With a freshly convicted county executive, a commissioner who confessed to federal corruption charges and a school superintendent who confessed to bid-rigging, DeKalb County has a serious problem. And that’s before we start exploring additional allegations ranging from glaring conflicts of interest and misuse of public money to ethical breaches.
It’s a real mess, and while DeKalb citizens have every right to be dismayed, honesty requires an admission that they have been part of the problem. This situation has built over time, and the people perpetrating and tolerating this corruption are people whom the voters have elected and often re-elected, and of whom they have demanded too little. If the county is to change, that has to change.
In March, interim county CEO Lee May announced the hiring of Mike Bowers and Richard Hyde to launch what was billed as a no-holds-barred investigation into county operations. (Bowers, a former state attorney general, and Hyde, an investigator, earned considerable credibility in their work on the Atlanta schools scandal.)
Five months later, that brave tone has changed. May has demanded that the investigation wrap up by the end of August, although he has since suggested that he might be open to an extension. Bowers insists that he needs until October. And Bowers and Hyde have released an “interim update” claiming that the county is “rotten to the core,” a colorful description that May quickly rejected.
That sequence suggests that May might be trying to block an investigation that has gotten uncomfortably close to something or someone. This is DeKalb, so maybe so. But May also has a point. Injecting words such as “rotten to the core” into the public debate is at best premature. And that harsh language isn’t justified by the allegations that Bowers and Hyde chose to include in their update.
The closest they come is the claim that “in the last few days we have found what appears to be a bribery scheme in a major county department.” If that claim pans out, it ought to be prosecuted aggressively. But it’s fair to question the propriety of putting such a major allegation on the record before confirmation.
Part of the issue may be that throughout his public career, Bowers has espoused a rather idiosyncratic interpretation of the “gratuities clause” in the state constitution, which states that government “shall not have the power to grant any donation or gratuity.” I respect Bowers and agree with his strict interpretation, not least because it might rein in the corporate giveaways in which the state engages.
The problem is, Georgia judges, prosecutors and political system do not interpret that clause anywhere near as strictly as Bowers. His letter strongly suggests that he may be judging DeKalb by a standard that is simply not applied elsewhere in state and local government, and if so that’s unfair.
It’s not as if DeKalb doesn’t have major challenges being judged by the standards that do apply.
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