The first protester in line continued speaking in Hunter’s absence. When the second speaker asked where the commissioner had gone, board chair Charlotte Nash said he was “gone for the afternoon.”

Hunter has been the target of protests and calls for his resignation since The Atlanta Journal-Constitution published screenshots of a Jan. 14 Facebook post in which he called U.S. Rep. John Lewis a "racist pig." An ethics complaint was filed against him on Feb. 6, and that complaint got the go-ahead to proceed last week.