“When one gets in bed with government, one must expect the diseases it spreads.”
― Ron Paul

Recently, several articles about conflicts of interest, have been hitting the political pundit’s websites;

http://www.peachpundit.com/2015/11/08/georgia-legislators-struggle-with-term-conflict-of-interest/

is a very interesting article about conflicts, the appearance of conflicts, and the problems that they cause at the state level.   I have no idea if any of the legislators mentioned in this article truly have some ethical conflicts with their businesses doing business with the state or not, but they should each either QUIT doing business with the state or QUIT their legislative positions or post their own article describing why THEIR situation is not a conflict.    While we all should be innocent until proven guilty, politicians have a bad enough rap without doing ANYTHING to damage their (or the entire group’s) reputation.

Any politician needs to be extremely careful about even the appearance of a conflict of interest.   I was maintaining the city’s website and charging them around $1,000/year.  They were my client, before I got into politics.  But once I became a city councilman, I stopped charging the city for maintaining their site.   I probably COULD have kept charging – as long as we bid out the contract and as long as I recused myself from any discussions or votes, but I thought it best to just not charge the city. So for almost a dozen years, I did the city website for free – saving the city and citizens thousands of dollars.

Later on, as a conflict arose between a local business owner and the city of Hawkinsville (on a very unrelated matter), a particular businesses owner ACCUSED me of having a conflict of interest.   She thought I was getting paid to do the city’s website.  She had not bothered to ask anyone.   That particular business owner posted on Facebook (July 25, 2014) (with a picture of me), “How in the h*** you is the one doing the website for hawkinsville and you on the commission broad the one of the to decide which person get the job if you are on the broad are have friends are family on the broad you should not get the job it wood not be fair to the people the one how broad on it and did not get it because they do not have friends on the broad or family” (all grammar and spellings were as posted, not mine)

This particular business owner even posted this to 11Alive Newsroom’s Facebook page!   She had not bothered to CHECK to see if there was a conflict of interest, she just assumed.   But as politicians, we need to go the extra mile removing even the appearance of a conflict.  (After I sold my website company, the city and county are now getting the Regional Commission out of Macon to maintain their websites.)

I challenge all of my colleagues to go the extra mile and remove any and all appearances of conflicts.   Let’s put our constituents first and our private businesses second.

What are your thoughts?