SPEAK OUT: How Do You Feel About Gwinnett Government?

The news still reverberates in Gwinnett County -- and not in a positive way.

Shirley Lasseter's resignation from the Board of Commissioners after a guilty plea to federal bribery charges reopened old wounds. It's the third time in two years that a Gwinnett commissioner resigned amid accusations of wrongdoing, and all the cases involved real estate.

Do you feel like the county has a bad reputation nationally? How do you feel about the direction of Gwinnett government? Tell us in the comments below.

Charles Bannister resigned amid a Gwinnett grand jury probe, and Kevin Kenerly was indicted on bribery charges by a Gwinnett grand jury. That indictment was overturned, but another was later handed down.

Lasseter, a former Duluth mayor whose commission district included Duluth and Suwanee, took bribes totaling $36,500 from an undercover FBI agent posing as a South Florida real estate developer, authorities said.

Gwinnett County, of course, is a significant part of metro Atlanta in several ways. And in the Internet era, such news can have a global reach. So the chatter that is still strong in Gwinnett likely is echoing elsewhere.

So the county's reputation is under a big microscope, affecting all of the county's 805,000 residents. And that reputation doesn't look good right now. One person on

"We have worked really hard in the last year to repair the damage done to the image of the Gwinnett Commission and the image of Gwinnett County," Commission Chairman Charlotte Nash said. "I'm just sick for Gwinnett County."

And the news may not be over. U.S. Attorney Sally Yates said during the Lasseter press conference that “today’s guilty pleas are part of an ongoing effort to root out public corruption in Gwinnett County."

And in a recent article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Gwinnett Sheriff Butch Conway said the federal probe that ensnared Lasseter could bring down other local officials from as far back as 2004.

So what do you think about all this? Do you feel like the county has a bad reputation nationally? How do you feel about the direction of Gwinnett government? What do you suggest county officials do to repair the damage to Gwinnett County's reputation?

Tell us in the comments below.