Ethics Should Be Focus Of Election Season

Read the column here.

State Integrity Investigation:

http://www.stateintegrity.org/

Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commission (formerly the State Ethics Commission):

http://media.ethics.ga.gov/

Georgia Alliance for Ethics Reform:

http://georgiaethicsreform.com/

HB 1105.  This bill never made it out of the House Rules Committee:

http://www.legis.ga.gov/legislation/en-US/Display/20112012/HB/1105

SB 391.  This bill never made it out of the Senate Rules Committee:

http://www.legis.ga.gov/legislation/en-US/Display/20112012/SB/391

HB 397.  This bill was reported favorably out of House Judiciary Committee and then passed the full House by a vote of 154 to 5, with 10 not voting and 11 excused.  It was similarly favorably reported out of Senate Judiciary Committee and then passed the full Senate by a vote of 46 to 0, with 3 not voting and 7 excused.  Since the Senate passed a substitute version of the bill, the measure went back to the House for reconsideration, where it passed by a vote of 169 to 1, with 5 not voting and 5 excused:

http://www.legis.ga.gov/Legislation/en-US/display/20112012/HB/397

Even though HB 1105 and SB 391 went nowhere in the General Assembly and are dead for the session, the fight is not over.  From Debbie Dooley’s Facebook page concerning a more limited “pledge campaign” to keep the ethics reform issue alive:

All candidates have been invited to join Atlanta Tea Party Patriots, Common Cause Georgia, Georgia Conservatives in Action, Georgia Tea Party Patriots and other organizations supporting ethics reform to a press conference announcing the candidate pledge campaign.

Below is text of the letter sent to incumbent members of the Georgia General Assembly.

Dear Senator or Representative:

I know many of you are disappointed that you will not have the opportunity to vote for the ethics bills that were proposed during this session, so we are providing you the opportunity to show your constituents that you support limiting lobbyist gifts to legislators. During this session, members of the General Assembly told constituents they would vote for the ethics bill if it reached the floor. Since you were denied that opportunity, we are giving you the chance to support meaningful change in 2013 if you are re-elected.

A copy of the pledge text appears below:

Candidate Pledge:

I pledge, if elected, to co-sponsor a bill during the 2013 legislative session to limit each lobbyist gift to $100.

The proposed legislation will add the following language to a new section of the Ethics in Government Act, Chapter 5 of Title 21 of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated:

“It shall be unlawful for a lobbyist to make a gift to a public officer where the value of the gift is more than $100.00.”

Candidate Signature:_______________________

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Georgia Corruption Risk Scorecard

The table for Georgia from the Center for Public Integrity web site did embed so well (formatting issues), so I replicated it below.

Yes, I realize that these are measurements of “corruption risk,” as opposed to measurements of actual corruption, but they should give citizens pause nonetheless. 

 

Overall Grade	F (49%)
Rank among 50 states	50
Public Access to information	F
Political Financial	F
Executive Accountability	D-
Legislative Accountability	F
Judicial Accountability	C-
State Budget Process	D
State Civil Service Management	F
Procurement	D
Internal Auditing	B
Lobbying Disclosure	F
State Pension Fund Management	F
Ethics Enforcement Agencies	F
State insurance Commissions	F
Redistricting	F

Georgia’s ethics laws are loaded with loopholes and are poorly enforced, yielding one of the nation’s worst scores on the State Integrity Index. Read more from SII State Reporter Jim Walls.

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Unified Government Loses In Stiles Case - Again

Readers may remember that, back in May of last year, Judge T. Penn McWhorter issued a partial interlocutory injunction in Clarke County Superior Court against the Unified Government of Athens-Clarke County in the Stiles Apartments parking case (a ruling in which he went to great lengths to rip City Hall’s conduct eight ways from Sunday).

The partial injunction did not deal with the crux of the matter, ownership of the those parking spaces located in front of Stiles Apartments on South Lumpkin Street over which Stiles originally filed suit in December 2010, but rather with things that City Hall had done, or was threatening to do, while the matter was making its way through the courts.

The Unified Government appealed the case, which given its nature went straight to the Georgia Supreme Court rather than the Court of Appeals.  The Supremes have issued their ruling, unanimously upholding the Superior Court’s partial injunction.

Without all of the legalese and citations, cutting straight to the point they affirmed the judgment for Stiles on two main points:

1)  1) “ACC may yet prevail on its claim that the agreement intended for all or part of the parking area to be used by the public at large. However, for the purposes of deciding whether to grant the interlocutory injunction, the trial court accepted the evidence supporting the construction of the agreement as argued by Stiles Apartments. As there is evidence authorizing the grant of interlocutory injunctive relief, the trial court did not manifestly abuse its discretion.”

