Spa services? $330. Pet supplies? $101.62. A riverboat cruise? $123.32.
Paying those bills and 200 more using campaign contributions? Pricey.
Georgia state Rep. Carl Gilliard, a Savannah Democrat, agreed to pay $47,000 in fines and reimbursements earlier this week in one of the costliest ever State Ethics Commission cases involving a lawmaker. The complaint dates to December 2022 and involved a series of missing and late campaign and personal finance disclosures by the five-term legislator.
Gilliard failed to file six campaign contribution disclosure reports and filed three reports late.
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
After looking at his campaign bank records, the commission found he left 110 expenditures totaling $54,000 off his reports, ranging from small purchases at grocery and convenience stores to big-ticket items, including a $972 payment to TitleMax, a Savannah-based car title pawn company; $230 to a private investigative firm specializing in photographic evidence; and multiple charges at a Savannah auto dealership.
The list of missing expenditures is littered with restaurant and hotel payments as well as thousands of dollars in clothing purchases. It also included more than $10,000 in cash withdrawals, including some with foreign ATM fees.
The commission decided some of the expenses could be considered legitimate campaign costs or expenditures to maintain his role as a legislator, which is a legal use of campaign money.
Gilliard is required to repay $30,000 of those expenses to his campaign account and was fined $17,000 by the commission as part of a consent decree. The commission said the lawmaker has already paid the fine.
The legislator also neglected to file annual personal financial disclosures in 2021, 2022 and 2023.
Gilliard cited a confluence of factors, such as a new campaign filing system enacted by the commission, poor accounting on his part for canvassing costs that he covered with cash withdrawals and miscommunication over events he sponsored or organized in both Savannah and at the Georgia Capitol.
“It is a legal matter that has been handled and now my focus is to continue to do the work of the people,” Gilliard told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The commission’s executive secretary, David Emadi, labeled Gilliard’s misuse of funds “blatant” and “intentional” and challenged the lawmaker’s portrayal of the violations as a misunderstanding.
“As far as the case is concerned, I’ve never accidentally spent 30 grand on trips to the spa, TitleMax car payments, unexplained cash withdrawals, etc. — all while using money that wasn’t mine to spend — as part of a simple misunderstanding,” Emadi said. ”But the facts made crystal clear that this was not a simple mistake, and instead was a pattern of intentional abuse of state law by the officeholder.”
Gilliard chairs the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus and sat on eight committees during the two-year session that concluded in March. In 2021, he was a co-sponsor of the legislation that repealed Georgia’s citizen’s arrest law following the slaying of Brunswick resident Ahmaud Arbery.
Outside of his legislative duties, Gilliard is an ordained minister and the leader of Feed the Hungry, which collects and distributes nonperishable food items to people in need. Prior to starting the nonprofit in 2009, Gilliard worked in sales at a Savannah auto dealership.
Gilliard is running for another House term this fall. He’ll face a Republican challenger for the first time since first being elected in Democratic-leaning District 162 in 2016. Keith Padgett, an officer in the right-wing Southeast Georgia Republican Assembly, is Gilliard’s opponent.
