Ethics timeline
2011
* January-May: The top two staff members of the state ethics commission, executive director Stacey Kalberman and her deputy, Sherilyn Streicker, open an investigation into Gov. Nathan Deal’s campaign. They meet with federal prosecutors and the FBI concerning their inquiry. The two draw up subpoenas for Deal and others and prepare to serve them.
* June: Kalberman and Streicker are gone from their jobs. Streicker’s job is eliminated. Kalberman’s salary is cut from $120,000 to $85,000, and she resigns. The chairman of the ethics commission, Patrick Millsaps, says he needed to cut costs.
* August: Holly LaBerge is hired as the commission’s new director.
2012
* June: Kalberman and Streicker file separate whistleblower lawsuits against the state.
* July 23: The state ethics commission clears Deal of major ethics violations while finding he made “technical defects” in a series of personal financial and campaign finance reports. Deal agrees to pay fees totaling $3,350.
* Sept. 1: The AJC reports that Kalberman and Streicker held several meetings with federal public corruption authorities to discuss the ethics commission’s investigation into Deal. The U.S. Attorney’s Office would not confirm nor deny that there had been a federal investigation into Deal. Referring to the meetings, Deal lawyer Randy Evans said “there was never anything to it.”
2013
* September: The AJC reports that two staff members of the state ethics commission accused LaBerge of improperly intervening in the investigation of Deal. Staff attorney Elisabeth Murray-Obertein and information technology specialist John Hair made the accusations in sworn testimony taken as part of Kalberman’s and Streicker’s whistleblower suits. Hair said LaBerge ordered him to destroy documents in the Deal file. Murray-Obertein said LaBerge bragged that Deal “owed” her for making his legal troubles go away. LaBerge denied those accusations in her own testimony. Deal also denied any wrongdoing.
* Oct. 22: The state ethics commission votes to have the state auditor investigate the beleaguered agency.
* Dec. 19: The ethics commission votes unanimously to hire veteran lawyer Robert Constantine to oversee operations from January to May.
2014
* Jan. 6: Relying on personnel files obtained through an open records request, the AJC reports that Constantine was fired in August 2013 as a judge on the state Board of Workers’ Compensation for “failure to meet performance expectations.”
* February: Deal and two top aides are subpoenaed by Streicker and could testify in her lawsuit. The ethics commission cuts ties to Constantine, voting to conclude his services while agreeing to pay the full $16,000 of his original agreement.
* March: The ethics commission faces a third whistleblower suit filed by Hair, the agency’s former IT specialist. Hair claims he was fired after refusing orders from LaBerge to alter or remove documents related to the Deal investigation.
* April 4: A Fulton County jury awards $700,000 to Kalberman in her suit claiming she was forced out for investigating Deal’s campaign too vigorously.
* April 7: Deal proposes an overhaul of the ethics commission, calling for 12 members who would be appointed by the executive, legislative and judicial branches.
* May 21: The final amount in Kalberman’s case is set at $1.15 million, with Kalberman receiving $725,111.79 and her law firm being paid $424,881.21. The state Department of Administrative Services will pay the costs through its self-funded insurance program.
* June 13: The state agrees to settle the remaining cases against the ethics commission and to pay Streicker $1 million, Hair $410,000 and Murray-Obertein $477,500.
* July 14: The AJC obtains a memo in which LaBerge alleges that aides for Deal contacted her in July 2012 and pressured her to settle the ethics commission case against the governor. Days later, the commission cleared Deal of the major violations, and he agreed to pay the fee for technical defects in his reports.
Digging deeper
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution began following the infighting, funding lapses and legal challenges plaguing the state’s ethics commission before the departure of chief Stacey Kalberman in June 2011 by reviewing documents and conducting interviews with staff.
Lawyers for former ethics commission director Stacey Kalberman on Friday asked a judge to sanction her former bosses, her successor and the Office of the Attorney General for failing to turn over texts and emails between Holly LaBerge and top aides to Gov. Nathan Deal.
Attorney Kim Worth said in her motion for sanctions filed in Fulton County Superior Court that the defendants’ failure to turn over such important documents as part of Kalberman’s lawsuit are a “manifest injustice and fraud upon the Court.”
A spokeswoman for Attorney General Sam Olens, who defended LaBerge and the commission against Kalberman’s original lawsuit, said “our attorneys acted professionally and appropriately in turning over every responsive document that our client provided to them.”
LaBerge’s private attorney, Lee Parks, said he had not seen the motion and could not comment.
Kalberman sued the state in 2012, claiming she was forced from her job for investigating Gov. Nathan Deal's 2010 campaign. A Fulton County jury in April agreed, and awarded her $700,000 in damages plus another $450,000 in attorneys fees.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported in July, however, that current ethics commission director Holly LaBerge penned a July 2012 memo in which she details what she said were calls and texts from top Deal aides. LaBerge said she felt pressured by Deal chief of staff Chris Riley and executive counsel Ryan Teague to settle the complaints against the governor.
Less than a week later, the commission dismissed the major charges against Deal, who agreed to pay $3,350 in fees for technical violations to his campaign disclosures.
During the course of the lawsuit, Kalberman’s attorneys sought access to LaBerge’s personal email account, which is operated by Google. In lieu of issuing a subpoena for the account, lawyers for both sides agreed that for the sake of privacy, LaBerge would be allowed to sift through her Gmail account for emails that related to the Deal case.
LaBerge produced several, including controversial messages that showed members of the commission were interviewing her while Kalberman was still the director. But, LaBerge did not produce copies of the emails showing her communications with Teague and Riley.
LaBerge turned over the memo to Attorney General Sam Olens’ office as part of the lawsuit’s discovery process, however Olens’ staff never gave it to Worth or attorneys for other former commission employees who had also filed suit or planned to sue. Olens last week said his office determined the memo did not fit the plaintiffs’ demands for documents.
But LaBerge also forwarded the texts to her personal email account. Those texts and the emails were not turned over, either. LaBerge’s attorney, Lee Parks, has said his client told someone in the Attorney General’s Office about the communications but was never asked for them.
Olens, however, has said “no one in my office was aware that such emails exist,” until last month.
On Friday, Olens spokeswoman Lauren Kane said, “Indeed, our attorneys did not know they existed. Only Ms. LaBerge can provide an explanation regarding the newly-revealed emails.”
Worth, Kalberman’s attorney, says in the motion that failure to punish those responsible would set a terrible precedent where “this case would become the guiding precedent for any litigant who wants to play ‘hide-the-ball.’”
The motion was filed with Fulton County Superior Court Judge Ural Glanville, who presided over the week-long jury trial in March and April. Under state law, Glanville has broad discretion should he rule in Kalberman’s favor. He can force the state to pay additional attorneys fees, issue fines or report Olens and other lawyers to the State Bar of Georgia for professional punishment.
According to her motion, Kalberman wants any additional fees or fines Glanville awards to be donated to the State Bar for ethics research and training.
The other former employees, deputy director Sherilyn Streicker, staff attorney Elisabeth Murray-Obertein and media specialist John Hair, settled their cases for a collective $1.8 million.
