Jury awards $700K to ex ethics chief

The former executive director of the state ethics commission was awarded $700,000 when jurors decided Friday that she had been forced out of her position in 2011 for aggressively investigating ethics complaints against Gov. Nathan Deal’s 2010 campaign.

Kalberman filed her whistleblower lawsuit in June 2012, about a year after she resigned after the commission, citing a budget crisis, cut her salary by $35,000, or 30 percent. The move came about a month after she and her top deputy, Sherilyn Streicker, asked the commission to issue subpoenas in the Deal investigation.

Kalberman testified Thursday that she thought the budget crisis was only a cover. “I said I believe this has nothing to do with the budget,” Kalberman said she told one of the commissioners at the time.

Nathan Deal

The governor faced complaints that he personally profited from his campaign’s aircraft rentals from a company he partly owned, that he illegally used state campaign funds for legal bills related to a federal ethics investigation when he was a member of Congress and that he accepted campaign contributions that exceeded limits. The state ethics commission cleared Deal of major ethics violations in July 2012 while finding he made “technical defects” in a series of personal financial and campaign finance reports. Deal agreed to pay fees totaling $3,350.

Deal was originally on the witness list in the trial of Kalberman’s suit, but Judge Ural Glanville granted the state’s motion to quash the subpoena.

“I’d answer whatever question they’d ask me,” Deal told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “I just can’t imagine that they could ask me much. I don’t know very much about what they’re concerned with.”

Holly LaBerge

LaBerge was appointed as executive director of the state ethics commission in August 2011. She was a lobbyist for the state Public Defenders Standards Council when the governor’s chief counsel, Ryan Teague, contacted her about replacing Kalberman — before Kalberman’s salary was cut and her top aide, Sherilyn Streicker, was dismissed.

LaBerge testified during the Kalberman trial that when she took over she found no budget crisis at the ethics commission.

Sherilyn Streicker

Streicker was Kalberman’s top assistant and the investigator in the complaints against Deal. Like Kalberman, she has filed a whistleblower suit against the commission.

During testimony in the trial, she said, “I knew the commissioners weren’t going to move forward with (the Deal investigation), just seeing the way they handled the previous cases.”

Patrick Millsaps

Millsaps was chairman of the commission when it cut Kalberman’s pay by 30 percent and eliminated Streicker’s position.

During the trial, he acknowledged under cross-examination that if the governor’s office assisted in the recruitment of LaBerge to succeed Kalberman, “it doesn’t pass the smell test.”

Elisabeth Murray-Obertein

Murray-Obertein was hired by LaBerge to serve as the ethics commission’s staff attorney. In sworn testimony leading up to the case, she claimed that LaBerge intervened in Deal’s case and bragged that Deal owed her after his case was settled. Murray-Obertein was later dismissed from her position in January after a Capitol police officer said he smelled alcohol on her on the morning of a workday. The jury, however, did not hear about her dismissal after both sides agreed not to mention it in court.

During the trial, she testified that LaBerge told her that commissioners felt Kalberman and Streicker “were delving into the (Deal) investigation too deeply.”

John Hair

Hair is a former information technology specialist with the ethics commission. He also filed a whistleblower lawsuit against the commission after he claimed he was fired for “frivolous” reasons for refusing to remove documents from Deal’s ethics case file.

During the trial, he testified that LaBerge often asked him to alter or remove files from commission computer servers and put them on a removable hard drive that he would hand-deliver to her. That only happened, he said, with files related to Deal.

Timeline

Key players in ethics commission trial

Stacey Kalberman

The former executive director of the state ethics commission was awarded $700,000 when jurors decided Friday that she had been forced out of her position in 2011 for aggressively investigating ethics complaints against Gov. Nathan Deal’s 2010 campaign.

Kalberman filed her whistleblower lawsuit in June 2012, about a year after she resigned after the commission, citing a budget crisis, cut her salary by $35,000, or 30 percent. The move came about a month after she and her top deputy, Sherilyn Streicker, asked the commission to issue subpoenas in the Deal investigation.

Kalberman testified Thursday that she thought the budget crisis was only a cover. “I said I believe this has nothing to do with the budget,” Kalberman said she told one of the commissioners at the time.

