Candidate says attorney general soft on corruption

ALBANY — Greg Hecht, Democratic candidate for Georgia Attorney General, says he made the decision to challenge incumbent Sam Olens for a number of reasons, including Olens’ failure to protect children in the state and to prosecute crime and corruption.

“One of my biggest reasons for coming into this is what’s going on with the Department of Family and Children,” Hecht said during a recent campaign stop in Albany. “The Attorney General’s office and DFCS have continued to put children back into homes where there is alcohol and drug abuse as well as violence.”

According to Hecht, children are routinely returned to insecure homes without support of substance abuse counseling.

“You have to understand that addiction is life-long,” Hecht said, “And to return a child to where you’ve given someone only five days of counseling is putting that child in harm’s way.”

Hecht claims that last year some 3,000 child abuse investigations continued past the statutory 45-day limit and that no enforcement actions have been taken to rectify the situation. The lack of action on Olens’ part endangers those children and other children in the homes, Hecht said.

“The Attorney General does not have the experience to protect Georgians,” Hecht said, “And as a result, Georgians go unprotected.”

Hecht, a former Georgia assistant district attorney, accuses Olens of being soft on all forms of corruption and crime within the state.

“I believe corruption should be prosecuted without regard to politics,” Hecht said. “My opponent doesn’t do that. He doesn’t investigate corruption. He doesn’t prosecute corruption, and lately he was sanctioned for hiding evidence of corruption.”

Hecht said that in the spring of 2011, Republican-appointed ethics director Stacey Kalberman and assistant director Sherilyn Streicker presented a subpoena and supporting documents to the Attorney General’s Office, and later to the Ethics Commission, that there were potentially four major violations committed by Gov. Nathan Deal.

Olens never appointed a special prosecutor in the case, Hecht said, never investigated anything, and weeks later the Ethics director and deputy were forced out of office.

In April, Kalberman was awarded $700,000, plus $450,000 in back pay and attorneys fees in a suit against the state, where Kalberman claimed she’d been forced from office in retribution for investigating Deal.

“It’s time to take the politics out of that office and put law enforcement above the politics,” Hecht said.

Hecht is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Georgia School of Law. He’s been an assistant district attorney for the state of Georgia and served in the Georgia legislature for six years.