A College Park councilman has been ordered to repay public funds and pay penalties for state ethics violations that residents say center on accountability and the misuse of taxpayer money.
Councilman Roderick Gay agreed to a consent order with the Georgia State Ethics Commission requiring him to refund $3,262 to the city and pay $2,000 in penalties for his use of public funds to promote a ballot measure in the November 2025 election. The consent order was announced during the commission’s June 24 meeting.
Gay used his Ward 4 community enhancement funds, which are taxpayer monies, on a promotion encouraging residents to vote yes on a referendum expanding a property tax exemption for seniors and disabled residents.
Gay also was on that November 2025 ballot for reelection.
Voters overwhelmingly approved the House Bill 648 homestead exemption measure, but Gay violated four provisions of Georgia’s Campaign Finance Act while campaigning for it, including using public funds to promote the measure, failing to formally register the campaign effort with the state and failing to file required financial disclosures.
“While I regret the error, I do not regret standing with the senior citizens of College Park,” Gay said in a statement, adding that he respects the work of the Georgia State Ethics Commission. The councilman asked that his statement be shared in full.
Gay was represented in the ethics case by Michael Huening, an attorney with the same law firm as College Park city attorney Winston Denmark. SaportaReport has reached out to Denmark and City Manager Michael Hicks to ask whether the representation posed a conflict of interest and who paid Gay’s legal fees. Neither had responded by the time of publication.
Georgia State Ethics Commission attorney Timothy Baywal, who oversaw Gay’s case, said the commission does not have authority or “jurisdiction to enforce, analyze or consider conflicts of interest between an attorney and client.”
Gay is required to repay the $3,262.65 to the Ward 4 community enhancement funds account.
“Outside of that, we have no authority over how the city of College Park allocates its funds,” Baywal said.
College Park council members have faced criticism over transparency surrounding the use of their community enhancement funds. Mayor Bianca Motley Broom regularly posts reports detailing expenditures by members of the governing body on her website.
Each elected official was allocated $900,000 in community enhancement funds for fiscal year 2025-26, including $500,000 designated for capital projects and $400,000 for non-capital expenditures.
Residents are watching
College Park resident Tom Coleman filed the ethics complaint against Gay with the Georgia State Ethics Commission last year after seeing a banner promoting the referendum, signed by Roderick Gay, stretched across Herschel Road near a voting location, Coleman said.
“Roderick has pushed that bill over the years… that was one of his campaign points: ‘I’m getting you seniors exempt from College Park taxes,’” Coleman said. “Full disclosure, I’m a senior and would be exempt.”
Coleman said he learned through open records requests that the banner was paid for with public funds. He also learned that city employees installed the banner and moved it from one location to another, he said.
“I said, ‘This is not [right]. He’s using city funds and employees essentially to campaign for himself,’” Coleman said. “I want people to play by the rules. Do I think they are going to continue to play by the rules? I don’t think so.”
Concerns about accountability and transparency in College Park have also drawn attention from outside the city, including from East Point resident Jeremy Taylor.
Taylor, a member of East Point’s ethics board, has closely followed Gay’s case and contacted Baywal himself to inquire about a possible conflict of interest in Huening representing the councilman.
“The matter of public officials behaving ethically… is important to me because it directly affects citizens’ trust,” Taylor said. “If residents don’t trust their public officials, they become less involved in government… And then those public officials become freer to behave in unethical ways because there are fewer people paying attention.”
College Park’s ethics board is selected by the city attorney and city manager and approved by city council.
“Nobody holds the council people accountable except for the citizens,” Coleman said. “The city attorney doesn’t rein them back in. When employees or department heads push back, often they get fired.”
Hicks is the fifth person to serve as College Park city manager since 2022. Numerous other department heads and employees have been fired during that period, as SaportaReport has previously reported.
Another fine example of corruption associated with local governments and amazing that this even made the news and not sweeped under the rug. Congrats to the Saporta Report for publishing this!