Authority
The Ethics Office is an independent office within city government headed by the ethics officer. The ethics officer is appointed by the Board of Ethics, subject to confirmation by the City Council and approval by the Mayor, for a period not to exceed six years. The ethics officer must be a city resident and an active member of the Georgia Bar Association with five years experience in the practice of law. The ethics law prohibits the ethics officer from being involved in the city's partisan or nonpartisan political activities or political affairs.
Ethics Officer
Ginny Looney is the inaugural ethics officer for the City of Atlanta and opened the Ethics Office in August 2003. The Board of Ethics reappointed her to a second term of office in 2009.
During her first term of office, Ms. Looney established a unique, web-based public disclosure system for personal financial disclosure statements, gift reports, travel disclosure reports, and conflict of interest disclosure statements; created a citywide Integrity Matters public education program; set up a 24/7 ethics and compliance hotline; and published an enewsletter, Ethics Matters. Ms. Looney also conducted ethics workshops for half of the city’s 9,000 employees, responded to more than 850 requests for advice, prepared 30 formal advisory opinions and 70 informal advisory letters, and helped develop city policies on holiday gifts, gifts of travel, official city business, solicitations of donations, post-employment service, and use of public property during political campaigns. In the enforcement area, she increased the city’s financial disclosure filing rate from 77 percent in 2002 to 99 percent in 2008 and prosecuted 66 delinquent filers and ten violators in administrative actions before the board.
Prior to her appointment, Ms. Looney worked for twelve years as law clerk to Chief Justice Norman S. Fletcher of the Supreme Court of Georgia; three years as a litigation associate with Bondurant, Mixson & Elmore; and one year as an associate with Mayer, Nations, & Perkerson in Atlanta, Georgia. She served a one-year clerkship with U.S. District Judge William Wayne Justice of the Eastern District of Texas after graduating from law school in 1985. Before attending law school, Ms. Looney worked as a news reporter, university researcher, and project director for the Alabama and Georgia Civil Liberties Unions.
She earned her Bachelor of Arts in Southern Studies and Women Studies from the University of Alabama and her law degree from the University of Georgia, where she graduated summa cum laude and was editor-in-chief of the Georgia Law Review.
She has lived with her family in Midtown Atlanta since 1977.
Staff
Jabu Sengova is the associate ethics officer and conducts ethics investigations, serves as the administrative hearing officer in financial disclosure cases, coordinates the Integrity Line Steering Committee, and assists with ethics training and advice. Prior to joining the Ethics Office in November 2008, she worked in the Fulton County Public Defender’s Office where she represented criminal defendants in felony trials and as an assistant public defender in the City Court’s Public Defender’s Office. A native of Sierra Leone, she is a founding member of the St. Joseph’s Secondary School Alumni Association, which raises monies for scholarships and books for girls to attend the school in West Africa. Ms. Sengova earned her bachelor of arts degree in English from South Carolina State University and her law degree from the University of Florida.
Sherry Dawson is the senior administrative analyst and serves as the office manager, assists users in filing online forms in the Electronic Disclosure System, and researches and compiles data for reports. Previously, she worked for the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia for 13 years, serving as finance director and office manager. She earned her bachelor of science degree in marketing from Alabama State University.