By MONROE ROARK
mroark@thecitizennews.com

The City Council of Peachtree City is to decide tomorrow night how to handle a recent ethics complaint filed against city attorney Jim Webb.

Mike Hyde wrote in a Feb. 29 letter to city manager Jim Basinger that Webb advised the council in 1996 concerning a proposed buffer ordinance when a company in which Webb has an interest owned property that would be directly affected by the ordinance.

The City Council was to consider the reappointment of Webb, Stuckey and Lindsey as city attorney at its March 2 meeting, but that action was delayed until the ethics complaint is dealt with.

Basinger advised the council that under section 62-90 of the city's ethics ordinance, a five-member ethics board must be appointed to investigate the complaint. The city attorney is designated as the advisor to the board, Basinger said, but since the city attorney is the one being investigated, an outside attorney will be needed.

After receiving several recommendations from the Georgia Municipal Association, city staff met with Andrew Whalen III, who is currently the city attorney for Griffin. Whalen is willing to serve as the board's advisor, Basinger said, and he recommended that the council appoint him to that position at an hourly rate of $150.

It has also been recommended that the five-member ethics board be selected by a random drawing from a 10-person pool already established for this purpose. The pool consists of the following citizens, listed here along with the council members who appointed them:

Eileen Shaw and John Dillahunt (Carol Fritz); Lynn Gray and Herman Pearson (Annie McMenamin); Tim Kaigler and Jim Stienbach (Bob Lenox); Ann Matwick and Steve Brown (Dan Tennant); Lucille Potts and former Mayor Fred Brown (Bob Brooks).

Pool member Steve Brown (no kin to the former mayor) is currently a defendant in a lawsuit being filed by Webb, so Whalen has recommended that his name be removed from the pool before the drawing, with no need for a replacement. Brown is codefendant along with The Citizen newspaper and its publisher, Cal Beverly, in an unrelated libel lawsuit filed by Webb, Stuckey and Lindsey.

Each council member will draw one name from the pool to form the five-person ethics board, Basinger said. The first meeting of the board should be held within 30 days, and Webb should be advised of the date, time and location of the meeting at least 10 business days in advance, Basinger added.

Whalen has advised that the procedures adopted in the city's current ethics ordinance, adopted in January of 1999, be used in this case. But the standards of conduct in the previous ordinance should be applied because the violation is alleged to have occurred before the current ordinance was adopted, he said.