Atlanta Unfiltered

The head of the Georgia Lottery made about a half-million dollars last year, but you wouldn’t know it if you checked salary data on the state auditor’s website. Open.Georgia.gov shows Margaret DeFrancisco was paid $353,500 in salary in FY2010. What it doesn’t tell you is that the lottery paid her a bonus of $143,276 last year. What’s up with that?

Earning nearly a quarter-million dollars, Julie Lewis ranked as Georgia’s best-paid staff attorney for a local school board in 2009, state auditor’s records show. Lewis pulled in $31,000 more than Atlanta Public Schools’ best-paid attorney (whose name was not disclosed) and $87,000 more than Jack Lance with Rockdale County schools.

Guy Riekeman made a healthy $318,038 in 2005-06 as president of Life University in Marietta. But he’s done even better for himself since then, earning more than three-quarters of a million dollars in 2007-08.

July 8, 2009 — Casey Cagle refunded more than $1 million in campaign donations after dropping out of the Georgia governor’s race in April. Then, often on the same day, hundreds of contributors gave more than a half-million dollars back to support Cagle’s re-election as lieutenant governor.