Snellville City Council members voted against the ethics ordinance last night. That sounds like our city council is against ethical behavior, if you don't know the whole story.
The Georgia Municipal Association (GMA) applies a designation to cities in Georgia as "Cities of Ethics." It was previously believed that Snellville would lose its City of Ethics designation if the city did not have a new ethics ordinance in place. Council Member Kelly Kautz brought the measure forward and postponed the vote on the issue over the course of the last few Snellville City Council meetings.
Several other council members were concerned about loopholes in the ordinance, knowing that after their service on council was over, this ordinance would remain on the books for years to come. They wanted to be sure that an "Ethics Ordinance" could not be used un-ethically as a tool in power struggles among council members. Ironically, an ethics ordinance can be misused by citizens or council members with an axe to grind, if it's not set up correctly with safeguards.
Kautz presented all the details of her research, explaining how the ethics ordinance could be set up in order to assuage the concerns of the dissenting council members. Kautz mentioned the Gwinnett County Board of Commissioner's debacle, saying if the Gwinnett BOC had an ethics ordinance it could have been prevented. (Personally, I don't think crooks give a damn about an ethics ordinance, so it wouldn't have made any difference).
After completing her outline, it was Council Member Tod Warner's turn to speak. Warner said he called the Gwinnett Municipal Association and spoke to Susan Moore, the person in charge of the ethics program at the Association. Ms. Moore told Warner that what we already have in place would suffice, but that Snellville should put it in ordinance format to insure there is no loss of ethics protection in times of political turn-over. Every year or two, the Snellville City Council should re-approve the ethics ordinance.
So, all this hullabaloo and research was unnecessary. All it took was one smart person (Tod Warner) to make a phone call. Again, we learn that the best solution is often the simplest.