Nathan Deal

The governor faced complaints that he personally profited from his campaign’s aircraft rentals from a company he partly owned, that he illegally used state campaign funds for legal bills related to a federal ethics investigation when he was a member of Congress and that he accepted campaign contributions that exceeded limits. The state ethics commission cleared Deal of major ethics violations in July 2012 while finding he made “technical defects” in a series of personal financial and campaign finance reports. Deal agreed to pay fees totaling $3,350.

Deal was originally on the witness list in the trial of Kalberman’s suit, but Judge Ural Glanville granted the state’s motion to quash the subpoena.

“I’d answer whatever question they’d ask me,” Deal told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “I just can’t imagine that they could ask me much. I don’t know very much about what they’re concerned with.”

Holly LaBerge

LaBerge was appointed as executive director of the state ethics commission in August 2011. She was a lobbyist for the state Public Defenders Standards Council when the governor’s chief counsel, Ryan Teague, contacted her about replacing Kalberman — before Kalberman’s salary was cut and her top aide, Sherilyn Streicker, was dismissed.

LaBerge testified during the Kalberman trial that when she took over she found no budget crisis at the ethics commission.

Sherilyn Streicker

Streicker was Kalberman’s top assistant and the investigator in the complaints against Deal. Like Kalberman, she has filed a whistleblower suit against the commission.

During testimony in the trial, she said, “I knew the commissioners weren’t going to move forward with (the Deal investigation), just seeing the way they handled the previous cases.”

Patrick Millsaps

Millsaps was chairman of the commission when it cut Kalberman’s pay by 30 percent and eliminated Streicker’s position.

During the trial, he acknowledged under cross-examination that if the governor’s office assisted in the recruitment of LaBerge to succeed Kalberman, “it doesn’t pass the smell test.”

Elisabeth Murray-Obertein

Murray-Obertein was hired by LaBerge to serve as the ethics commission’s staff attorney. In sworn testimony leading up to the case, she claimed that LaBerge intervened in Deal’s case and bragged that Deal owed her after his case was settled. Murray-Obertein was later dismissed from her position in January after a Capitol police officer said he smelled alcohol on her on the morning of a workday. The jury, however, did not hear about her dismissal after both sides agreed not to mention it in court.

During the trial, she testified that LaBerge told her that commissioners felt Kalberman and Streicker “were delving into the (Deal) investigation too deeply.”

John Hair

Hair is a former information technology specialist with the ethics commission. He also filed a whistleblower lawsuit against the commission after he claimed he was fired for “frivolous” reasons for refusing to remove documents from Deal’s ethics case file.

During the trial, he testified that LaBerge often asked him to alter or remove files from commission computer servers and put them on a removable hard drive that he would hand-deliver to her. That only happened, he said, with files related to Deal.

Timeline

A Fulton County jury sided Friday with the former director of the state ethics commission when it ruled she was forced from her job for aggressively investigating Gov. Nathan Deal, throwing the already troubled commission into deeper turmoil.

The outcome is bad news for state officials, who for nearly three years said Stacey Kalberman’s departure from the agency had nothing to do with her desire to issue subpoenas for records in an investigation into Deal’s 2010 campaign. It also bodes ill for the state’s case in two additional whistleblower suits against the commission dealing with many of the same issues.

The jury, after deliberating 2 1/2 hours, ordered the state to pay the former ethics commission director $700,000. That figure will climb once back pay and attorneys’ fees are settled.

“I very honestly and truly believed what happened to me was wrong,” Kalberman told reporters after the verdict was read. “More than that, the justice systems allowed me to tell my story and I didn’t have to walk away from something I thought was wrong.”

Lauren Kane, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Sam Olens, who defended the commission in the case, declined to comment because of the other lawsuits still pending.

Kalberman’s departure launched a period of great tumult at the agency, which has seen tremendous turnover, internal strife and allegations of impropriety that have called into question its ability to enforce the state’s ethics laws. It also is facing at least two state investigations and a federal grand jury’s subpoenas.

The state and federal investigations follow investigations by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Kalberman’s attorneys worked all week to show that the commission’s decisions in June 2011 to cut her salary by $35,000 and to eliminate the job of her top deputy, Sherilyn Streicker, were a response to the pair’s desire to issue subpoenas for records in the investigation. Jurors heard three days of testimony from current and former commissioners and employees, culminating Thursday night with several hours of testimony from Kalberman herself.

