The Fayette Citizen-News Page
Wednesday, December 22, 1999
Ethics Commission cites anti-SPLOST action committee

By PAT NEWMAN
Staff Writer

Georgia's Ethics Commission Monday cited anti-sales tax advocate Carl Avrit for failure to identify his organization in phone messages last September, but chose not to levy a fine.

Avrit and his lawyer, Don Johnson, said they will appeal the ruling, which includes an order to cease and disist.

Avrit is head of the political action committee Fayette Citizens for Better Government, which launched a last-minute phone blitz in opposition to the Fayette Board of Education's special purpose local option sales tax referendum Sept. 21.

“This was a political decision by a political body,” Avrit said following the Ethics Commission hearing Monday morning. The decision was “a miscarriage of justice,” he added.

Janet Smola, cochairman of a political action committee that supported the 1 percent sales tax for school improvements and construction, filed the complaint against Avrit.

“I feel like the voters of Fayette County have been vindicated,” Smola said following the decision.

The last-minute phone campaign consisted of two different prerecorded messages. The phone messages received by Fayette County voters instructed them to vote against the $91 million spending package. There was no tag line, or disclaimer, which is required on politically generated print ads or TV spots.

John Garst of Rosetta Stone Communications, the firm that Avrit used to place the calls, said tag lines were “not standard industry procedure. Literally, it's never been done,” Garst told the commission. No distinction was made between politically generated phone calls and printed material being called “advertisement” by the commission.

The vote was 4-1 citing the lack of identification on the calls as a statute violation. Commissioner Sam Nicholson said that voters “are entitled to know who is spending the money,” in this case $900, when a group is trying to influence an election.

Johnson, who represented Avrit before the commission, asked that the complaint be dropped based on constitutional grounds and improper venue. Both motions were overruled by commission Chairman Michael McCrae. Johnson tried to prove that the definition of “referendum” was vague and Douglas County, where the hearing took place, was not his client's home county.

He called the special local option sales tax referendum a “ballot question,” which he said should negate the need for a tag line on the calls.


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