About Flagpole. (Athens, Ga.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (June 22, 2011)
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BERNSTEIN FUNERAL HOME AND CREMATION SERVICES 3195 Atlanta Highway I Athens, GA 30606 I 706-543-7373 www.BemsteinFuneraIHome.com eaplM DDuDpQSG TRANSPARENT AS DIRT Politicians will say things that they know they don't mean at all. At the state level, whenever you hear a politician utter the word "transparency," you can be sure that he or she is opposed to any kind of transparency or openness in government. I remember that when he was first elected governor, Sonny Perdue claimed that trans parency was one of the greatest virtues an officeholder could have. He didn't really mean it. Perdue, among other things, signed a bill that gave himself a $100,000 tax break with out ever disclosing it publicly. (It wasn't until two years after he signed it that a newspaper reporter finally broke the story about the governor's generosity.) Perdue also signed several other bills that closed off various types of information contained in state and local government records to public view. House Speaker David Ralston has also paid public tribute to the concept of transparency. In the bill he pushed through a couple of years ago to revise Georgia's eth ics laws, he even changed the official name of the State Ethics Commission to the clunkier "Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commission." Ralston didn't care much about "government transpar ency" either, as we soon discovered. Over the past few years, Georgia lawmak ers have made a series of severe cutbacks in funding for the commission that is supposed to enforce government transparency, requiring the agency to reduce its staff from 26 to nine people. At the same time, legislators have amended the campaign disclosure laws so that more administrative paperwork requirements have been imposed on the few remaining staffers who have not been laid off. The result is that the people still working for the ethics commission have very little time or resources to investigate complaints that candidates are violating campaign finance laws. This ensures that there will be less transparency regarding the way politicians raise and spend money during an election campaign. The "government transparency" commis sion hit its lowest point recently when the director, Stacey Kalberman, and her deputy director attempted to investigate complaints filed against Gov. Nathan Deal concerning his campaign for governor last year. Kalberman asked the commission members for the go- ahead to issue subpoenas for information related to their review of Deal's campaign records. She could not get any of them to sign off on the subpoenas. Shortly afterward, commission members decided that because of "budget problems" they would unfortunately have to elimi nate the jobs or cut the pay of Kalberman and the deputy direc tor. (Kalberman eventually agreed to resign.) In a government memo that was transparently disclosed, Kalberman wrote to the commis sion chairman: "I do not believe it. to be a coincidence that your increased concern with the budget coincides with my staff's preparation and delivery to you for your signatures subpoenas related to the ongoing Nathan Deal investigation." Kalberman is accurate in that assessment. All state agencies have seen their budgets reduced since 2008, but the sudden timing of this budget cutback at the commission whose function is to provide "government transpar ency" is highly suspect. It should not have been a surprise, how ever. Georgia politicians may tell you that they are all in favor of transparency in government, but they don't really mean it. Tom Crawford tcrawford@gareport.com Tom Crawford is the editor of The Georgia Report, an Internet news service at gareport.com that covers government and politics in Georgia. THIS MSIIIH WSILI WELCOME Yl Fun and games For the whole FAMILY! 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