     2) “ACC also raises the defenses of laches, waiver, and the statute of limitations. However, a review of the record shows that these issues were not ruled on by the trial court. Therefore, they may not be raised on appeal.”

So, the Unified Government has spent yet another pot of taxpayer money (probably, like in the original Superior Court proceedings, on outside counsel) on yet another losing legal battle, so that it can further pursue its losing strategy in the Stiles case.  The folks down at City Hall should be paying very close attention to this; I assure you that some of we citizens surely are.

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Georgia GOP Will Be Strong Presence At Convention

Read the column here (04 March 2012).

Great minds think alike:
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/super-tuesday-math-why-does-georgia-m...

There are two reasons why I focused on the GOP side of the presidential preference primary: 1) I am a Republican and am far more familiar with the minutia of this stuff on my side of the aisle (though anyone can look this information up for either party) and 2) the fact that, since Obama is for all intents and purposes unopposed on the Democratic side, the elephants are where all the action is.

For what it is worth, I partook of that action and cast my early ballot last Wednesday.

The three states that have more delegates allotted that Georgia are California with 172 delegates, Texas with 155, and New York with 95.
 
According to national GOP Rule 13(a)(5), states casting a majority of their 2008 electoral votes for the Republican candidate receive 4.5 + 0.60 × the jurisdiction's total 2012 electoral votes. The resulting math for Georgia is:
4.5 + (0.60 X 16 [2 Senators and 14 Representatives] =
4.5 + 9.6 = 14.1 (by rule rounded up to next higher whole number = 15)

See Rule 13, “Membership in Convention,” of the Rules of the Republican Party: 
http://www.gop.com//images/legal/2008_RULES_Adopted.pdf

See Rule 7.3, “Election of National Convention Delegates,” of the Rules of the Georgia Republican Party:
http://www.gagop.org/documents/GRP%20RULES%20ADOPTED%2020110924.pdf

See Republican Detailed Delegate Allocation (this is a great web site, so play around with it):
http://www.thegreenpapers.com/P12/R-Alloc.phtml

For the bit about “unpledged” delegates, see O.C.G.A. 21-2-197:
http://www.lexisnexis.com/hottopics/gacode/default.asp

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Militia Aren't Argument For Gun Control

Read the column here (19 February 2012).

Constitution of the State of Georgia:
http://sos.georgia.gov/elections/GAConstitution.pdf

Official Code of Georgia Annotated (see Title 36 “Local Government” for state militia districts and Chapter 38 “Military Affairs”):
http://www.lexisnexis.com/hottopics/gacode/default.asp

Georgia Department of Defense (includes links to all manner of things military and militia):
http://www.gadod.net/

Finally, there is a group called the Georgia Militia that is not a part of the state’s formal military structure. It appears to be more of a “preparedness” organization made up of private citizens (which, to my mind, is precisely the kind of group envisioned by the “unorganized militia” sections of the state Code):
https://gamilitia.com/index.html

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All Things In Moderation

My thanks to Clarke County Republican Party chairman Matt Brewster for asking me to moderate last Monday's evening's panel discussion among Athens-Clarke County Commissioners Kelly Girtz, Andy Herod, Kathy Hoard, and Doug Lowry.

The full meeting room at the County Inn & Suites included the “usual suspects” of GOP faithful, office holders, and candidates, but also included members of the general public, high school and collegiate student organizations, and members of the press corps (both the Banner-Herald and Flagpole were represented).

While I may frequently disagree with the policies adopted by City Hall, I have no personal animosity toward those who serve in government.  In fact, I think it did the commissioners credit to participate in our little civic exercise.

See the local GOP web site here and photos of the event here.

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McKillip Mishandles Redistricting Issue

Read the column here (12 February 2012).

Though at first glance the topic of this column may appear to be dated in that it is an ongoing story, I do not think so.  That is because HB 804 will doubtlessly be an issue in the upcoming elections.

I originally submitted a version of this column on the morning of Thursday, 02 February.  That afternoon, news broke that the Athens-Clarke County legislative delegation had decided to pull the bill (meaning Bill Cowsert in the Senate).  Jim Thompson offered me the opportunity to revise my column, which I immediately set about doing.  In the meantime, Doc Eldridge contacted Jim to request space in last Sunday’s edition for a piece on the Chamber and the ongoing Selig Development spat.  Jim gave it to him, and offered to move my column back a week (I should resume my regular biweekly schedule next Sunday).  I revised the column a second time later in the week so as to reflect the ongoing nature of the story.  Last I heard on Tim Bryant’s Newsmakers, McKillip is set to introduce his own ten district map, without super districts, later in the week.

As I noted on the Banner-Herald comment board last Tuesday, “l am not married to the idea of super districts, but if we want and/or need to change them, the current situation would seem to be a case study in how not to go about doing so.”

