An ethics complaint lodged against Fayette County Commissioner Robert Horgan over his arrest for misdemeanor possession of marijuana has proceeded past the first stage of the process.

Jim Fortune, county attorney for neighboring Spalding County, has reviewed the ethics complaint and deemed there is sufficient cause for the county to impanel an ethics board hearing, Fayette officials confirmed this week.

Also, state Attorney General Thurbert Baker has appointed an out-of-county prosecutor for the case: Tasha Mosley, the solicitor-general of Clayton County. Horgan is charged with the misdemeanor marijuana possession and also for driving with an expired tag.

As far as the ethics complaint goes, the county now has to find three county attorneys from nearby jurisdictions who will serve as the ethics board during a public hearing in which they will rule on the complaint. The attorneys are being selected for the ethics panel by Fortune, said Fayette County Attorney Scott Bennett.

The complaint centers on the May 23 arrest of Horgan, who was driving a truck owned by his company when he was pulled over on Stanley Road near Gingercake Road for driving with an expired tag.

According to the sheriff’s deputy’s report, Horgan was arrested after the deputy detected the smell of marijuana, and Horgan, after first denying it, admitted that he had smoked the illegal substance in the truck.

The tag had expired on April 30 for the truck Horgan was driving, which was owned by his business, Mr. Transmission.

In the ethics complaint, citizens Patrick J. Hinchey and David Cree allege that Horgan solicited special treatment from the deputies who arrested him. An incident report filed by the arresting deputy said that Horgan asked the deputies, “If there was anything that we could to to resolve this right here, right now!” The deputy noted that he told Horgan no.

The report does not indicate whether Horgan informed the deputies he was a county commissioner, nor whether they recognized him as a county commissioner.

Should Horgan be found to have violated the county’s ethics ordinance, he faces up to a $1,000 fine and a written reprimand or public censure.

Under the county’s ethics ordinance, employees and elected officials should “never engage in other conduct which is unbecoming to an official/employee or which constitutes a breach of public trust.”

The county’s ethics rules call for the ethics hearing to be conducted in public, and once all three attorneys are impaneled, a date for the hearing will be announced, officials said.

Since Horgan’s arrest, citizens have used the “public comment” portion of each county commission meeting to demand that Horgan resign from his post. At last week’s commission meeting, one resident put the heat on Horgan’s fellow commissioners, asking them to sign the recall petition themselves.

Commissioner Eric Maxwell announced last month that he privately at first asked Horgan to resign after Maxwell judged the public opinion on the matter.

But aside from a statement the first meeting following his arrest, Horgan hasn’t made any public statements about the incident. In his comments at the May 28 meeting, Horgan apologized for the situation and the ill light it has shed on the commission.

Since Maxwell’s overture, seven former county commissioners authored a letter urging Horgan to resign: Harold Bost, Bill Bonner, Grace Caldwell, Greg Dunn, Peter Pfeifer, Rick Price and Linda Wells.

Bost has been one of the leaders behind the effort to initiate a vote to recall Horgan, effectively removing him from office.

The Fayette Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has also entered the fray, saying Horgan’s situation illustrates the need for district voting.

Currently Fayette’s commissioners are elected at-large by all residents in the county. Under district voting each commissioner would be elected only by voters who live in a certain geographical district.

The NAACP has argued that mounting a recall effort on Horgan would be less costly if he had been elected at a district level instead of countywide.

Supporters of Horgan recall face several hurdles before final vote

They’ve got a website. They’re on Facebook.

It’s a thoroughly modern political campaign, save for the fact they’re not Twittering yet. And it’s not exactly election season either.

A group of local residents are hoping to make it “un-election” season for Fayette County Commissioner Robert Horgan, who was arrested May 23 on charges of possession of marijuana and driving with an expired tag.

The Committee to Recall Robert Horgan is poised to submit its recall petition to elections officials this (Wednesday) afternoon, touching off a process they hope ends with an election to remove Horgan from office.

Once the initial petition is filed, the county elections superintendent will have five business days to verify the application contains 100 signatures from voters who were qualified to vote when Horgan was re-elected last year.

Also once the recall petition is submitted, Horgan will have four business days to petition the Superior Court to review the sufficiency of the grounds for recall and the facts asserted in support of the grounds for recall listed on the petition, according to the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office.

Should Horgan petition the court for a review, the burden of proof falls on the chairperson of the recall petition, Robert Ross of Peachtree City, according to Georgia’s recall statue. The court would be charged with determining whether probable cause exists to believe the facts alleged in the petition are true.

Georgia law requires recall petition reviews to be handled expeditiously and by a judge from outside the Griffin Judicial Circuit in this case.

Should that judge deem the recall petition sufficient, recall supporters must gather 21,454 signatures of voters who were qualified to vote in the November 2008 election, equivalent to the 30 percent requirement outlined by Georgia law. All those signatures must be collected in the time frame of 45 days.

In gathering those signatures, recall supporters cannot set up shop anywhere alcoholic beverages are sold or served, which eliminates many if not all county grocery stores and restaurants, according to Georgia law.

After the 45-day period is over, the election superintendent will have 30 days in which to verify the signatures on the petition as being those of qualified voters.

If the recall petition is certified as having the necessary 21,454 signatures of registered voters, a recall election must be held within 40-55 days of the certification.

The majority vote at the election would determine whether Horgan could stay in office or not. And even if the majority removes Horgan, he also could run for the seat in the subsequent special election that would be necessary to fill the vacancy.

Horgan is one of five county commissioners, all of whom are elected at-large, meaning all county voters may vote on each individual seat. This is unlike traditional district voting where only persons in a given district may vote for one candidate to represent them.