Under the policy, state employees are not allowed to accept anything valued over $25 - including gifts, speaking fees and meals - from any company that does business with state government.
About 650 employees accepted gratuities from government vendors over the past two years, according to disclosure reports examined by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Many of those employees are bound by the ethics policy for state government's executive branch. But the newspaper reported that none of them have been disciplined for violations.
Lobbyists are a common sight at the Capitol during the legislative session, talking to lawmakers and wining and dining them after hours. But companies that sell goods and services to state government know that it is often bureaucrats who decide how millions will be spent.
For that reason, vendors' lobbyists entertain government employees and appointees with drinks, meals and tickets to events and pay for conferences, trade shows and sales pitches called "educational briefings."
"We often interact with people in social settings," Georgia Power spokeswoman Christy Ihrig told the newspaper. But she said favors in return are "never the expectation."
A decade ago, Gov. Roy Barnes fired Dotty Roach, head of the state's purchasing agency, for accepting gifts from software firms.
A state investigation had found that a saleswoman for Oracle Corp. had given Roach gifts worth nearly $1,000 at a convention in 1997. The saleswoman then got a $450,000 commission when the state bought $40 million in software from Oracle and PeopleSoft, Inc.
The Ethics Commission fined each company $2,000 in 1999 for not disclosing gifts to Roach. The Journal-Constitution reports that no such penalties have been imposed since then.
On the day he took office in 2003, Gov. Sonny Perdue signed an executive order banning gifts valued at more than $25 to state employees under his command. That includes almost every worker in every agency other than the Legislature and the court system. An employee who violates the ban could be fired.
Perdue said at the time that the gift ban would "safeguard their ability to make objective, fair and impartial decisions."
But the Journal-Constitution reports that lobbyist disclosure forms show that the policy is widely disregarded.
In 2007 and 2008, vendors' lobbyists reported spending about $106,000 on state workers, though about a third received gifts that fell within the $25 limit.
The numbers could be much higher since some lobbyists report gifts to government employees in the same filings as disclosures of spending on elected officials. A spot check of those filings by the newspaper found an additional $12,000 in gifts to employees since 2007.
About a fifth of lobbyists' spending was on employees of the Department of Economic Development.
Georgia Power paid for $1,695 in meals, golf rounds and other perks for Chip Mitchell, a project manager for the agency, in 2007 and 2008. Mitchell, who works with companies considering locating to or expanding in Georgia, told the Journal-Constitution that agency policy prevented him from commenting.
Economic Development officials said many gifts received by employees are permissible.
"None of these expenses were for the personal gain" of employees, agency spokeswoman Alison Tyrer said, adding that all were incurred "in the context of promoting Georgia and its communities to create jobs."
She said Georgia Power acts as a "partner" in wooing new industry.
"As the private member of a public-private partnership, its resources enable the state to maximize its efforts while conserving taxpayer dollars."
There are no exceptions under Perdue's order, which says agencies should pay their employees' expenses.
Perdue spokesman Bert Brantley said in an e-mail Friday that the governor still expects employees to adhere to the order's requirements.
"We are reminding all agencies of their responsibility to make certain that any employee contact with a vendor meets the intent and spirit of the order," he wrote.
http://accesswdun.com/article/2009/10/224238