An ethics panel is being assembled to look into whether Gwinnett County Commissioner Kirkland Carden violated the county’s ethics policy when he acted as a strategist for a candidate’s failed bid for a legislative seat last year.
Laurie McClain filed the complaint in February, and refiled an amended version of it in March after county attorneys told her there were technical issues with the original complaint. County commissioners then decided at the end of March to proceed with putting together an ethics panel to hear the complaint.
“All the members of the Ethics Board must be appointed by April 24,” county spokeswoman Deborah Tuff said.
In the complaint, McClain raised issues with Carden working as a campaign consultant for Om Duggal’s failed campaign for House District 99 — Carden’s company Workhorse Strategies worked for Duggal’s campaign — in 2022.
McClain, who lost to Carden in the 2020 general election race for Commission District 1, asserts that it violated a section of the county’s ethics policy which forbids county officials from taking on employment or rendering services which are “incompatible with the proper discharge” of their official duties or would limi their ability to be impartial in their judgments or actions while performing their official duties.
Duggal is affiliated with a company that filed a lawsuit in the county in June 2022 over a rejected rezoning request.
The rezoning request was for a property in Carden’s district. He initially sought to table the request for one month after a public hearing was held, but no other commissioner would second that motion so he then made a motion to deny it.
The lawsuit is still pending in Gwinnett County Superior Court.
“I do not understand how Mr. Carden could possibly continue to take funds, albeit through a conduit entity, from a litigant against the county,” McClain…
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