Ethics board adviser: ‘Ship needs to be righted’

A graduate of the University of Georgia’s law school, Constantine was a top-ranking official in the insurance department in the 1970s. He later worked as a lawyer for insurance firms and a well-connected lobbyist for the health care industry. He was hired as an administrative law judge for the state workers’ compensation board in 2011 and left the job earlier this year. He was hired on Thursday to help oversee the ethics commission at a sum of $4,000 a month from January to May.

Georgia’s ethics commission went with an unusual pick for the outsider who will help oversee the troubled agency’s operations: a 66-year-old insider with decades of experience as a lobbyist and attorney who is comfortable in the state’s corridors of power.

Robert Constantine must now try to resuscitate an ethics department mired in so much turmoil that its five-member board took the unprecedented step of seeking his outside help to mediate, oversee and even referee rampant infighting amid a growing federal investigation.

He said in an interview Friday his goal is to “help them get to a point where the agency is functioning properly,” which suggests the board charged with overseeing lobbyist issues and campaign complaints is mired in dysfunction.

“I need to find a way to help them go back to doing their job,” Constantine said. “Basically, my job is to go down there and figure out what’s going wrong and fix it.”

How much turmoil? The agency’s two top staff members received federal subpoenas last week demanding documents related to a probe into Gov. Nathan Deal’s 2010 campaign. Three other former staff members have been subpoenaed for documents to produce records for a grand jury.

A former computer specialist for the commission also claimed he was ordered to destroy documents related to the Deal investigation, and the current staff attorney said in sworn testimony that the agency’s director, Holly LaBerge, bragged that Deal “owed” her after the commission dismissed the most serious charges against the governor.

Deal has said he did nothing wrong and that he welcomes a broader investigation. LaBerge has denied both claims, and made clear that she did not request that the board hire Constantine, who will be paid $4,000 a month between January and May. The board said those funds will come from internal accounts.

With Constantine, the board’s five commissioners tapped someone who knows how Georgia government works. He served as deputy insurance commissioner in the 1970s and later was an attorney for insurance firms and a well-known lobbyist on health care issues.

“We were usually on opposite sides of issues, but that didn’t interfere with the fact that we respected each other,” said Wayne Oliver, another veteran lobbyist. “He’s a good guy with honest integrity.”

Constantine, who was more recently an administrative law judge with the State Board of Workers’ Compensation, said Deal appointed him to a Department of Labor board in 2011 but that he hasn’t seen the governor in years. He said commission Chair Kevin Abernethy contacted him last week about the role and he told Abernethy he’d be willing to plunge in.

Yet he was unknown to at least one commissioner, Hillary Stringfellow, who requested his resume before joining the other four commissioners in unanimous approval. His job description also wasn’t made available to commissioners before the vote.

William Perry of Common Cause of Georgia, the transparency advocacy group, said he’s willing to give Constantine the benefit of the doubt.

“It definitely raises an eyebrow that he was hired without some commissioners even seeing his bio,” Perry said. “I’m concerned that they haven’t even had the chance for a conversation, but I’m hopeful it’s the right one.”

Constantine said he wouldn’t have accepted the job if he didn’t think he could be an independent agent, and that his years of experience in government dating to the 1970s would come in handy. But some questioned whether hiring an outsider would just complicate an already complex situation.

“I don’t know how commissioners vote on somebody they don’t know,” said Rick Thompson, the former head of the ethics agency. “And if it’s a personnel problem, then I don’t think adding another layer is going to help.”

Constantine, though, sees a chance to help an agency that needs an extra hand.

“It’s a mess down there — that’s my understanding. There’s concerns they aren’t functioning the way they should be, that they’re not enforcing the law,” Constantine said. “I’ve been given pretty wide latitude to make changes. But first I have to see what’s down there. The ship needs to be righted.”