Court Opinion

ID: 9575243
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:12:33.378905+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:48:06.137221
License: Public Domain

McMurray, Presiding Judge,
concurring specially.
I concur in the judgment reversing the judgment of the trial court in this case. I also agree with the majority’s reliance upon Georgia Dept. of Labor v. Sims, 164 Ga. App. 856 (298 SE2d 562). However, I do not agree that Hall v. Dept. of Natural Resources, 139 Ga. App. 298 (228 SE2d 174), and Department of Human Resources v. Green, 160 Ga. App. 37 (285 SE2d 772), were overruled by Sims. In my view, there is no conflict between Sims and the two earlier decisions.
In Sims, we acknowledged the authority of the State Personnel Board to reduce sanctions imposed by employing agencies. As stated by the majority in the case sub judice: “OCGA § 45-20-8 (d) endows the Board with authority to reduce a sanction imposed by the appointing authority even though the Board finds support in the evidence for a charge for which the sanction of dismissal is authorized.” In other words, the board has a discretionary authority to reduce sanctions.
The exercise of the board’s discretion in this regard is a separate matter from the questions of fact and law concerning whether imposition of a specific sanction, such as dismissal, is authorized. Hall and Green did not involve the board’s exercise of its discretion to modify sanctions, but instead, were concerned with whether the sanctions imposed in those cases were authorized. Thus, in Hall, we held that the board had erred when its reversal of the dismissal of an employee was based on an incorrect conclusion of law that there was no proper cause for imposition of the sanction of dismissal. Similarly, in Green, we approved of the superior court’s affirmance of the board’s imposition of a lesser sanction where the findings of fact by the hearing officer did not authorize dismissal. Hall and Green should be distinguished rather than overruled.
*702Decided September 4, 1990.
Benjamin P. ■Erlitz, for appellants.
Michael J. Bowers, Attorney General, Jennifer L. Hackemyer, Assistant Attorney General, Robert C. Kates, for appellee.