Buckhead cityhood leader’s service on state Board of Corrections raises questions of experience, oversight
By John Ruch, Saporta Report
With crime as a political driver of the Buckhead cityhood movement, you’d think much would be said about its leader serving as an official in the state criminal justice system.
Yet it’s barely noted in scattered news reports that Bill White, chairman and CEO of the Buckhead City Committee (BCC), is also a member of the Georgia Board of Corrections (BOC), which oversees state prisons. White’s 2020 appointment by Gov. Brian Kemp goes unmentioned in his lengthy BCC bio, and neither he nor the governor responded to questions about it.
Among those questions is why White, a politically connected professional fundraiser and holder of a culinary arts degree with no experience running prisons, was interested in and chosen for the position. Also unclear is if and how White was vetted and whether Kemp was aware of his widely reported 2010 brush with the criminal justice system in New York, where he struck an agreement with the state Attorney General’s office to pay $1 million and undertake other actions as part of a criminal investigation into state pension fund improprieties. White never acknowledged any wrongdoing and was not charged with any crime.
Also murky is if and how the August 2020 appointment relates to the Republican-backed cityhood movement. At that time, the cityhood movement was just coalescing through semi-public virtual meetings with leaders who refused to identify themselves. White emerged publicly, along with other BCC leaders, about six months later, first as the group’s fundraiser and later as its public face and chief. Cityhood has since become an issue in the 2022 gubernatorial race, with Kemp remaining noncommittal, his Republican challenger David Perdue backing a referendum, and Democrat Stacey Abrams in opposition.
One certainty is that White joined the BOC at a crucial moment when the Georgia Department of Corrections (GDC) is facing lawsuits and a U.S. Department of Justice civil rights investigation related to conditions in state prisons and a spike in suicides and homicides within them — issue that has not been part of the law-and-order debate over Buckhead cityhood.