Augusta commissioners removed the name of convicted former Commissioner Sammie Sias from a public road Tuesday.
Commissioner Alvin Mason, who was mayor pro tem when the commission approved “Sammie Sias Lane,” made the motion to rename the short street “Jamestown Lane,” for the community center it leads to.
Last year, Sias was convicted in U.S. District Court of lying to a federal investigator and destroying evidence during an investigation of sales tax spending at Jamestown, which he used as campaign headquarters.
Sias remains out on bond while he appeals the conviction, claiming his former lawyers withheld evidence that might have cleared him.
Sias’ one defender Tuesday was Commissioner Bobby Williams, said at one point prior to taking office Sias had commission support for naming the road. He did not win a commission seat until 2012.
“The commission at that time thought a lot of that man. They thought he did a lot for the community. He was probably the best policy maker that we had when I was here,” Williams said. “Somebody’s going to name something after you one day.”
Sias gained acclaim as a neighborhood association activist, fighting to keep the houses in Sand Ridge subdivision occupied and tidy and to keep undesirable businesses away from the Tobacco Road area where it is located. He also worked to renovate Jamestown, which was in disrepair, although the center is located in District 8, not his District 4. The sales tax funds for which he was under investigation filtered through the Sand Ridge Community Association.
Who approved ‘Sammie Sias Lane’?
The signs at either end of the one-tenth-mile road between the front and back entrances of Jamestown Park came about in August 2009, when the commission approved naming the street on a consent agenda. Minutes from a preceding Public Services Committee meeting, when the name might have been discussed, are not available online.
At that time, Sias’ longtime lover Willa Hilton – who was known then as his right hand in the association and at Jamestown – signed a letter addressed to then-Commissioner Don Grantham asking for the name.
“Our president, Sammie Sias, deserves to be honored (by) our request because of the tough task he has taken on for our neighborhood and Richmond County,” the letter stated. “”We don’t think we are asking too much for a well-deserving citizen who is dedicated to his community… Please, we are asking that you grant us this request in a reasonable timely manner.”
A letter Hilton wrote in 2018 about his misspending became the basis for the FBI raid of Sias’ house and criminal conviction. In turn, Sias publicly claimed the pair had a decades-long affair.
Sammie Sias Lane didn’t have a name before and there are no houses on it, so there was no requirement of committee approval or public support, Mason said Tuesday.
The vote to rename the street passed 9-1 with only Williams opposed, although Commissioner Jordan Johnson raised the matter of John C. Calhoun Expressway, named for the South Carolina statesman and defender of slavery.
“Calhoun Expressway is still up and we have a Confederate monument in the middle of Broad Street,” Johnson said.
