Fulton County’s tax commissioner made $342,000 last year, most of it by personally charging $1 a parcel to collect property taxes for three of Fulton’s cities, county documents show.
The payments made Arthur Ferdinand one of the highest-paid elected officials in the state. In addition, he and other tax commissioners are skirting a 2007 state law designed to regulate these kinds of payments.
The three cities, Atlanta, Sandy Springs and Johns Creek, already pay more than $3 million to the tax commissioner’s office for tax collections. Ferdinand’s personal fee is on top of those payments. In addition to his base pay of $134,279, last year Ferdinand received $152,035 from Atlanta; $29,860 from Sandy Springs; and $25,754 from Johns Creek, according to files The Atlanta Journal-Constitution obtained through an open records request.
“Do I think I’m overcompensated? No,” Ferdinand said last week. “Paying me personally a fee for collecting is still good business for them.”
Some of Ferdinand’s critics disagree with his definition of fair compensation.
“It’s obscene, is what it is,” said state Rep. Wendell Willard, R-Sandy Springs, the 2007 law’s author. “You could have three policemen on the beat for what Atlanta has to pay him.”
Newly elected Sandy Springs City Councilman Gabriel Sterling said the three cities should band together and demand reprieve.
“It rubs me completely wrong,” Sterling said. “This guy could be in office another 20 years.”
Charging personal fees is more common than not in Georgia counties that collect taxes for cities, according to Tommy Tedders, president of the Georgia Association of Tax Collectors. DeKalb County’s tax commissioner also assesses such fees; Cobb’s and Gwinnett’s commissioners do not.
Ferdinand said his methods pay off for local governments through a 99 percent collection rate that the cities couldn’t hope to duplicate for what he and the county charge. He’s not breaking the law, he said, because his contracts with the cities predate the law.
He isn’t the only local tax commissioner who believes prior deals trump Willard’s law. DeKalb Tax Commissioner Claudia Lawson made $233,176 last year, including $77,506 for collecting taxes for cities.
Such payments are remnants of Georgia’s old fee system, in which constitutional officers such as probate judges, sheriffs and clerks of courts made their pay by collecting fines and fees, a system mostly done away with in the 1950s. Ferdinand started the job as a County Commission appointee, until state legislation made the Fulton tax commissioner an elected position starting in 2005.
Willard said he was troubled to learn that Ferdinand and other tax commissioners were personally charging cities to collect taxes, so he introduced legislation that said if commissioners in large counties need extra compensation, the money would have to come through their county governments.
The Association County Commissioners of Georgia backed the bill. Clint Mueller, ACCG’s legislative director, said he reasoned that taxpayers fund a tax commissioner’s staff, office space and technology.
“My thought was, it’s not the tax commissioner that’s doing the work, it’s his staff doing the work,” Mueller said.
Ferdinand suggested that questions over his pay are less about legalities than they are about a vendetta by Willard, also the Sandy Springs city attorney.
Beginning 10 years ago, Willard ran afoul of another of Ferdinand’s controversial practices. The tax commissioner sold liens on the lawyer’s property to Vesta Holdings in 2001, 2002 and 2003. Vesta, the largest purchaser of tax liens in the state, buys liens from the county and turns a profit by charging fees and penalties that would otherwise be collected by the county.
Ferdinand also pointed out that Willard makes far more than he does off Sandy Springs, which pays Willard’s law firm $33,000 a month for legal services.
“If he believes the contracts are illegal, he could cancel them,” Ferdinand said. “He shouldn’t have the city operating under what he thinks is an illegal contract.”
Willard said he isn’t being vindictive over the liens. He’s just trying to save Sandy Springs and other cities money, he said.
Of the $33,000 paid to his law firm, he said, $25,000 goes to three other lawyers, a legal assistant and overhead at a law practice that does three-quarters of its business with the city. If the mayor and council aren’t happy, they can end his services at any time, Willard said.
Ferdinand said the same thing about his arrangement with the cities, but Willard said it’s not so simple. Using Ferdinand is more cost-effective than doing the work in-house, even with the nearly $30,000 payment. Sandy Springs residents have also become accustomed to receiving just one tax bill, Willard said.
Johns Creek Mayor Mike Bodker said the city looked into taking over tax billing, but found it would cost more than using Ferdinand. The commissioner gets bills out on time, they’re correct and there are few collection problems, he said.
“If we don’t pay it,” Bodker said of the personal payment, “I’m fairly confident that our taxes will not be billed.”
Sandy Springs Mayor Eva Galambos had similar praise for Ferdinand’s near-perfect collection rate. But she, too, objects to the extra payment.
Atlanta Councilwoman Felicia Moore recalled the issue of personal payments to the Fulton and DeKalb tax commissioners coming up a decade ago. In 2001, Ferdinand asked Atlanta to start paying him 95 cents per parcel, but since he was an appointed employee at the time, the council balked.
Moore said Atlanta is now in the same bind as the other cities — and with a larger, more complex tax base.
“I don’t know that we have a choice,” she said. “Paying him $150,000 is certainly a lot less than us trying to take on tax collections ourselves. We’re talking millions and millions.”
While DeKalb’s tax commissioner still collects fees, the 2007 law did cause some changes. Only about a third of the payments made to Lawson last year went directly to her.
Atlanta and Dunwoody each pay her $25,000, but that money goes to the county, which then turns it over to her, said Assistant Tax Commissioner Robert Goodman. Lawson uses this process for Atlanta and Dunwoody, but not the other cities, because the contracts for those two cities were written after the 2007 law took effect. The seven other cities that DeKalb collects taxes for will continue to pay Lawson directly, Goodman said, until their contracts expire.
“That’s how we read the law,” he said. “We don’t see that it causes contracts to be broken. We see that it applies to future contracts.”
The state attorney general’s office declined to comment on the law, a spokeswoman saying a judge would have to settle a dispute over what the law means. Willard said he hopes that will happen eventually. A resident of any of the three cities could mount a challenge.
“Until someone makes him address the court on this issue, it’s not going to stop,” he said.
The practice of personally collecting fees is not uncommon among states that have elected tax collectors, according to Jacquelin Boyers, research director at the National Association of Counties.
But that doesn’t mean it sits well with residents.
“I think it’s terrible,” said Brent Sobol, an Atlanta taxpayer. “I think he gets paid a lot more than a public servant should.”
-------------------
2010 SALARIES
Tax commissioners’ pay, compared to what other pivotal public officials earn.
● Fulton County Tax Commissioner Arthur Ferdinand: $341,928
● DeKalb County Tax Commissioner Claudia Lawson: $233,176
● Gov. Nathan Deal: $139,339
● Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Carol Hunstein: $167,210
● Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle: $91,610
● Mayor Kasim Reed: $147,500
● DeKalb CEO Burrell Ellis: $157,098
● Fulton County Manager Zachary Williams: $200,000
● Gwinnett Tax Commissioner Katherine Meyer: $156,538
● Cobb Tax Commissioner Gail Downing: $130,537
The commissioners in Gwinnett and Cobb do not assess personal charges. Commissioners in Fulton and DeKalb do.
About the Author
