By Chuck Gallagher — Business Ethics Keynote Speaker and Trainer
TL;DR: Chuck Gallagher, business ethics keynote speaker, examines Georgia’s governor’s race — where both candidates have made ethics reform a centerpiece while defending their own records — and argues that conflict-of-interest rules only work when they’re written before anyone needs them.
Thursday morning in Atlanta. A candidate for governor stands with a row of state lawmakers behind her and tells a room full of reporters she wants to stop governors from making money off the state they run.
Keisha Lance Bottoms unveiled her ethics platform at that campaign event, built around limiting a governor’s business interests with the state. Her language was plain. “We will also very plainly and simply stop governors from making money off of this state,” she said. The specifics matter more than the applause line. Require candidates for governor to divest from companies doing business with the state. Require agencies to explain their no-bid contracts. Open up financial disclosure.
Her opponent is running on ethics too. Republican Rick Jackson told reporters on August 20 that he intends to push the most strenuous ethics bill anyone has seen, adding that he doesn’t want anybody working in legislation to hold power that makes money for their own benefit.
Two candidates. Same issue. Each one convinced the other is the problem.
Why Is Everybody Suddenly Talking About Ethics?
Because both of them have something to answer for. That’s the honest read, and you already knew it.
Jackson founded Jackson Healthcare, a staffing firm whose subsidiaries have been paid close to a billion dollars by Georgia state agencies since fiscal 2020, according to a Healthbeat review of government records. Roughly $710 million of that came from the Department of Community Health for pandemic-era staffing. He has pledged to end his healthcare contracting with the state by December 31 if he wins.
Bottoms has her own file. In January 2021, her campaign agreed to a $37,000 fine from the Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commission over her 2017 mayoral run, admitting to $6,900 in contributions above the legal limit and another $110,797 that exceeded debt limits. Mary Norwood, her opponent in that race, paid $27,000 in the same investigation. Then there’s the city credit card used for her husband’s 2018 Super Bowl airfare. Bottoms told reporters on August 14 that she caught the error herself and repaid the city before anyone else noticed.
I’m not here to tell you how to vote. As a business ethics keynote speaker, I’ve spent years watching this exact sequence play out in companies, in city halls, and in state capitols. The reform arrives after the damage. Nearly always.
What Makes a Conflict of Interest Different From Corruption?
Here’s where most people go wrong. They hear “conflict of interest” and they think somebody stole something.
A conflict of interest is structural. It’s a position, not an act. Georgia law generally prohibits elected officials from holding contracts with state government, but the statute carries exceptions, including for contracts already in place before the official took office, according to Atlanta government-contracts attorney Matt Maguire. Edward Queen of Emory University’s Center for Ethics has said a governor in that spot should resign from his companies, place the related assets in a blind trust, and keep those companies out of state bidding for the length of the term.
Notice what none of that assumes. It doesn’t assume the man is a crook. A blind trust is not a verdict. It exists so that nobody — not a reporter, not a voter, not a competing vendor — has to spend four years wondering. That’s the whole function. Take the question off the table before anyone has to ask it.
What’s Actually Wrong With a No-Bid Contract?
Competitive bidding is friction, and friction is the point. Making an agency explain itself before it hands out public money is slow, irritating, and occasionally unfair to a vendor who really was the best choice. Fine. That’s the price of admission.
Because a no-bid contract never announces itself as a favor. It looks like efficiency. It looks like urgency, and during a pandemic some of it genuinely was. But the same shortcut that lets a state hire nurses in a hurry lets a state hire a friend in a hurry, and from the outside you cannot tell the two apart. Requiring an agency to put in writing why it skipped the bid won’t stop anybody determined to cheat. It just makes the cheating take effort and leave a trail.
Why Do Ethics Rules Always Show Up Late?
Because nobody starts out planning to break them.
Let me be clear about something. People don’t wake up one morning and decide to sell out. They take a ride. They take a ticket. They let a contract renew because unwinding it would be complicated and the lawyers said it was legal anyway. Each step is small enough to explain. Each step makes the next one easier. Then one day you’re standing in front of a microphone explaining a plane ticket, and the explanation is even true, and it doesn’t matter, because the story got there first.
I didn’t learn that from a textbook. I learned it by making choices that cost me my business, my reputation, and my freedom. Every choice has a consequence. Every single one.
What Would Actually Fix Any of This?
Rules written before anybody needs them. That’s it. That’s the answer nobody wants, because it isn’t a headline.
The trouble with campaign-season ethics reform is that it’s aimed. It arrives shaped like the other guy. A divestiture requirement lands squarely on a healthcare executive. Legislative conflict rules land squarely on career politicians. Both proposals may well be good policy on the merits. But a rule designed around one person tends to have that person’s shape, and the next situation won’t fit it.
Real standards get drafted when the chair is empty. Disclose before you’re asked. Divest before somebody makes you. Explain the sole-source contract in the file, not at the podium. As a business ethics keynote speaker, I tell audiences the same thing every time. The strength of an ethics program is never measured on the day it’s convenient. It’s measured on the day it costs you something.
Georgia voters will sort out the race. The harder question outlasts it. When you’re holding public money, do you want rules that protect you from suspicion, or rules that protect you from consequences? You don’t get both.
Choose carefully.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a conflict of interest in government service?
A conflict of interest exists when an official’s private financial stake could reasonably influence a public decision. It is a structural condition, not proven wrongdoing, and the official may never act on it at all. That’s why the standard remedies — divestiture, resignation from company leadership, a blind trust — aim at removing the overlap rather than punishing behavior.
Why are no-bid government contracts controversial?
Competitive bidding forces an agency to justify how it spends public money. A no-bid contract skips that step, which is sometimes legitimate in an emergency and sometimes a way to steer work toward a favored vendor. From the outside the two look identical, which is why reform proposals in Georgia would require agencies to document their reasoning in writing.
Can a business owner serve as governor without a conflict of interest?
Generally yes, but it takes real separation. Ethics specialists typically recommend resigning from company leadership, placing affected assets in a blind trust, and barring the company from bidding on state work for the duration of the term. Georgia law bars elected officials from holding state contracts, though it carries exceptions, including for agreements signed before taking office.
What does Chuck Gallagher say about ethics failures in public office?
Chuck Gallagher, a business ethics keynote speaker who served federal prison time for his own white-collar crime, argues that ethical collapse in government is almost never one dramatic decision. It’s a sequence of small, defensible compromises, each one making the next easier. His work returns to a single idea: every choice has a consequence.
When should a public official disclose a financial interest?
Before anyone asks. Disclosure made under pressure reads as damage control no matter how clean the underlying facts turn out to be, while voluntary disclosure made early costs almost nothing and settles the question permanently. With the public, timing carries nearly as much weight as content.
Ethics doesn’t get decided at the press conference. It gets decided months earlier, in a quiet room, when the shortcut is sitting right there and nobody is watching. That’s the conversation I bring to boards, agencies, and leadership teams — not a compliance lecture, but an honest look at how decent people talk themselves into indefensible decisions one small step at a time. If your organization would rather have that conversation before it needs to, start at ChuckGallagher.com.
Five Questions for Reflection
1. Where in our organization could someone’s private financial interest quietly overlap with a decision made on our behalf?
2. If a reporter asked us tomorrow to explain our three largest sole-source contracts, could we answer in writing today?
3. What is the smallest ethical shortcut that has become normal here, and who first decided it was fine?
4. Do our ethics rules exist to prevent suspicion, or only to prevent consequences once suspicion has already arrived?
5. What would it cost us to disclose something uncomfortable before we were forced to — and are we willing to pay it?