Attorneys for the commission, meanwhile, tried to establish that the agency’s budget was in crisis and that, coupled with Kalberman’s request for a pay raise, was what motivated the decision to cut her pay and dismiss her deputy.

Kalberman attorney Kim Worth told jurors in her closing argument that the commission’s defense was full of inconsistencies and contradictions. Defense witnesses, Worth said, testified that with the help of the governor’s office they recruited Holly LaBerge to replace Kalberman while Kalberman was still in her job and before they announced plans to cut her salary and eliminate Streicker’s job.

Worth said even former commission Chairman Patrick Millsaps, who engineered the plan to cut Kalberman’s salary, acknowledged under cross-examination that the recruitment of LaBerge by Deal’s office “doesn’t pass the smell test.”

“That, ladies and gentlemen, is pretext,” Worth said. “The very first witness. It doesn’t add up.”

Jurors agreed. Forewoman Allison Pecquet, a 25-year-old account manager, said Millsaps was a key to their decision.

“It was Millsaps,” she said. “When he told (Kalberman) not to say anything about the Deal investigation right before the May 3 meeting. We had it circled 10 times on the board.”

That May 3, 2011, meeting was when Kalberman first presented draft subpoenas for records in the Deal case to the commission. When Kalberman earlier told Millsaps about the extent of their investigation, and that the FBI was interested, Millsaps ordered her to keep it silent, according to testimony.

Juror Kurt Pinniger, 43, a software developer, said the fact that the only two attorneys at the commission “got fired” sealed the verdict.

“If they had taken 10 percent pay cuts across the board, that might have been something,” Pinniger said. “But they got rid of the two attorneys who were investigating Nathan Deal.”

Deal spokesman Brian Robinson said the governor’s office had nothing to do with this case.

“Today’s verdict involved an internal dispute between former employees and former commissioners of the Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commission, which is a body that operates independently of elected officials,” Robinson said in a statement. “There’s a reason no member of the governor’s staff was called to testify: because there’s no connection to this office.”

But it was Deal’s executive counsel, Ryan Teague, who called LaBerge in mid-May to gauge her interest in Kalberman’s job before it was open. Jurors said that point was key, too. Deal’s office has confirmed it was Teague who called LaBerge, while LaBerge testified this week that she did not remember who called her. Jurors didn’t believe her.

“That was a laughable point that she would say she didn’t remember who had called her,” Pecquet, the jury forewoman, said.

The timing of the verdict complicates Deal’s re-election bid. With a competitive GOP primary next month and a well-financed Democrat waiting in November, his political opponents moved to seize on the verdict.

Former Dalton Mayor David Pennington, who’s running against Deal in the primary, said it was a symbol of the “abuses of power, ethics flaws and strong-arm, good ol’ boy politics.” And Democrat Jason Carter said the trial “opened a new window into the ethical culture” of Deal’s administration.

Assistant Attorneys General Bryan Webb and Laura McDonald spent the week trying to convince jurors that the budget crisis was genuine and that Kalberman showed poor management skills during it.

In his closing argument, Webb hammered at Kalberman. He said during that key May 3, 2011, meeting — before Kalberman and Streicker presented the commission draft subpoenas for records in the Deal investigation — Kalberman acknowledged the agency had major budget problems.

Then “she went into executive session and asked for a raise,” Webb said. “She had the gall to say the sky is falling, we’re going to run out of money and you know what? I want $5,000 more for myself.”

That was what led to the decision to reduce her salary, Webb said, not the Deal investigation.

“Kalberman took actions that made commissioners begin to question her abilities,” he said.

Worth acknowledged that the budget wasn’t perfect but said it was no surprise.

“Budgets are always a problem in state agencies,” Worth said. “They’re always an issue.”

In fact, Worth said, almost immediately after taking the job, LaBerge hired a staff attorney and a receptionist. LaBerge testified that when she took over she found no budget crisis.

“The reason they made the personnel decisions they did was because they wanted to take the attorneys out,” Worth said. “They wanted to remove the attorneys from the commission.”