Wednesday, August 14, 2002
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Wednesday, August 14, 2002 |
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Contracts found illegal; it's time to move forward An open letter to the Citizens of Peachtree City: Before I was elected to the City Council of Peachtree City, I remember picking up the papers in my driveway and reading about the insults and accusations hurled from one elected official to another. It always made me scratch my head and wonder why these people chose to participate in such undignified and unnecessary behavior. You may have wondered the same thing. I now find myself the target of some of this behavior. I have spent the better part of this summer attempting to defend myself in an ethics hearing that was both frivolous and a waste of taxpayer's money. One good thing that emerged from this hearing is that it brought to light several inconsistencies within the ethics ordinance which need to be addressed and clarified. It also revealed to me and my family who our true friends are. I am so thankful for their support and especially for the many prayers. It has been a tough summer. I have been urged to file an appeal of the ethics board's 3-to-2 split decision that I violated the ethics ordinance by voting to appoint a special counsel to investigate the validity of the contracts between the city and two of its authorities. The supposed conflict is because of my wife's lawsuit against the Development Authority for gender discrimination. The ethics board also voted 5-0 to take no action against me because they felt that, although I violated the wording of the ordinance, I did not violate the spirit of the ordinance. Voting to investigate the validity of these contracts did not and could not have had any impact whatsoever on my wife's lawsuit. Her civil suit will be a very long and drawn-out process and this one definitely will be because it will be decided by a jury trial. There is nothing that I can do to influence this process and I have nothing to gain by attempting to do so. I believe that I was bound by my oath of office, Peachtree City Ethics Ordinance section 62-88 as well as the Official Code of Georgia section 45-10-1, to protect the interests of the citizens of Peachtree City first and foremost. I did not know prior to the meeting how the other members of the City Council would vote on this issue and I believed it was my duty to take a stand, especially as the state code of Georgia requires public officials to "expose corruption wherever discovered." These reasons far outweighed any other in influencing my decision to vote to appoint a Special Counsel. Now that the report by the Special Counsel is complete, and the contracts have, in fact, been found to be invalid and unauthorized, I feel that I definitely made the right decision, the best decision and the only decision that I could have made. I am now faced with another decision whether or not to file an appeal. Again, I have spent many hours seeking wise counsel and contemplating the "rightness" of filing an appeal. I have reached the conclusion that although an appeal would give me an opportunity to achieve a sense of vindication, I have already experienced that with the finding of the Special Counsel. While I can not control the actions of others, I can control my own actions. And I chose to not participate in perpetuating this issue any further. I think it's time for everyone involved to grow up a little bit and sincerely consider the interests of the citizens rather than those of an individual. Whether or not the ethics board's decision is overturned matters very little to anyone other than me. My children, my wife, my parents, my friends, my family, many of you citizens who have expressed support and even my mother-in-law are proud of me for standing up for what I believed in regardless of the personal cost. It's time to move forward. Steve Rapson City Council Post 3 Peachtree City
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