Don Balfour No Longer Chair of Rules Committee
After months of speculation, the State of Georgia has now officially replaced Sen. Balfour with Sen. Jeff Mullis.
Following a GBI investigation into allegations of ethics violations, state Sen. Don Balfour, R-Snellville, is no longer chair of the Senate's Rules Committee. (The committee is a group of senators that decides which bills can be voted on by the Georgia Senate.) The investigation by the GBI was completed in December of 2012. The outcome, however, has not been made public. According to the AJC, "the GBI’s involvement marked the first criminal investigation of a state senator since 2005." Balfour was eventually fined $5,000 for filing inaccurate travel reports to claim expenses by the Senate Ethics Committee, although he maintains that it was a simple mistake, not a breach of ethics. Sen. Jeff Mullis has replaced Balfour as the Senate Rules…
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Brenda Lee
12:27 pm on Wednesday, January 16, 2013
IMHO, Balfour is and should be held responsible for his actions. That said, the Senate has failed miserably by allowing any one person to remain in the same position too long. GRRR!!! There are actually elected officials, commonly referred to as genuine "Statesmen", who self-impose term limits by choosing to step down after several years in the same position. more ›