Atlanta Unfiltered

A judge has ordered Atlanta City Councilman Jim Maddox (right) to pay a $6,650 fine for failing to report tens of thousands of dollars in campaign expenditures. Maddox, a councilman for 32 years, filed three reports indicating his campaign spent no money during the last six months of 2005. He amended the reports several months [...]

Julia Wallace, editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, today announced names of 74 newsroom employees who will take a voluntary buyout. Each will receive two weeks’ pay for every year of service, with a maximum of 52 weeks. There are many award-winning photographers and writers here. They include Gayle White, Jim Auchmutey, Andy Miller, Louie Favorite, [...]

A state ethics investigation is trying to find out whether Lisa Borders (right), president of the Atlanta City Council, lobbied state legislators on behalf of her employer without registering as a lobbyist. A complaint filed with the State Ethics Commission alleges that Borders, then a vice president of Cousins Properties, lobbied in 2007 for passage [...]

By JIM WALLS April 6, 2009 — Georgia legislators, in the final hours of their 2009 session on Friday, appear to have muzzled the agency that monitors their compliance with campaign finance laws. Last-minute changes to Senate Bill 168 redefined the powers of the State Ethics Commission, which enforces laws governing financial disclosure for political [...]

DeKalb County Police Chief Terrell Bolton (right) had it made in 2007, with a perfect score –- all 5’s (Page 4) — on his probationary 6-month personnel evaluation. But it was downhill from there –- ending with his new boss, DeKalb CEO Burrell Ellis, firing him in February. Bolton will challenge his dismissal at a civil [...]

The State Ethics Commission will lose about 30 percent of its current funding in the 2010 state budget passed Friday. The Georgia House and Senate compromised on a $1.2 million budget for the agency in negotiations on the last day of the 2009 legislative session. The House last week slashed spending on ethics enforcement to [...]

Car dealer Allan Vigil (right) has sold $9.8 million of cars and trucks to the University System of Georgia, which he oversees as a member of the state Board of Regents, since 2002. That figure represents just a fraction of his dealerships’ $76 million in sales to state agencies in the past seven years, according [...]

Tax breaks approved by the Georgia House would save businesses half a billion dollars for creating 2,200 jobs at a cost of $265,000 per job, the Georgia Budget & Policy Institute says. A cut to stimulate home-buying would cost $149,545 per home.

House Bill 63, which would let the BeltLine and other Tax Allocation District projects use school tax money, was amended yet again this afternoon in the Senate. With the latest change, school systems in Atlanta and Gainesville could “opt out” of their earlier approval of funding. That use of school funds was ruled unconstitutional last [...]

Atlanta Public Schools are fighting changes to a bill that would let Tax Allocation Districts spend school tax money. A state Senate committee last week amended the bill to say a school board that had already approved a TAD would not have to vote on it again. School board chair LaChandra Butler Burks (right) says [...]

This came in from Cagle’s spokeswoman, Jaillene Hunter, in response to rumors that Cagle had asked the Senate Finance Committee to: “To be clear, the Lt Governor had absolutely no involvement in a Senate substitute to H.B. 63. We are unaware of who suggested he was, but it is a completely false assumption. “H.B. 63 [...]

Georgia Public Service Commissioner Lauren “Bubba” McDonald Jr., facing a possible five-figure fine for breaking election finance laws in 2002, filed campaign finance reports with similar discrepancies in 2008, state records show. McDonald last week admitted dozens of violations in reporting the finances for his 2002 campaign. He blamed the mistakes on his campaign staff [...]