Gwinnett County will hold a public hearing next week to decide what to do about an ethics complaint filed against a county commissioner.
At the meeting, at 6 p.m. Feb. 26 at the Gwinnett Justice and Administration Center, commissioners will decide whether to take the county ethics board's advice that Commissioner Marlene Fosque receive a written warning for statements she made following a town hall meeting she organized.
Fosque declined to comment on the 3-0 vote to schedule the hearing. She abstained, as did Commissioner Tommy Hunter.
Last year, Fosque scheduled a town hall to discuss a controversial federal immigration program known as 287(g) that is used by the county sheriff's department.
Sheriff Butch Conway invited D.A. King, an anti illegal-immigration activist, to participate in the panel to represent a pro-287(g) viewpoint. During a commission meeting a few days later, Fosque called King "someone known for spewing hatred and bigotry and racism" and said she regretted that he had participated.
King filed an ethics complaint against Fosque. The ethics board upheld two of the six counts, recommending that Fosque receive a written reprimand.
The counts the group upheld are based on sections of the county’s ethics ordinance that urge officials to give their duties “earnest effort and best thought” and to “never engage in conduct which is unbecoming” to their office.
“While the commissioner testified that her comments were not intended to reflect her personal beliefs regarding Mr. King … her choice of words and the manner in which she delivered them at [the subsequent commission meeting] can reasonably be interpreted otherwise,” the ethics board wrote in its findings.
King said after the Jan. 27 decision that the recommended punishment didn't go far enough. Commissioners have 30 days after that decision to take a vote.
Fosque is the second county commissioner to have run afoul of the county's ethics ordinance. In 2017, Commissioner Hunter was publicly reprimanded after writing Facebook posts that, among other things, called U.S. Rep. John Lewis a "racist pig."
The ethics board found that Fosque, a Democrat, violated the same behavior-regulating tenets that Hunter, a Republican, did in his case. But the written warning recommended for Fosque would be a lesser punishment than the reprimand Hunter received.
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