The Peachtree Citizen Review article (Feb. 11) “City is the subject of few suits” was educational in that it confirmed that the city has to deal with a significant number of “development-related issues” in a legal sense. The article referred to the current suits filed against the city by Pathway Communities and the Black family.

However, the article left out the crucial information about past suits (exactly who the plaintiffs were and what was the outcome). Moreover, the article failed to provide the details on fees billed to the city for litigation by Webb, Stuckey and Lindsey during their tenure.

This type of information is needed to show where the city and law partner James Webb stand in the conflict of interest predicament that is brewing for the appointment of City Attorney on March 3, 2000. It was also unfortunate that the article never even mentioned the recent lawsuit by another of Webb's fellow Bank Directors - Mike Rossetti.

There is no doubt that Pathway Communities (formerly PCDC) is a force to be dealt with in the Peachtree City and Fayette County governments. Pathway Communities has long been the engine that drives the PTC Development Authority. Pathway has quite a few former employees that are now employed by local governments. Likewise, Tate Godfrey who is employed by Pathway Communities heads up the Fayette County Chamber of Commerce.

Mr. Godfrey stated, “No one, least of all business people, wants to see rampant growth” (Fayette Neighbor, Feb. 10) and yet his company tried to persuade Peachtree City to annex a small quadrant to the west and cram a total of 6,400 people in the area not including shoppers. What about the traffic and where would all the kids go to school?

The Fayette Neighbor article continued, “Godfrey said he would ask the [county] commission and local city councils to allow the chamber to become more involved in these issues.” I contend that Mr. Godfrey and his employer are already well immersed in such issues and that his goal is to simply drag the chamber into the fray.

Now it appears that even Coweta County might even be affected by the Pathway Communities' influence. The Coweta County Board of Education recently approved a controversial redistricting plan that sent parents into a frenzy. Steve Black's Pathway Communities is developing a new subdivision next to the Newnan Crossing Elementary School.

At the meeting, “Peter Skrmetti asked why the board wanted public comment on the matter when it seemed the matter was already decided. Many in the room said the impetus for the change was Pathway Communities, who is developing the 2,500-home SummerGrove subdivision” (The Citizen Review, Feb. 11). The theory goes that Pathway Communities might have pushed for redistricting because they would be hard-pressed to sell homes in a subdivision in which the children would have to attend an elementary school that is 80 percent minorities and has the lowest test scores in the school system.

Residents are suspicious because the Board of Education waited until now to make such a decision. As far as I can tell, no one has come up with proof substantiating such a hypothesis.

These claims may also arise from the fact that the chairman of the school board is said to have formerly worked for the law firm of Glover and Davis and that the same firm has represented the CEO of Pathway Communities, Steve Black's ventures.

Unfortunately, as long as James Webb remains on the board of directors of the Bank of Georgia with Steve Black and the other developers, his reappointment as City Attorney will promote conflict of interest and his firm will forever remain in a fog of suspicion. With the development sector being thrown into hyper drive with big box stores, variances, rezonings, new apartments and annexation, we can ill afford to have a City Attorney that might arouse suspicions of a violation of trust, clouded judgement and favoritism.

If Webb, Stuckey and Lindsey insist on remaining in the selection process, we will need full disclosure from city staff, City Council members, Development Authority members and Planning Commission members to see if any of them have a vested interest in the Bank of Georgia. James Moliterno, law professor at William & Mary, said, “disclosure is a way of preserving integrity” (Wall Street Journal, Jan 31). There will be not one shred of integrity in the city's selection process or legal opinions unless we have full disclosure from all parties involved in developmental decisions.

Conflict of interest cases will continue to be wide spread in this country as long as there is money involved. Even the American Institute of Public Accounts had “to introduce sweeping new compliance rules intended to stop the conflicts of interest plaguing the profession” (Wall Street Journal, Feb 2).

The Big Five accounting firms had auditors who were investing themselves or their families in their audit clients. PricewaterhouseCoopers had 8,064 violations and found that even some of the executives responsible for enforcing rules were guilty. Do we want this kind of atmosphere in our city government? Why should we even consider placing ourselves in this sort of dilemma?

The City Council has the ability to make a fatal mistake on March 3, 2000. With just one vote, they can cause nearly every major decision thereafter to be questioned leaving the electorate in total dismay.

“Maintaining public trust in the integrity of the democratic institutions is essential to the success of representative democracy. In that fundamental sense, ethics and democracy are intertwined. Political ethics are the basis by which citizens judge official actions, attach responsibility and exercise accountability. An ethical government process is a precondition for making good public policy” (Excerpt from the Travers Ethics Conference, Univ. of California, Berkeley).

Special interest groups should be involved in the debate but NOT occupying our City Attorney position.

Steve Brown
Steve_ptc@juno.com

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