Balfour Ethics Investigation Dropped Over Statute Of Limitations

ATLANTA, GA — Snellville Republican and former Georgia Senate leader Don Balfour may have dodged a bullet when a state ethics investigation against him was dropped recently because the statute of limitations had passed.

According to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Balfour stopped filing mandatory disclosure reports when he retired from the Georgia Senate, even though he left with about $630,000 in a campaign bank account.

In 2018, a watchdog group filed a complaint with the ethics board alleging that Balfour was using that money to bankroll negative ads against former state representative Geoff Duncan, a political rival who was in a runoff for lieutenant governor. Balfour has repeatedly denied the allegations.

Georgia’s state ethics commission recently dropped the case, though, because it was too late to track the money.

Even though the complaint was filed over activity in 2018, legal action had to be taken within one year after the last missing disclosure report, which should have been filed in 2015.

“Unfortunately, despite our efforts to analyze this case from every possible angle to save the complaint and the investigation, there is no legal avenue to do so and the case has been dismissed,” David Emadi, executive secretary of the ethics commission, said in a statement to the Atlanta newspaper.

“This is a get-out-of-jail-free card,” said William Perry, founder of Georgia Ethics Watchdogs, the organization that first filed the complaint. “You can avoid filing and take the money and run.”

For all other alleged ethics violations by lawmakers, the statute of limitations is three times as long.

Emadi told the Atlanta newspaper he’d been pushing to fix the Georgia legislature to fix this loophole, but to no avail.

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