Report cites progress but gives Georgia D- on ethics

The center gave its top grade, a C, to Alaska.

On its website, the center notes that it gave only two other states marks greater than a D+: California and Connecticut each got a C-.

Where does Georgia stand?

The Peach State placed 24th in the ranking, with a D-.

Who flunked?

Eleven states received F’s: Delaware, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Nevada, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota and Wyoming.

Georgia’s anti-corruption laws got a D- in a report released Monday, but it was not the grade that caused the most controversy.

Three years ago, the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit investigative journalism organization, released a report grading every state on the strength of its laws against official corruption. That report ranked Georgia dead last and handed ethics watchdogs a cudgel to swing in their campaign for tougher laws, especially surrounding the then-unlimited amounts lobbyists were allowed to spend on state politicians.

The new report ranked Georgia 24th among the states, which is something of a commentary on how the center views anti-corruption efforts across the nation. The top-ranked state, Alaska, earned a grade of C, and 11 states failed the test outright.

But Georgia’s vault to mediocrity alarms people such as William Perry, a professional ethics hound, who called the report “devastating” for Georgia reformers, giving state politicians room to brag without reason.

“The Legislature gets to say the same outfit that had us dead last three years ago now has us 24th,” he said. That is all the excuse lawmakers will need to delay further changes, he said.

“They’ve got the cover now that they need not to do anything for years to come,” he said.

The 2015 report is different than the 2012 study, and the Center for Public Integrity cautions the two rankings should not be compared, although the center does that itself at various turns. Some of the improvement relates directly to changes made since the last report, including the passage in 2013 of a $75 cap on most lobbying gifts. At the same time the report dings the state for the fact that the law contains so many ways to circumvent the cap.

How much hay lawmakers actually will make out of the middling ranking is not clear. House Ethics Chairman Joe Wilkinson, R-Sandy Springs, blasted the 2012 report and offered mostly indifference to the new one.

Part of his problem is the center hires freelance journalists in each state to do the grunt work of filling out dozens of data points that go into the ranking. Some of those are judgment calls. In 2012, many in Georgia said they were graded more harshly than other states in areas where the laws were nearly identical.

“A number of us on the Georgia side contacted them and said how is it possible that we have this law in place and so does California — they were given 50 points and we were given zero,” he said. “I will, of course, read it, but I must confess, based on the 2012 report and what I’ve seen so far of this, I must confess (I believe it) to be tainted.”

In Georgia, the center contracted with veteran Atlanta broadcast journalist Susanna Capelouto, who drew on a mix of existing reporting from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and other area media and her own interviews to come up with scores for the report.

“She never contacted me,” Wilkinson said, adding that before the 2012 report the center was more collaborative in its reports on state-level ethics.

Most of those contacted by the AJC about the ranking had yet to read the report, which is dense and spans a range of issues, such as public access to records, pension fund accounting and who gets appointed to state jobs.

While Georgia earned a passing grade overall, the state failed in several key measures. The report gives Georgia F’s in access to public documents, campaign financing, lobbying disclosure and executive branch accountability.

Two of those failing grades land, in part, on the doorstep of the Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commission, which oversees campaign finance law and the regulation of lobbyists. The commission, informally called the state ethics commission, is emerging from a period of unprecedented political turmoil, including the firing of an executive secretary.

The data for the report was collected early this year, before the new secretary, Stefan Ritter, took over. Ritter said he thinks the ethics commission has made great strides since then, although he agrees there is room for improvement.

The commission earned a score of zero for its political independence, in part because of a series of whistleblower lawsuits filed during the tenure of the former executive secretary claiming that Gov. Nathan Deal’s office interfered with an investigation into his 2010 campaign. The state lost one lawsuit and settled others, although Deal has denied any meddling.

Ritter said he has seen no political interference with his board since he came on in April, but he said “complete isolation is always desirable,” especially when it comes to setting the commission’s budget.

“That’s not what our statutes call for at the present,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean that cannot be changed.”