday the board of commissioners is planning to take action: It’s scheduled a brown bag “lunch and learn” refresher for commissioners over proper use of county-issued charge cards.
In the two weeks since Commissioner Elaine Boyer admitted to racking up thousands of dollars in personal charges, reported by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, there have been no censures, no public rebukes, no investigations launched and no requests for investigations.
Boyer signed an agreement acknowledging her charge card could be revoked for misuse. But the interim chief executive officer, Lee May, says he can’t do that because she’s an elected official, pointing to the county’s unique government structure that separates executive and legislative functions.
Late Friday, after repeated inquiries from the AJC last week, Boyer issued a statement saying she and her staff were suspending use of their county-issued cards.
For their part, Boyer’s fellow commissioners have been reluctant to sanction a colleague.
"I don't want to get into taking away something from another elected official," said Commissioner Larry Johnson, who scheduled Tuesday's "lunch and learn." "But (the AJC report) was a clarion call for us to look at this and be more transparent."
The anemic response has residents such as Pam Saint, a former IRS worker who lives not far from Boyer in the Smoke Rise community, fuming.
“If I ever did what she did, I would have been fired,” said Saint. “Really, she ought to be run out on a rail for what she’s been doing.”
The most significant action so far has been not by the county, but by two men who filed complaints with Board of Ethics on Thursday. One of them isn't even from DeKalb, but from Norcross in neighboring Gwinnett County.
They’re asking that Boyer be removed from office, which the Ethics Board has power to do. They also want investigations into possible criminal wrongdoing by Boyer and her chief of staff, Robert Lundsten.
The case will be the first test of the newly-invigorated board and DeKalb’s ability to police itself. The board’s next meeting is in May.
County commissioners know what's at stake. The AJC's findings came soon after a consultant's report named the "stigma of political corruption" one of the top threats to economic development. Another roadblock, according to the report: the perception that county leadership is unable to enact reforms to improve the county's image.
Boyer claimed ignorance
Boyer’s ethical problems are the latest to bedevil Georgia’s third-largest county.
Suspended CEO Burrell Ellis stands accused of 14 felony counts of strong-arming county vendors for campaign cash and punishing those who did not give. He has strongly denied wrongdoing in the case. Last year, former schools Superintendent Crawford Lewis pleaded guilty to misdemeanor obstruction in a racketeering case, and he’s currently appealing a judge’s decision to send him to jail. Another school official and her husband were convicted of racketeering.
Last month’s AJC investigation exposed a pattern by Boyer of spending thousands of dollars on airline tickets, rental car charges and other travel expenses, in some cases while she and her husband were having financial problems.
Boyer reimbursed the county for most of the charges within days, weeks or months, but she didn't reimburse about $4,000 in purchases until after the newspaper began scrutinizing her spending. Boyer later apologized in an interview with Channel 2 Action News, saying "it never dawned on me that what I was doing was wrong."
She also told Channel 2 that she doesn’t have her own credit card. Records show that, instead, she turned to her DeKalb County purchasing card, or P-card, for interest-free bridge loans.
P-cards work like debit cards, drawing money directly from a county account.
Boyer has declined to be interviewed by the newspaper since the investigation was published March 23.
Several legal experts have said her P-card use has been a breach of public trust at best, criminal at worst.
District Attorney Robert James has the Boyer matter “under review,” according to a spokesman. The DA’s office has asked the county government to turn over the same documents it gave to the AJC in its investigation.
Boyer signed an agreement in 2010 with the DeKalb Purchasing and Contracting Department, which administers the cards, acknowledging she could face civil action or criminal prosecution for improper use of her P-card.
She agreed not to use it for personal purchases, and acknowledged that “DeKalb County may terminate my right to use this card at any time for any reason at its sole discretion.”
As acting CEO, May oversees the purchasing department, but he says he can’t touch Boyer’s card — or any other commissioner's. He also declined to be interviewed, speaking only through e-mails and through his spokesman, Burke Brennan.
“As I stated last week, I don’t have any authority to impose any corrective action or policy mandates on elected officials,” May said in an e-mail Monday. “We have separate branches of government in DeKalb County.”
Commissioner Kathie Gannon said she disagrees with May about his authority over P-cards.
“His office, his department, I would think, would have some responsibility for the revoking of P-cards, no matter who has them,” she said.
Gannon said she’d rather Boyer’s constituents speak out.
“It’s not us that should be doing everything,” Gannon said. “People have a responsibility for their government. It’s not a bystander sport. You don’t just stand outside and look and point fingers, you get in and you change it.”
But a professor at Georgia State University who follows DeKalb County government says it’s up to commissioners to cut off a colleague, if they so desire.
“You can’t grant the authority to use tax dollars without oversight and not have the power to take it away. This falls directly on the county commission to do something,” Steve Anthony said. “It’s their job.”
Commissioner Jeff Rader said he’s considering asking the DA for an investigation if no one else will. But Rader, interviewed before Boyer said she’d stopped using her card, said it would be premature to ask Boyer to give up her card without a finding of fault.
“I think that any of us would want due process before we were acted against by our peers,” he said.
Johnson, the commissioner, said he wants Chief Operating Officer Zach Williams to sign off on all commission offices’ P-card charges. He said he is also open to discussions on freezing all commission cards until new policies are in place.
A board with teeth
DeKalb has struggled for years to police itself, in part because the separation of the CEO and commission restricts the ability of each branch serve as watchdogs for each other.
A special grand jury investigating allegations of corruption in DeKalb blasted the county’s unwillingness to boost its internal watchdogs, including the Georgia’s only ethics board established by state law.
The ethics board is charged with investigating complaints and issuing advisory opinions on behavior that could violate DeKalb’s code of ethics. But it has outsized power: it can fire nearly every county employee and remove any elected official if its finds flagrant violations.
The grand jury report noted those powers but called for a complete overhaul of the board it described as weak and ineffectual. The board struggled to meet quarterly, as required by law, in part because it could attract quality volunteers due to lack of funding and organization.
But just before the Ellis’ indictment last year, existing ethics board members began pressing for more money they said was critical to conduct investigations.
County commissioners, led by Boyer and Sharon Barnes Sutton, stalled on that request this year over concerns the board would have too much power if it had the ability to hire outside investigators.
May was able to push through a 600 percent increase to the board, to $118,000, despite the slowdown. The seven-member body recently met for the first time this year and agreed to hire an outside investigator on one outstanding complaint, from 2012, about the county’s watershed department.
“We as a board won’t have any idea directionally where to go until we see (cases) fully looked into,” said board chairman Isaac Blythers.
Richard Williamson, who lives in unincorporated DeKalb outside Avondale Estates, is watching closely how DeKalb handles Boyer’s case.
“In the end, she needs to probably be disqualified from her job position,” said Williamson. “I don’t think we should have public officials that do that. I think we need to set some examples here.”
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