Faced with questions about the man he said last week he would appoint to DeKalb County’s powerful ethics board, interim CEO Lee May on Thursday said he has dropped plans to name the Lithonia businessman to the panel.
A week ago, May said he planned to replace board chairman Isaac Blythers with Terrance Thornton, whom he knows from business circles in south DeKalb.
But, after being told by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Thornton’s financial history includes a foreclosure and not paying his taxes on time, May admitted that he had not vetted Thornton.
“That’s who I was interested in, but he will not be my appointee because I want to make sure my appointee is above question,” May said. “I want county residents to feel confident in whoever my appointment is and the work of the ethics board.”
But May also said he is not willing to re-appoint Blythers to the board, which takes up its first cases in more than a year on May 8. He said he wants Blythers to serve only until he can find a new appointee, though there is no timeline for action.
Thornton did not respond to multiple phone messages left over several days to a number listed for him. But the background check by the AJC revealed a troubling financial history:
• He did not pay $1,345 in county taxes in 2001 until 2006, according to a court lien. Another lien was filed in 2010 after he didn’t pay $11,576 in taxes, though he paid that debt in about three months.
• He lost his 5,000-square-foot home to foreclosure in 2011, appraisal records show. That is the same home he bought in 1999 with a $160,000 loan from the Bishop Eddie Long Ministries charity, according to a 2005 AJC investigation.
“That kind of financial history does give me some concern,” May said of Thornton’s background.
Thornton served as a board member on Long’s non-profit and at least two other tax-exempt groups run by the leader of the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church.
The U.S. Senate investigated the tax-exempt status of Long’s groups as part of a probe into whether he and five other religious leaders were properly spending donations. The three-year investigation yielded no finding of wrongdoing.
The revelations about Thornton come just three weeks before the ethics board is slated to conduct its first investigative meeting since spending a year on hiatus because of funding and quorum struggles.
Among the cases on its plate is an ethics complaint asking to remove County Commissioner Elaine Boyer from office. The complaint was filed after an AJC investigation revealed she rang up thousands of dollars of personal charges on her county-issued Visa. She reimbursed most of the $12,000 – spent on airline tickets, rental cars and other travel expenses within days of the charges and paid another $4,000 after the AJC began its probe.
DeKalb County has had nearly a year of scandal in county government that includes the indictment of suspended CEO Burrell Ellis political corruption charges.
“Every move in DeKalb ethical arena now has to be a positive move, because any negative move will hurt even more,” said Steve Anthony, a political science lecturer at Georgia State University who follows local government. “What is going on now with the ethics board clearly will be seen as a negative for DeKalb.”
Blythers has been the public face of the ethics board since members began pushing for training, funding and support from the county.
Without him, the board will be down to six members and be operating under an acting chairman, Brookhaven attorney John Ernst, when it takes up business next month.
Blythers told the AJC that May had a proxy reach out to him about continuing to serve until a new appointee is found.
But Blythers said he will only serve if May appoints him to a three-year term – which has been done for other board members – or a pledges to wait until a permanent CEO fills the appointment for his seat.
“I don’t want to be on the board if we have to deal with this silliness and nonsense,” Blythers said. “All it does it make it more challenging for this board to do its work with authority. He’s made a mess out of this when it was finally running smoothly.”
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