Restoring Public Trust

After a series of public corruption scandals, the Gwinnett County Board of Commissioners (BOC) pledged to restore public trust in local government. As part of that effort, they scheduled a series of town hall meetings. Forgive my cynicism, but I have little confidence in the commissioners’ pledge to restore public trust in local government because actions speak louder than words.

At the same time they are holding these town hall meetings, they are spending taxpayer money to prevent us from knowing what was done with taxpayer money. Do they honestly expect us to believe they are sincerely trying to encourage ethical behavior, transparency and openness?

A private citizen, Sabrina Smith, filed an open records lawsuit against Gwinnett County, the Gwinnett Chamber of Commerce and Gwinnett County Public Schools (GCPS) after she was repeatedly refused access to records that could reveal how the Gwinnett Chamber spent millions of taxpayer dollars. The Georgia Attorney General’s office said these records are subject to the open records law. An education auditor tasked by Georgia School Superintendent, John Barge, to review GCPS’s use of education funds to pay chamber employees’ salaries, found it was not in compliance with Georgia law. (Perhaps the school board members already knew that because there are no minutes of the meeting in which they approved the payments and the GCPS CFO classified the payments for chamber employees in the school budget as “banking fees”.) Apparently, none of that made any difference to our elected officials. One week after Sabrina filed her lawsuit, the BOC voted to give even MORE taxpayer money to the Gwinnett Chamber.

The county contract with the chamber allowed the commissioners the right to review financial records to determine how the money they voted to give to the chamber had been spent. Despite this, the commissioners refused to review the records. When asked why not, the response was, “I am not going to pierce (the chamber’s) veil.” Is protecting the chamber more important than protecting the taxpayers?

This “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” charade is not plausible. At the same time that the chamber was spending taxpayer money approved by the BOC, Charlotte Nash was an ex-officio member of the chamber board. Alvin Wilbanks has been on the chamber board the entire time GCPS has been paying for Chamber employees’ salaries. I wonder what GCPS teachers who were being furloughed think about the school board paying the salaries of chamber employees who were never furloughed? Do commissioners and school board members expect us to believe they do not know how taxpayer money was spent? Do they care?

I don’t know about you, but I am not happy that the county commissioners and school board members are spending our money fighting an open records lawsuit. What do they have to hide? We may never know because the Gwinnett Chamber’s attorney told the judge at a public hearing that he wants all of this to be kept confidential. Why? He said the chamber has trade secrets. I told you this was confusing. I can’t figure out how spending taxpayer money is a trade secret. Maybe the Gwinnett Daily Post agrees with the chamber attorney that this should all be kept confidential. After all, the editor of the GDP is the Vice Chair of Media Relations on the Gwinnett Chamber Board.

Didn’t we just read in the AJC that the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce played a disgraceful role in the Atlanta Public Schools cheating scandal? Isn’t there anyone with a backbone in Gwinnett County who is willing to stand up to prevent another scandal from developing in our county by shining a light on how the chamber has used taxpayer money? Or is the problem that a hidden scandal has already occurred and our elected officials are just trying to cover it up?