Even Mayor Bob Lenox's

Continuous Forms and Checks (CFC) threw their hat in the

ring for $750,000 in bonds. This was not an incentive to

attract Lenox's business to Peachtree City, because his

business was well established in the city. This

particular bond request proves that conflict of interest

issues cannot get in the way of a dollar.

Development Authority

member Bob Truitt was the accountant and auditor for

Lenox's CFC and authority member Tom Farr was an officer

with C&S Bank who was financing the bond. In

businesslike fashion, the authority members voted that

both Truitt and Farr had no conflict of interest issues

and they were allowed to cast their votes in favor of

issuing the bonds to CFC (Dev. Auth. minutes, May 28,

1985). Just what exactly constitutes conflict of interest

with the Development Authority?

The Development Authority

has an interesting history. From October of 1996 to

September of 1997, it violated opens records law and did

not turn the minutes to its meetings over to the City

Clerk for public viewing. It was not until November of

1997 that they even expressed the need for a public

information policy.

In addition, it was not

until July of 1998 that they had a policy regarding the

appropriateness of providing incentives to businesses

(unfortunately, the policy was introduced long after

millions of dollars of incentives had already been doled

out to businesses, to which some of the members had close

ties). In one authority meeting, a local citizen asked to

see a copy of the authority's annual budget and the

authority members had to discuss the request in executive

session!

I cannot help but shake my

head in disbelief when I read the Development Authority

minutes. Unfortunately, our city has not learned from its

past mistakes. Mayor Lenox and Councilman Brooks are

setting us up for more government by association. If

James Webb is reappointed as City Attorney March 2 while

remaining on the board of directors of the new Bank of

Georgia with Steve Black and other developmental

interests, the governmental process will be downgraded to

constant public suspicions of developmental favoritism.

The loss of the public's trust equals poor government.

We have ethics ordinances

prohibiting employees from engaging in outside employment

that would interfere with the interests of their city

service and the City Council should enforce the law and

its intent.

In the Oct 2, 1985

Development Authority minutes, it was announced that Mr.

Lipford released his interest in the Peachtree National

Bank, thus setting a precedent for such potential

conflict of interest cases. Mr. Lipford made the

ethically correct decision and we can only hope that the

City Council will do the same.

Steve Brown

Peachtree City