The political fate of state Sen. Don Balfour lies in the hands of three people. But not as you might think.
The Snellville Republican was indicted last month on 18 counts of filing false reports and theft. This past week, Gov. Nathan Deal appointed two legislators and a retired judge to evaluate Balfour’s case and recommend whether to suspend him.
But whether Balfour takes his seat in the Senate come 2014 won’t hinge on that decision. At least, not directly.
That’s because the state Constitution would render any suspension meaningless. At issue is this provision:
“If a public official who is suspended from office … is not first tried at the next regular or special term following the indictment, the suspension shall be terminated and the public official shall be reinstated to office.”
Here, “term” refers to the term of the court handling Balfour’s case. And the court terms in Fulton County, where Balfour was charged, last just two months.
Balfour was indicted in September; that court term ends Nov. 1. The next term ends Jan. 3 — so, if Balfour’s case hasn’t been resolved by then, that’s also when any suspension of him would have to end.
The General Assembly will reconvene a few days after that. See the problem?
This predicament has some folks under the Gold Dome very nervous. How would it look if Balfour is suspended, only to return just before the session begins?
Heck, Democrats might even accuse them of timing the indictment to achieve just that.
Not that such a claim would make sense: An indictment in, say, November would have meant a suspension couldn’t last past February, when the next session will still be going. A January indictment would have yielded the chaos of Balfour beginning the session in good standing, then potentially being removed midway through it.
Of course, that explanation wouldn’t have the bumper-sticker resonance of “Georgia GOP taking care of its own.” (Never mind that two top Democrats served on the panel this summer that advised against suspending indicted state Rep. Tyrone Brooks, D-Atlanta.)
Another reason it wouldn’t make sense is Senate Republicans aren’t necessarily inclined to take care of Balfour. As chairman of the Rules Committee for several years, Balfour wielded much control over which bills made it to the Senate floor for a vote. More than a few senators felt he lorded that power over them and still resent him for it.
But here, too, lies a problem. The Senate cannot suspend one of its members. The Constitution offers lawmakers just four options for punishing a peer for “disorderly behavior or misconduct”: censure, fine, imprisonment (!) or expulsion.
Which punishment, if any, is deemed appropriate may depend on what the three-person panel now weighing Balfour’s case decides to do.
I get the sense expulsion is a real possibility, but not a shoo-in. Balfour has been in the Legislature since 1993. That’s a long time to watch other legislators make their own missteps. An expulsion could get names-getting-named ugly. You can bet that’s on the mind of a lot of senators — some more than others.
But a milder punishment could look uglier. Not least because, when then-Sen. Ralph David Abernathy III was censured by his peers in 1998 following a drug arrest, one senator said he opposed the measure because it was too weak: Expulsion was more appropriate.
That senator’s name? Don Balfour.
