Sunday, September 20, 2009
Opinion, Politics, Atlanta
Lisa Borders' ethics problem
Herring claims that Borders used her position as Atlanta City Council president to secretly lobby state legislators on behalf of her then-employer, Cousins Properties.
Mayoral candidate Lisa Borders
Courtesy of the Lisa Borders campaignBy Stephanie Ramage
The State Ethics Commission dismissed a complaint Neill Herring brought against Atlanta mayoral candidate Lisa Borders several months ago, but Herring, a lobbyist for the Sierra Club, is still perplexed about why.
The commission, for its part, claims that there was insufficient evidence to pursue the matter. Herring wonders how that is possible.
“The only way I could have more evidence is if I were sitting in Lisa Borders’ brain,” says Herring, whose complaint claims that Borders used her position as Atlanta City Council president as a cover in order to secretly lobby state legislators on behalf of her employer, Cousins Properties.
The commission dismissed the case shortly before a scheduled hearing on May 21, as was first reported by Atlanta Unfiltered. But it’s not necessarily dismissed forever.
“If we stumble on something related to it, we can always bring it back up,” says Rick Thompson, executive secretary of the commission.
At the heart of the matter is Borders’ then-position as a senior vice president with Cousins Properties, and Cousins’ support of state legislation aimed at making taxpayers financially responsible for private developments. The measure was nicknamed the “private cities bill.”
Last fall, prior to the November election and as a guest pundit on PBS’s election-night coverage, I called the bill “welfare for developers.” That same night, the measure was soundly defeated in a statewide referendum. It turned out that urban Democrats were as fed up as their rural Republican counterparts with Big Business passing its financial burdens onto taxpayers.
In September 2008, a little more than a month prior to the referendum vote, Herring had filed the following complaint against Borders:
“Ms. Borders is the President of the Atlanta City Council. In 2007, during the Session of the General Assembly she was employed by a real estate development firm, Cousins Properties, which has financial agreements with Temple-Inland Co. to jointly develop property owned by that company in the Metro Atlanta area. Since that time, Ms. Borders has resigned her position with Cousins Properties to concentrate on a campaign for the office of Mayor of Atlanta.
“During consideration of [Senate Bill] 200 and [Senate Resolution] 309 in the House Economic Development Committee, on April 11, 2007, Ms. Borders was recognized for her attendance in the committee meeting. It was known, from distribution of a brochure folder entitled ‘Georgia Smart Infrastructure Finance Act of 2007,’ that her employer, Cousins Properties, was a member of a ‘vast coalition in support’ of the bills. That her presence may have led legislators to also assume that the Atlanta City Council might be in support of these measures is also worth note. The Council has taken no known position on these matters at any time.”
When the legislation package came before the full House for consideration on the final day of the 2007 session, Borders was present in the corridor outside the House chamber “accompanied by registered lobbyists who were all working in favor of passage of SR 309 and SB 200, and she met with numerous legislators in that hallway on that day in the company of those persons. This obvious lobbying by an unregistered lobbyist was seen and noted …” Herring then lists lobbyists who witnessed Borders schmoozing the legislators as if she were a lobbyist.
One of the lobbyists, who spoke with The Sunday Paper on condition of anonymity, recalls Borders “hugging” the legislators and thanking them for passing the measure to put the private cities bill on the ballot.
Herring’s complaint states: “This is in plain violation of the Georgia Ethics in Government Act since Ms. Borders was representing the interest of her employer, Cousins Properties, in advancing legislation openly supported by that employer in the company of lobbyists registered as agents of that client to legislators at the State Capitol, and she failed to register as a lobbyist …”
Herring says requiring lobbyists to register with the state allows the public to know who people are representing when they are spending time with legislators. The Ethics Commission’s Thompson says it’s not just for the public: “It’s also so the legislators know who these people are really representing. It’s tremendously important.”
In answer to the complaint, Borders and her attorney claimed she was not paid by Cousins to lobby. Borders further stated she wasn’t there on behalf of Cousins: “It was in my capacity as President of the Atlanta City Council performing the official duties of my public office.”
Yet, the City of Atlanta took no position on the private cities measure. According to its developer promoters, the bill was aimed at “underdeveloped” areas and, according to the Sierra Club, it was likely to affect places like Carroll County’s Wolf Creek, Middle Georgia’s Oaky Woods and the Georgia coast. There was no reason why the City of Atlanta would have taken a position on it. If it had, the city would have sent its own paid lobbyists; after all, the City employs 14.
So was Borders really there in her official capacity as Atlanta City Council president, or was she lobbying on behalf of Cousins Properties? Lobbying can be a hard thing for the unpracticed eye to spot, especially when Borders’ duties at Cousins, according to her own affidavit, seemed to be not much more than those of a lobbyist. Borders told the ethics commission that her duties—for which Cousins paid her a salary of about $195,000—included answering solicitations for charitable contributions, writing some company communications, and “establishing positive relationships with elected and appointed officials in the jurisdictions in which the company does business and coordinating political contributions made by the company.”
Regardless of what happens with the ethics complaint, do Atlantans want yet another slippery, professional schmoozer in the mayor’s office? Is that really what this city needs? SP
To view a video of Borders at the Capitol on the day cited by Herring, visit YouTube.com and search for “Lisa Borders: Atlanta City Council President … Lobbyist.”