More cash could mean more ethics probes in DeKalb

POWER TO HIRE, FIRE

DeKalb County’s organizational act establishes a county ethics board, which can have its own staff and budget. The ethics board has not had a staff, though, since being set up in 1991.

The seven-member panel is tasked with hearing complaints of county ethics code violations and conflicts of interest, and may also take up investigations on its own or at the request of citizens. It has most commonly issued binding opinions after hearings.

However, if five members agree, the board can also reprimand, suspend or remove from office the elected county commissioners and chief executive. It also can fire any county worker who reports to those elected officials. Appeals would go to DeKalb Superior Court.

The board is requesting more money to hire investigators and other staff it says are needed to conduct more thorough reviews of complaints.

Members of DeKalb County’s ethics board have been asking for more money for nearly a year but only now, amid renewed scrutiny of government operations, is there a chance they’ll get it. Funding could quadruple if they do.

A special grand jury report released in August alleged that corruption is pervasive in county operations. Ironically, DeKalb has a strong ethics code – on paper.

The seven-member ethics board can hire staff, investigate complaints and, if conflicts or behavior are egregious enough, fire nearly every county employee and remove county commissioners and the CEO from office.

It has that power. But it’s never used it.

Part of the problem: The board’s budget is $16,500 this year, $12,000 of which is parked in the county attorney’s budget to pay for a lawyer’s guidance.

“You can have a Maserati, but if you don’t pay to gas it up, it’s just lawn art,” said ethics board member John A. Ernst, a Brookhaven attorney who joined the panel in June. “Without more funding, we’re just decoration.”

A letter from acting board chairman Isaac Blythers recently made that same argument to interim county CEO Lee May and the county commission.

In it, Blythers asks for another $57,750 for the rest of 2013. Part of the extra money would pay for board training and advice from an attorney who does not work for the county. Training is needed for the members, nearly all of whom have served in the unpaid position for less than two years, in areas such as rules of evidence and proper governing procedures.

Most of the additional money, $35,000, would pay for investigators who could perform their own review of complaints – work that the volunteer board members now often do during the hearings themselves.

The potential for deeper investigation has given some commissioners pause. Concerns about how far such inquiries could go have also slowed a three-year discussion of hiring an internal auditor to serve as a watchdog. The grand jury report cited both the need for a stronger ethics board and to hire an internal auditor.

“I’m not sure about operating expenses,” Commissioner Elaine Boyer said during a recent meeting, about the cost of investigators and, potentially, court reporters to take down minutes or record evidence. “I just ask that be part of the discussion.”

One way to grant the funding request for the rest of this year has been suggested by Commissioner Jeff Rader, the only county employee who has an active complaint against him before the ethics board.

He has proposed moving money from the commission’s own budget to the ethics panel for 2013 – a type of budget transfer that the commission typically rubber stamps. No commission vote has been scheduled on Rader’s proposal.

“This would get them significantly, I think, to where they and we need to be,” said Rader, who faces a complaint from a developer who has questioned his spending commission money for an outside legal opinion on the developer’s project in Druid Hills.

Blythers’ 2014 budget request for the ethics board calls for even more money: $65,000 for investigators and $48,000 for an outside attorney. That request is part of the ongoing budget process, and its fate likely won’t be known until the interim CEO releases a proposed budget in December.

Rebuilding public trust is a theme in the report from the special grand jury, whose yearlong probe into allegations of corruption helped lead to the indictment of CEO Burrell Ellis on charges of conspiracy, bribery and attempted extortion.

The jury’s report calls the current ethics structure “inept” and suggests DeKalb create a full-time ethics officer, a job Atlanta created in 2002 after the federal indictment of former Mayor Bill Campbell on corruption charges.

Atlanta also has an ethics board, whose members are named by various community groups such as the local Bar Association and League of Women Voters.

Cobb County, one of the few counties in Georgia that has a standing ethics board like DeKalb, also draws on community appointments for its panel.

The Cobb commission appoints just one of its seven ethics board members, while DeKalb’s commission appoints five of the seven. The remaining two are appointees of the DeKalb County CEO.

But Blythers rejects suggestions that the board has lacked teeth because of who appoints its members. Once they are appointed, it is nearly impossible to remove DeKalb’s members before their term expires. That’s designed to help shield them from political pressure.

Blythers led the discussion, for example, when board members unanimously rejected Ellis’ request earlier this year to set up a legal defense fund after January searches at his home and office during the widening corruption probe. Ellis had appointed Blythers, the retired president of Atlanta Gas Light Co., to the post two years earlier.