Alpharetta's mayor has asked the city's promotions agency to resume documenting which city officials and employees receive Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre concert tickets that the agency buys at taxpayer expense.
The request comes in the wake of an Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation that found that a fifth of the $150,000 worth of tickets and VIP parking passes bought in 2008 and 2009 went to the mayor and council members, and that the city's Convention and Visitors Bureau later quit keeping the records and destroyed the data it had in a possible violation of state law.
"Nobody has broken any codes or policies," said Mayor Arthur Letchas, a CVB board member who, according to surviving documents, took 20 tickets. "But if keeping records is the thing to do, then we'll keep records."
Meanwhile, another document obtained by the newspaper raises questions about the motivation for halting the recordkeeping in the first place.
In early 2010, Channel 2 Action News investigative reporter Richard Belcher was digging into other dealings by the CVB, including its investment in a $375,000 electronic scoreboard at Alpharetta High School.
Nine days after Belcher obtained the lists of amphitheater ticket recipients through an Open Records Act request, CVB President and CEO Janet Rodgers announced to fellow CVB board members in a Feb. 25, 2010, e-mail that she would no longer be tracking who got the tickets "in an effort to streamline the ticket process in our office."
Rodgers has told the AJC that her reasons for deleting the ticket records from her computer had nothing to do with the request from Channel 2 Action News. She said she was only logging recipients in case someone lost their tickets and needed replacements, and when that never happened, she wanted to clear up computer space.
The records she turned over to Belcher are all that remains. She said she does not know the date that she erased her own data.
Under state law, destroying public documents is a misdemeanor unless done under an approved records retention schedule. City Attorney Sam Thomas, however, said there was no intent to erase public records because Rodgers considered the ticket data a "personal task list."
However, the timing in the wake of Channel 2's request calls that explanation into question, Georgia Press Association counsel David Hudson said. "The coincidences are too great to be anything other than getting rid of any records of the criticized conduct," he said in an e-mail.
Rodgers did not return messages from the AJC on Friday. Approached by WSB at a charity function, she declined to speak about the timing of her decision and would only point out that the money for the tickets came from hotel-motel taxes, which are paid by guests of the city.
In an e-mail Friday, the mayor told Rodgers that he regretted that she was "probably feeling under siege," but he's sure the mission of promoting tourism is being met. He told her it's best to start keeping records again of city officials and employees who get amphitheater tickets.
The mayor is one of 12 voting CVB board members and has no authority to give Rodgers a direct order. However, the City Council does control the level of the hotel-motel tax, which funds the CVB.
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.
Council members interviewed by the newspaper denied abusing the free tickets. Some said they attended concerts themselves so they could talk up the venue to friends, and some said they gave most of the passes away to help promote the city and the amphitheater.
The records showed Councilwoman Cheryl Oakes, also a CVB board member, taking 76 tickets, the most by far in 2008 and 2009. She disputed those figures Friday, attributing it to clerical errors by CVB staff and saying that at most, she and her husband took about 30. She said she absolutely did not take 10 tickets to a Moe concert, as the records reflect.
Oakes said she attended about five shows per year, including a recent Dolly Parton performance, but in most cases, she's given tickets away or accompanied guests to concerts. In one case, she gave tickets to a planning commission member. In another, she said she gave them to a mother and daughter who had recently moved from California and had bought a house through Oakes, who is a real estate agent.
"I have done nothing wrong," she said. "I took the tickets and did what I was supposed to do, which was promote the venue. I don't hoard the tickets for myself."
The situation has Alpharetta resident Kim Bailey livid. She lives in the Garden district, near downtown Alpharetta, and can often hear music coming from the amphitheater. But she's never been to a show because she can't afford tickets in these tight budget times.
She called what elected officials have been doing "a gross abuse of power."
Staff writer Patrick Fox contributed to this article.
Continuing coverage
An Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation found that Alpharetta’s mayor and City Council members took about $30,000 worth of taxpayer-paid concert tickets over two years that were meant to promote tourism. The Alpharetta Convention and Visitors Bureau’s president, who had tracked the recipients, deleted all her ticket data in 2010. Today, we look at the timing of that deletion and what the mayor says should happen next.
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