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. Appointed to a six-year term by the Atlanta Board of Ethics, she opened the Ethics Office in August 2003.
In her first five years in office, Ms. Looney has established a unique, web-based public disclosure system for personal financial disclosure statements, gift and travel reports, and conflict of interest disclosures; created a citywide Integrity Matters public education program; set up a 24/7 ethics and compliance hotline; and published a quarterly enewsletter, Ethics Matters. Ms. Looney has 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, and use of public property during political campaigns. In the enforcement area, she has 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, and provides ethics training. 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.
Nasceas Timms is the administrative analyst, senior in the Ethics Office where he assists with the financial disclosure program, electronic disclosure system, and the Integrity Matters program. He previously worked as a paralegal with the City Department of Law and United Parcel Service. Mr. Timms graduated from Georgia State University in 2003 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science.