The Cobb Board of Ethics has dismissed a complaint filed by an East Cobb resident against Commissioner Jerica Richardson.
In a special meeting Monday, the board voted 6-0, with one member absent, to dismiss the complaint, saying it did not find “specific, substantiated evidence to support a reasonable belief” of an ethics violation.
It’s the first step under the Cobb County code to consider ethics complaints and is an “investigatory review.” If the board had voted the other way, it could have set a hearing date to formally consider whether an ethics violation occurred.
(You can watch a replay of the fill meeting below.)
Debbie Fisher, an East Cobb political activist, filed the complaint in late January, saying that Richardson was engaged in a conflict of interest due to a political action committee she formed to fight her redistricting by the Georgia legislature.
Richardson, who is part of the Cobb Board of Commissioners’ Democratic majority, voted in October in favor of the county invoking home rule powers to conduct reapportionment.
They are challenging Georgia legislative maps passed last year that would draw her out of her East Cobb home in District 2 in the middle of her term.
Richardson also created a 501(c)(4) non-profit, For Which It Stance, for the purpose of “protecting local control, empowering local voices,” and seeks financial donations, sells merchandise and offers memberships ranging from $25 to $100 a month.
Fisher, a local Republican activist who said she was representing herself, alleges that’s a conflict and at Monday’s hearing, recounted her complaints. (In addition to seeking a reprimand and/or censure of Richardson, Fisher wants to void Richardson’s votes on the maps, which would result in a 2-2 deadlock.)
“This organization creates a conflict of interest, a direct and indirect financial benefit,” Fisher told the Ethics Board members, referring to For Which It Stance.
“Its existence creates the appearance of impropriety and it is evident that Commissioner Richardson is using her position as an elected official for private gain by selling favors and merchandise and giving preferential treatment by selling access and favor to the organization’s members.”
But Justin O’Dell, a Marietta attorney representing Richardson at the hearing, noted her status as the first woman and African-American to represent District 2, and her election in 2020 was “an historic one” in that it ensured a black female Democratic majority.
“Ever since that time, there has been and continues to be an effort to undermine the results of that election, through legislative and other means,” O’Dell said.
He included various cityhood movements in Cobb (three of which failed, including East Cobb), as examples of efforts undertaken so that “individuals who don’t feel like they ought to be represented by Commissioner Richardson can have their wish despite the results of the election.”
O’Dell said elected officials have a “fundamental” right to engage in political advocacy and speech in the course of doing their jobs.
He said “what’s being attempted here is an end run” around the legal proceedings involving Cobb’s home rule challenge to the legislative maps, “and should be dismissed as such.
“They are asking you essentially to declare her actions void as a means to bypass what they have been unable to do through the courts,” O’Dell said, “by having you void these actions and undo the map.”
Most of the ethics board members said they were unpersuaded by the complaint, and that they were looking for evidence of the claims of financial benefit for Richardson going into the hearing.
“We don’t have any evidence that Ms. Richardson has profit,” ethics board member Cynthia Ann Smith said. “But we don’t have any evidence that she didn’t either.”
Board chairman Carlos Rodriguez spelled out the differences in the ethics code between compatible and incompatible employment, as they related to an elected officials’ discharging of their official duties.
The code, he said, precludes commissioners from using their office to benefit in for-profit entities, not non-profits.
“In my mind, it doesn’t really even matter whether she received some sort of compensation as a member of For Which It Stance or not,” he said, “as long as it’s not incompatible with her public duty and responsibility.”
Board member Janet Savage said “we have not seen any hardcore evidence that there was private gain” for Richardson.
The ethics board is a seven-member body appointed by the Cobb Board of Commissioners, the Cobb Tax Commissioner, the Cobb Sheriff, the Cobb Solicitor General, the chief judges of the Cobb probate and magistrate courts and the clerk of the Cobb State Court.
Fisher has 30 days to appeal the decision in Cobb Superior Court.
