A lawyer and lobbyist who was part of the team that defended Gov. Nathan Deal’s campaign against ethics charges during his first term in office was named Friday to the State Board of Workers’ Compensation by the governor.
Benjamin Vinson, a partner in the mega-law firm Dentons, will take the $150,000 a year post July 1.
Vinson served as majority caucus counsel in the Georgia House of Representatives. In 2011, Deal appointed him to a new investigative panel aimed at cracking down on government officials who fail to enforce the state’s immigration-related laws. The Immigration Enforcement Review Board’s members quickly elected him chairman.
Vinson represented a political action action committee - Real PAC - that was created to push Deal’s agenda, and he was one of the lawyers who represented the governor’s campaign in cases before the state ethics commission.
The state ethics commission cleared Deal of major ethics violations in 2012 while finding he made “technical defects” in a series of personal financial and campaign finance reports. Deal agreed to pay fees totaling $3,350. The case against the governor’s campaign and its aftermath led to series of problems at the commission that persisted for a few more years.
A Fulton County jury in 2014 found that former commission executive secretary Stacey Kalberman was forced from her job for investigating the Deal campaign, eventually awarding her and her attorneys $1.15 million.
The three-member State Board of Workers’ Compensation is responsible for administering workers’ compensation laws in the state. The jobs historically have gone to lawyers with political connections to the administration in power.