In fact, I think that the idea of having Commission and Board of Education districts correspond has a lot going for it (though there would be practical difficulties to overcome) – but any such change needs to have popular support, not be imposed without widespread popular support by the local legislative delegation to the General Assembly.

HB 804:

http://www.legis.ga.gov/Legislation/20112012/119101.pdf 

Unified Government’s Charter and Code of Ordinances:

http://www.athensclarkecounty.com/index.aspx?NID=314

Unified Government’s Reapportionment Committee web page (see the separate pages concerning Reapportionment Committee Members, Reapportionment Maps, and Reapportionment Process):

http://www.athensclarkecounty.com/index.aspx?NID=4226

As part of my 2006 campaign for the District 1 seat on the Athens-Clarke County Commission, I put forth the idea that commission districts should be redrawn so as to concentrate UGA’s dorms and Greek houses, which are currently split among districts 3, 4 and 7.  College students have been on the receiving end of City Hall’s legislative initiatives and I think that carving out a “student” district would not be such a bad idea (for examples of this, see the definition of family ordinance and rental registration debacle).  Though I suggested a change to where the districts lines should be drawn, I have never supported any proposal that would alter the structure of local government.

I penned the following in a column back in July 2011; even though the column ended up with the title of “Redistricting work should give voice to students,” the bit about a “student-centered” commission district was actually my secondary point:

http://onlineathens.com/stories/072411/opi_861471782.shtml

Rather than just tweak existing commission and school board district lines, I think that the redistricting committee recently named by the mayor should consider creating a "student-centered" commission district.

I suggest that approach because the University of Georgia's dormitories and fraternity and sorority houses are split among three commission districts. Though grouping them into a single district would not affect many students who live off campus, it would serve to concentrate student voting power much more so than is currently the case. After all, students are routinely the focus of new ordinances and enforcement mechanisms adopted by the commission, so why should they not have representation?

At the state level, I have long maintained that turning the decennial redrawing of Georgia’s congressional, state House of Representatives, and state Senate districts over to a nonpartisan commission is an idea whose time has come.  This is because, when in the majority underneath the Gold Dome, neither party has shown itself capable of resisting the temptation to play political games with the redistricting process.  Though this proposal would change who draws district lines, it does nothing to alter the structure of state government.

I noted in that same column:

If I had my way, though, Athens would take even more of a lead in the redistricting process. And it could, too. Every year, the Athens-Clarke County government submits what amounts to a "wish list" of desired changes to state law to the county's legislative delegation for consideration by the General Assembly. Rather than follow its usual custom and hector those underneath the Gold Dome for more power and higher taxes, perhaps the mayor and commission could ask our local House and Senate members to introduce a bill in the upcoming session to take redistricting out of the hands of the General Assembly, placing it instead in the hands of an independent commission. 

In taking such a step, Georgia would hardly be tilling new ground. According to the most recent information available from the National Council of State Legislatures, quite a few states have enacted such commissions to draw congressional and/or state legislative district lines, the composition and particulars of which vary widely from one state to another.

For example, six states have delegated the "first and final authority" to draw congressional districts to their commissions. Seven other states delegate the "primary responsibility" for drawing congressional districts to their commissions.

Two more states employ "advisory" commissions. Five states have "backup" commissions. Another state maintains a "fallback" commission enabled to draw congressional districts in instances where the state legislature cannot agree on a plan. Yet another state utilizes a non-partisan legislative staff process to redistrict for both its legislative and congressional representation, which then must be approved by the state legislature.

Though relying on an extra-legislative commission is not without its own drawbacks, it is an idea worthy of consideration; given the opportunity to do so, neither of Georgia's major political parties has shown itself able to resist the temptation to gerrymander the state's congressional and legislative districts.

In either case, these are actions that the Mayor and Commission could have undertaken on their own initiatives; others of necessity would have to be involved, but the locals could have gotten the ball rolling.

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Clarke County GOP February Meeting To Feature Commissioners

Matt Brewster, chairman of the Clarke County Republican Party, kindly asked yours truly to moderate this event, a request to which I gladly assented (late word is also that Representative Paul Broun will address the meeting after the commissioners' portion concludes).  Says the Athens GOP web site:

The Athens GOP will host commissioners Andy Herod, Kelly Girtz, Kathy Hoard & Doug Lowry at our next meeting.  Please join us at the Country Inn & Suites on Monday, February 13th at 6:00pm.  The program will begin with a opening statement by the commissioners followed by questions from the moderator.  We will also have questions from the audience at the end of the meeting.  We hope to see you next Monday!   

Commissioners

District 1:  Doug Lowry

District 7: Kathy Hoard

District 8: Andy Herod

District 9: Kelly Girtz 

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