Departed ethics chief cites ‘toxic axe-grinding’

Leader resigns after effort to remove board member fails.

Before she resigned, the chairwoman of Dekalb County’s ethics board had proposed removing a fellow board member for helping perpetuate what she described as a “rhetorical cycle of toxic axe-grinding.”

She stepped down when other colleagues declined to support her efforts.

Now-former chairwoman Alex Joseph confirmed as much Wednesday, a day after The Atlanta Journal-constitution first reported on her resignation. Joseph’s motion to remove ethics board alternate member Bill Clark — who did not immediately respond to requests for comment — made it as far as the draft agenda for a meeting originally set for Thursday evening.

That meeting was canceled after Joseph stepped down Feb 9.

The specifics of her allegations, meanwhile, raise new questions about the culture of — and the next steps for — a board meant to provide ethical oversight to thousands of Dekalb County officials and employees.

The AJC on Wednesday obtained a copy of the lengthy motion Joseph drafted in support of Clark’s removal. In it, she acknowledged disagreements and even frustration among board members regarding some decisions that were made during her tenure, including a push to conduct less business in closed-door “executive sessions.”

But she accused Clark and at least two other unnamed board members of exhibiting “a degree of umbrage that I can only describe as extreme” toward both her and Bonnie Levine, the board’s legal counsel.

Joseph, a 35-year-old former federal prosecutor, has been a member of the Georgia bar since 2013. Levine has been an attorney since 2007.

But Joseph suggested in her motion that the allegedly outsized antagonism stemmed from both being women and younger than their predecessors on the board.

She accused Clark specifically of “bullying, undermining, and attempted manipulation.”

Specifically, Joseph’s memo attached to the proposed agenda item referenced a Jan. 12 closed-door session in which Clark allegedly addressed her as follows: “I have tried to give you every benefit of the doubt and covered for your inexperience for a year now … I have been a lawyer for more than three times as long as you have so your hanging your hat on your minute as a baby lawyer carrying someone’s briefcase as a government lawyer adds no validity to your opinions.”

Levine, the board counsel, did not immediately respond torequestsforcomment.david Moskowitz, the board’s vice chair and presumed leader following Joseph’s resignation, declined to comment.

The Dekalb County ethics board — which has the ability to fine and reprimand county employees and officials deemed to have violated ethics rules — was reconstituted in early 2021, after a more than two-year period of dormancy.

A lawsuit from former county commissioner Sharon Barnes Sutton, who was sentenced Tuesday in a separate federal extortion case, had successfully challenged the way certain ethics board members were appointed. It took two public referendums to tweak the process and get things back up and running.

It has been a bumpy road since then, too.

Several board members, including Joseph’s predecessor, have come and gone. Longtime ethics officer Stacey Kalberman — a full-time employee responsible for fielding complaints and referring them to the volunteer board — stepped down early last year, and it took months longer than expected to hire a replacement, effectively leaving the board on another unplanned hiatus.

Now-former deputy ethics officer Latonya Nix Wiley also accused Kalberman and others of racial discrimination and retaliation. An independent investigation subsequently found those allegations to be unsubstantiated. In January, Wiley’s position was eliminated altogether.

But just last week, Wiley filed a new federal lawsuit based on similar allegations.

Joseph referenced the situation in her recent memo lobbying for Clark’s removal.

“Indeed, though the investigator’s report convinced me that Ms. Wiley did not experience unlawful discrimination or retaliation, I do believe that Ms. Wiley’s perception of hostility is sincere,” Joseph wrote. “In my short tenure as chair, I have developed similar concerns about Ethics Board culture.

“I am committed to changing it, and I hope you will join me.”

Alex Joseph