A Forsyth County man, despite having the state Attorney General's Office on his side, lost his fight to pursue a local case charging public officials with ethics charges on technical grounds.
Senior Superior Court Judge Hugh Stone ruled Wednesday that Terence Sweeney missed deadlines to challenge a July ethics board decision that dismissed charges against three county commissioners that they illegally conducted county business in private.
"I guess I'll go home and review the judge's order," a discouraged Sweeney said after Wednesday's hearing.
Sweeney filed the ethics complaint in March after he said he witnessed County Commissioners Brian Tam, Pete Amos and Patrick Bell at Cumming City Hall for a meeting with Mayor H. Ford Gravitt. State law forbids prearranged gatherings of a majority of the members of a governing body anywhere but in public.
The county ethics board dismissed the charge in July.
But later that month, Senior Assistant Georgia Attorney General Stefan Ritter said the incident violated the spirit of the state's Open Meetings Law, and he directed the county to adopt measures to ensure the practice stops.
All three commissioners have publicly disagreed with that opinion.
Sweeney, who represented himself at Wednesday's court hearing, said he filed a request for a court hearing within 30 days of the ethics board ruling, but he couldn't find a Superior Court judge who would accept the case. Two judges recused themselves.
"No judge in Forsyth County would offer any assistance in signing a sanction," he said.
Under state law, a challenge to an ethics board ruling must receive court approval within 30 days of a decision.
Joseph Homans, an attorney for Tam, argued that Sweeney not only failed to obtain a court order to proceed, but that he continued to file additional material by email as late as the night before Wednesday's hearing.
Stone told Sweeney that he might have been better served had he not tried to navigate the legal system by himself.
"When you represent yourself, you need to be as skillful as an attorney," the judge said.
This is not Sweeney's last gasp, however.
He still has a case pending that charges the ethics board itself with ethics violations for holding a meeting without proper notice in November. And he hasn't given up on the case against the three commissioners.
"I guess I'll file some more paperwork to get them to follow the rules," he said.
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