Alpharetta's mayor and city council members snatched up roughly $30,000 worth of concert tickets courtesy of taxpayers over two years, but tracking whether the tickets were used as intended -- to promote tourism -- is not possible, mainly because of shoddy record keeping.
Alpharetta's Convention and Visitors Bureau, funded by local hotel-motel taxes, spent nearly $150,000 buying two years of season passes to the Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre. The tickets were meant to be distributed to hotel owners, restaurants and radio stations, among others, to promote sales tax-generating tourism. Local tourism officials across metro Atlanta and the country commonly give free tickets to woo event planners in hopes of luring conventions, trade shows and sporting events that can have millions of dollars in economic impact.
But Alpharetta elected officials took more than a fifth of its tickets -- 204 tickets for 43 shows, with VIP parking and coveted orchestra-section seats for such acts as The Eagles, Dave Matthews Band, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and Stevie Nicks. The city attorney, city administrator, public safety chief and other department heads and city officials took another 108 tickets, about $16,000 worth.
Alpharetta can't say who has been getting the freebies since 2009. The Convention and Vistors Bureau kept limited records of how the tickets were used. It stopped tracking ticket distribution altogether at some point, then erased what records it had last year, in a possible violation of state law, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has learned. Destroying public records is, in some cases, a criminal offense.
Other metro Atlanta convention and visitors bureaus say they limit the number of tickets that go to public officials or require them to pay for their tickets. They also keep meticulous records on where they go.
William Perry, executive director of the government watchdog group Common Cause Georgia, said what's happening in Alpharetta smacks of a conflict of interest and taxpayer-funded perks. There's no public benefit to members of council attending concerts, he said, and the failure to adequately track the tickets raise more questions.
"Taxpayers have a right to know where their taxpayer dollars are going," he said, "and right now, it looks like it's going to council members."
The AJC attempted to contact the city officials who received tickets. Those who spoke denied abusing the free tickets, and several said most of the passes they received they gave away to help promote the city and the amphitheater. One councilman, Jim Paine, admitted to using the tickets for himself.
Councilwoman Cheryl Oakes, according to available records, took 76 tickets, the most by far, in 2008 and 2009. She and her husband, Paul, got them for Steely Dan and Bryan Adams, and Oakes took more tickets for Charlie Daniels Band, Styx/REO Speedwagon and Stevie Wonder, among others. In one case, she took 10 tickets to a Moe concert. Oakes could not be reached for comment..
City Administrator Bob Regus took the second-most with 44.Mayor Arthur Letchas and his wife, Sally, got seats for Rod Stewart, The Eagles and Stevie Nicks. In all, the mayor took 20 tickets.
Other recipients include Councilman D.C. Aiken with 28, Public Safety Director Gary George with 10 and City Attorney Sam Thomas with six.
All three mayoral candidates appear on the lists. Paine took 26, former Councilman Doug DeRito took 12 and former Councilman David Belle Isle took six, records show.
By their own admissions, council members have continued taking tickets since 2009.
Paine said most of the time, the tickets he's taken have been the CVB's leftovers. Over the years, he said he's paid his own way into the venue about three times.
"I don't think it's an exorbitant amount of tickets," said Paine. "I never thought a whole lot about it, until recently."
Asked how elected officials attending concerts helps tourism, Paine said they're promoting the amphitheater through word of mouth.
"Using our network of friends we know," Paine said. "Our personal friends and political friends, and talking up the venue, and hopefully creating an interest in coming to the venue."
DeRito acknowledged that ticket distribution needs to be more open, and that giving them to public officials provides "very little" benefit to tourism.
Carla Miller, founder of City Ethics, an information clearinghouse for local government ethics programs said the public understands that some events may call for officials' presence.
"Citizens don't care about that," Miller said. "They do care if there's inadequate accounting of the tickets."
Alpharetta Convention and Visitors Bureau President and CEO Janet Rodgers says she deleted all her ticket data from her computer sometime in 2010.
Rodgers said her reasons had nothing to do with an Open Records request or the fact that so many tickets went to council members. She said she only logged recipients in case someone lost their tickets and needed replacements, and when that never happened, she wanted to clear up computer space.
"It was just a hassle, and I didn't need them anymore," she said.
Under state law, destroying public documents is a misdemeanor unless done so under an approved records-retention schedule.
Thomas, the city attorney, said in an e-mail that Rodgers thought of the data a "personal task list," and there was no legal requirement to track tickets.
But once a record related to public business is created, it becomes a public document and must be treated as such, Georgia Press Association counsel David Hudson said. Deleting the ticket list, paid for by public funds, may violate the law, Hudson said.
Other CVBs in metro Atlanta say it's important to document who receives tickets, and who ultimately uses them, for purposes of transparency and accountability.
The Gwinnett CVB, which operates the Gwinnett Center Arena and Convention Center, requires board members, employees and county commissioners to purchase tickets, spokeswoman Lisa Anders said. .
"We do it, quite honestly, to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest," Anders said.
Other CVBs are far more meticulous in their record keeping.
Last year, the Atlanta CVB spent $34,000 on Braves, Falcons and SEC football championship tickets. The tickets can be used to entertain those with business interests in the city, those with potential to bring business to the city,spokeswoman Lauren Jarrell said.
In each case, employees doing the entertaining must fill out and sign request forms giving the business reason for needing tickets and the end user. Requests must be approved by the executive office before tickets can be distributed.
Mike Kennedy, who joined the Alpharetta City Council in 2010 and has his own amphitheater season tickets, said the issues raised by the AJC may warrant a revisiting of the city's ethics code, and a call for better record keeping by the CVB.
"Absolutely, there should be full transparency on tax dollars," Kennedy said.
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