The state ethics commission has done no work on any of its 169 open cases in nearly a year, the commission director said Thursday.
In a related move, commissioners Thursday dismissed a complaint against two insurance companies accused of funnelling illegal cash into the 2010 gubernatorial campaign of John Oxendine. Commissioners made no determination on the validity of the complaint, which was filed in 2009; they dismissed it because their staff had made so little progress on it.
“If that’s not toothless, I don’t know what is,” said Wyc Orr, a former state representative and current vice chairman of Common Cause Georgia.
The news comes at the beginning of a busy election year in which every statewide office and every legislative seat is on the ballot.
Executive Secretary Holly LaBerge said blame for the lost year rests with former staff attorney Elisabeth Murray-Obertein.
“Without an attorney that is actively and competently working on the cases, there is nothing moving forward with a case,” she said. “No cases were investigated or audited or dismissed.”
Commissioners fired Murray-Obertein in January following accusations that she was intoxicated at work. She gave despositions damaging to LaBerge in pending whistle blower cases filed by the former director and her assistant claiming commissioners fired them for pursuing an ethics investigation in the 2010 campaign of Gov. Nathan Deal.
“Ms. LaBerge’s comments are patently false and defamatory,” said Brian Sutherland, Murray-Obertein’s lawyer. He did not elaborate.
Commissioners appeared unsurprised by the news of the immobile backlog of cases.
“We certainly are intimately familiar with the reasons for (the backlog),” Chairman Kevin Abernethy said.
The commission is charged with investigating alleged violations of state campaign finance and lobbying laws and levying fines when a politician or lobbyist breaks those laws. But in recent years, commissioners have been more engaged in internal fights among commission employees or lawsuits from former ones.
Orr said the agency’s inaction on complaints did not surprise him, “given how entirely absorbed the commission has had to be in its own problems.”
Last month, John Hair, a former computer specialist with the commission, became the latest to file suit against his former employer. Hair’s complaint alleges he was fired after he refused LaBerge’s orders to alter or destroy records related to the Deal investigation.
In the case involving Oxendine’s 2010 campaign, commissioners agreed unanimously to dismiss a complaint against Rome-based State Mutual Insurance Company and its affiliate Admiral Life Insurance. The companies were accused of making illegal campaign contributions to Oxendine’s campaign in 2009 by funneling them through political action committees. Oxendine is a former state insurance commissioner.
Senior Assistant Attorney General Stefan Ritter advised the commission to dismiss the investigation without prejudice, meaning it could be reopened at a later date. The companies had sued the ethics commission over its issuance of subpoenas in the case, but that suitwill be dropped since the commission threw out the complaint against the insurers.
“Given the current staffing situation of the ethics commission, it is not really ready to go forward with this case,” Ritter said.
The commission is advertising for a new staff attorney, one of four positions the small agency hopes to fill, LaBerge said.
“We’re starting to see some resumes trickling in,” she said.
Although LaBerge laid the commission’s lack of progress at the feet of her former staff attorney, records show the agency’s productivity has suffered greatly in recent years.
In 2008, the commission closed 116 ethics cases, collecting $195,000 in fines. In 2011, just 15 cases were closed and $10,850 in penalties were collected, according to a database of resolved cases on the ethics commission’s website.
The decline came amid significant budget cuts over a series of years.
Since then, the commission has been more involved in fending off lawsuits and criticism than investigating complaints.
Abernethy said he believes the office will begin processing complaints again once a new attorney is hired. When asked if he believed the commission were fulfilling its responsibility to keep watch on the money behind political campaigns and lobbying, he gave a careful answer.
“I think we are handling the circumstances and challenges that are presented to us over the last 18 months as best as we can,” he said.
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