Details, details....
“We’re not measuring actual corruption,” said Caitlin Ginley, the project manager for the report. “This is a look at the opposite: the laws, policies and procedures in place to prevent corruption and how effective they are.”
House Ethics Committee Chairman Joe Wilkinson, R-Sandy Springs, said the report blindsided him, and he criticized the choice of author for Georgia’s report card. Jim Walls, a former Atlanta Journal-Constitution editor and owner of the website Atlanta Unfiltered, gathered, wrote and provided an initial score on the information on Georgia for the report.
“To have Georgia’s laws judged by a blogger instead of a regulatory official, as has been done in the past, is of great concern,” he said. “Based on previous discussions with the Center for Public Integrity, we were under the assumption that the 2012 rankings would show Georgia in the top five states.”
Chuck Gabriel, an Atlanta attorney and former public corruption investigator for the FBI, said there is no doubt that the state’s ethics laws can be strengthened, but this report “misses the mark” by judging the state too harshly based solely on transparency laws. Criminal convictions are what really stops corruption, he said. Georgia has a pretty good track record when measured that way, he said.
“The conviction of dirty cops, corrupt legislators, unscrupulous business persons and political hacks is the true deterrent to corrupt behavior,” he said, “and those criteria ... ought to be the basis for grading this state.”
