Decatur To Keep Doing Business at Commissioner's Hardware Store

DECATUR, GA -- Decatur’s commission has decided to keep doing business with a hardware store co-owned by a newly elected commissioner.

The vote Tuesday was a unanimous 4-0, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports, with Commissioner Tony Powers, who has been co-owner of Ace Intown Hardware since 1996, recusing himself from the vote.

The city’s ethics ordinance and charter prohibit commissioners from having financial interests that conflict with their public duties. But City Manager Peggy Merriss said that lawyers for the city concluded that it wouldn’t violate the “letter or spirit” of the law to keep doing business at Ace Intown.

Key to their decision was that the city had done business at Ace long before Powers was elected and that its total purchases there are relatively small -- about $10,000 in 2014 and $17,000 in 2015.

They also noted that the next-nearest hardware store is two miles further away than Ace Intown, which sits just outside city limits.

Small tools, wheat, pine straw and paint were the most frequent purchases the city has made at the store.

To read the original report from the AJC, click here.