11.07
Yesterday commissioner candidate Perry Lamb responded to repeated criticism of his 2009 bankruptcy filing by releasing his 2014 and 2015 income tax returns.
Lamb 2014:
Lamb 2015:
Lamb challenged his opponents, Bebe Heiskell and Shannon Whitfield, to follow his lead and release their own tax forms to the public.
Surprisingly, Bebe Heiskell agreed.
She released her 2015 tax return on Facebook yesterday and promised to post the 2014 return sometime today.
Heiskell 2015:
Bebe Heiskell 2015 Tax Returns
Disappointingly, candidate Shannon Whitfield has not released his own tax returns, and likely won’t ever do so.
Whitfield’s brother Shawn, who frequently speaks for Shannon (while insisting he does not) says asking candidates to share their tax returns is “crap” and the data is nobody else’s business.
There is no legal requirement for a candidate (in Georgia anyway) to release their income tax return to run for office. But doing so anyway proves a candidate is willing to go above and beyond the minimum required to be transparent before voters.
Lamb has been open about HIS finances since the beginning of this campaign, and now Heiskell under pressure from Lamb is opening up her own records.
Whitfield, who has the most potential conflicts of interest and likely the largest income of the three candidates, won’t reveal his own financial situation and probably never will. That’s the same approach the candidate and his family have taken to financials from Whitfield Oil Company, which does considerable business with the county.
Team Whitfield is now less transparent than Bebe Heiskell.
Pretty sad for a candidate who keeps claiming he’s running on a platform of transparency.
