More Ethical Misconduct from Snellville Mayor Kautz?

May 10, 2013 - PRLog -- By Kenneth Stepp

Looking through videos of city council and county commission meetings is a great way to keep current with the ethical behavior of elected officials. And funny thing, the videos of Snellville council meetings always have something to grab the attention of ethics investigators. As usual the person who appears to be in the center of ethical questions is the mayor Kautz.

The latest episode was at the 4/8/13 council meeting where Kautz said “Apparently, there’s a blog going around that back in February, I missed a City business because I was getting my nails done. Some members of this council are spreading that rumor. I was actually in jail— not in jail— at the jail working as duty attorney so if you’re going to start a blog about why I wasn’t at something and I lied about it, don’t choose something that has audio and video tape of me actually working.”

I thought about that and the only conclusion I could come to was that somebody was lying. So I did some investigating to find out whether it was the blogger or the mayor. It didn’t take long to confirm my suspicions. I checked with some people I know at the Gwinnett County jail and they told me ALL attorneys are required to sign in and sign out. Someone even said that the only way an attorney could leave the facility without signing out was if he or she was helping a prisoner escape.

So the sign in/sign out log for February 1st which is the date in question would prove whether Kautz was at the jail or not. I wasn’t surprised when I got a copy of the log for that day and found that Kautz’s name was NOT on it. So it appears she was telling another lie and a dumb lie at that. Did she think that no one would check?

Kautz’s apparent lie seems to be substantiated by the fact that several people overheard her phone call to the City Manager at approximately noon of the day she claims she was at the jail. According to those people, she clearly stated that she would not be joining the group because she was getting her nails done.

Why bring this up? Because that’s what ethics investigators do. We look into statements and actions that seem questionable or dishonest. When I started my investigation, I actually thought it might be the blogger who was making false accusations. Kautz has plenty of problems from the garnishment of her city mayor’s wages to lawsuit she filed and lost against other council members and the city attorney.

Her ethical problems are well known (they were the subject of a FOX 5 investigative report) so it wouldn’t be unusual for someone to accuse her of something to make a bad situation worse. That wasn’t the case here. It seems that there’s no one but Kautz making the situation worse. That’s unfortunate for the citizens of Snellville.

info@gwinnettethics.org