Stacey Kalberman made a dumb mistake that cost her a good job.
She apparently didn’t know that as executive secretary of the state ethics commission, she wasn’t supposed to take her job seriously. She was naive enough, or maybe principled enough, to believe that she was being paid by the taxpayers of Georgia to enforce Georgia campaign law and to hold the politicians of Georgia accountable.
Silly woman.
Her real job was to pretend to hold the politicians of this state accountable. Her real job was not to discover the truth, but to make ethics allegations go away as quietly and cheaply as possible, with as little damage as possible, to those who wield power in this state.
And if Kalberman didn’t fully understand that job description, the commissioners appointed to oversee the ethics commission certainly did. After Kalberman began to investigate allegations of corruption in Gov. Nathan Deal’s 2010 campaign and to seek subpoenas, her bosses intervened. They forced her out of her job under false pretenses and then shut the investigation down.
But as most Georgians now know, she did not go quietly. Kalberman instead filed suit under Georgia’s Whistleblower Protection Act, and last week, a jury of her peers awarded her $700,000, plus back pay and attorney fees that will probably bring the total to well over $1 million. According to jurors, the evidence was so overwhelming, they didn’t even have to debate the verdict. The only question was how much to award Kalberman in damages.
Politically speaking, last week’s verdict amounted to a 7.3 earthquake, shaking things to their foundation. Deal’s staff tried to dismiss it, calling it “an internal dispute between former employees and former commissioners,” but that description ignores the fact that the governor was the primary beneficiary of the scandal.
They also insisted that neither Deal nor his office had conspired in Kalberman's ouster. I can actually believe that, if only because no intervention was necessary. What happened to Kalberman wasn't extraordinary; it was normal. That's the most damning thing about it.
Under state law, all five members of the state’s ethics commission are appointed by elected politicians: three by the governor, one by the speaker of the House and one by the lieutenant governor. Under that arrangement, top politicians are in no danger of being held accountable by the commission. Quite the contrary. Politicians have arranged to make the ethics commission accountable to them. They control its membership, budget and legal authority, and they have not hesitated to punish the commission if it gets too nosy.
They also tend to appoint commissioners whose careers and livelihood depend on being loyal soldiers. For example, the ethics commission chairman who helped to arrange Kalberman’s ouster was a veteran of Republican campaigns who went on to help run Newt Gingrich’s 2012 presidential campaign. The vice chairman, appointed by then-Gov. Sonny Perdue, had served Perdue as his top lawyer and went on to run for state Senate. They were installed to protect the political establishment, not investigate it.
In comments Monday, Deal himself acknowledged that “confusion, dysfunction and inefficiency have plagued the commission” and that reform is needed. He also noted that the dysfunction has become so deep that the panel has simply ceased processing cases.
“That’s not fair to candidates facing frivolous complaints who have a cloud hanging over them because their cases stay in limbo,” Deal said.
Somehow, that emphasis is telling. As Deal sees it, the commission’s main failing is that it’s not clearing politicians quickly enough. That’s more troubling to him than the fact that major ethics cases, such as those involving former Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine, have had to be dismissed rather than pursued.
That emphasis may also reflect Deal’s own distrust of powerful ethics panels. When he left Congress in 2010 to run for governor, he did so with congressional ethics investigators hot on his heels. Their final report found “substantial reason to believe” that Deal had violated numerous ethics standards, including a ban on using his office for personal gain. That’s the history that he brings to this debate, and unfortunately, it’s reflected in the tepid “reforms” he has proposed.
