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

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"

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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