Soon to be out-going Mayor Hardie Davis has beefed up his staff over the past year to four individuals.
Three of the employees, Chief of Staff Petula Burks, Assistant Chief of Staff Naeem Jenkins-Nixon and Administrative Assistant Brandis Chandler were all hired in September and October of last year.
The details surrounding Burk’s hiring remain murky. Last year, Davis contracted with Burks as a headhunter to recruit a qualified individual to serve as the mayor’s chief of staff. Burks, a native of Miami Gardens, Fla., ultimately took the job herself.
MORE: Augusta Mayor’s Financial Records Produce More Questions Than Answers
According to public records, Burks took a 50% pay cut to accept the chief of staff position in Augusta, a position that was expected to only last two years upon her hiring. Burks’ employment application shows she accepted a pay rate of $63,000 a year, meaning that she left her $120,000-a-year position in Miami Gardens to relocate to Augusta.
Davis did compensate Burks for all the time she spent “recruiting” by paying her $5,500 through his PayPal account that is linked to his city credit card. It remains unclear whether that payment and other purchases made by the mayor violate the city’s official “purchase card” policy, but it very clearly violates the city’s procurement policy which clearly states that all purchases over $5,000 must be routed through the Procurement Department.
[adrotate banner=”30″]
One of Burks’ primary duties is to manage and to be the custodian of records and, importantly, the receipts of the mayor’s spending. When first contacted with Georgia Open Records Act requests intended to obtain receipts for Mayor’s Office spending, Burks replied that she was new to the job and was working to fix things going forward but couldn’t answer questions about charges prior to her arriving on the job.
Emails between Burks and Lisa Fuentes with the city of Miami Gardens finance department indicate that Burks has a troubled history of managing records and receipts. The city of Miami Gardens attempted for weeks to get Burks to turn over missing receipts from her tenure there as director of civic engagement/chief of staff.
Burks responded via email that all receipts were turned into the city of Miami Gardens. A Georgia Open Records Act request shows, however, that not all receipts were turned in to the city. The records even show that Burks had to reimburse Miami Gardens for charges made at a bar that were improperly charged on a government credit card.
The receipts that have been obtained since Burks’ hiring in Augusta show that she has a penchant for using contractors from her hometown over local Augusta contractors. She has hired a number of vendors, including photographers and website designers, from Miami. Thus far, the sums paid to those vendors have not been documented or explained.
Another mystery revolves around the September 2020 hiring of Naeem Jenkins-Nixon to fill the role of assistant chief of staff. Jenkins-Nixon came on board around the same time as Burks, and his job description states that he is to “maintain communications between the Mayor, Commissioners, city staff, citizens and the media.”
[adrotate banner=”19″]
No mayor before Davis has employed a chief of staff or an assistant chief of staff.
Aside from a patronage position as confidential aide to Mayor Byron Brown of Buffalo, N.Y., a position he received after acting as Brown’s campaign manager, Jenkins-Nixon has virtually no experience in the day-to-day workings of local government, according to his personnel fille obtained from the city of Augusta.
Jenkins-Nixon does have plenty of experience in politics, though. He served from 2018 to 2020 as the communications director for the Biden Institute at the University of Delaware, a think tank devoted to promoting President Joe Biden’s policy agenda.
Prior to coming to Augusta, Jenkins-Nixon briefly served as the managing political director of the Missouri Democratic party.
Jenkins-Nixon’s job has him acting as liaison for the My Brother’s Keeper Program. According to his personnel file he is paid $58,000 per year.
[adrotate banner=”22″]
Another Mayor’s Office hire is that of Brandon Chandler as administrative assistant. The official qualifications listed for the job include being a “people person,” a “self starter” and having the ability to write and analyze data. Chandler is paid $13.95 per hour according to personnel file records.
The longest serving member of the mayoral staff is Maria Cook. She was hired in 2019 as an executive assistant level II. Cook’s personnel file shows she is paid $48,000 a year to manage programs and assist in public relations.
While Cook’s daily role in the mayor’s office is largely unknown, her mugshot was featured in The Jail Report after her June 2020 arrest for assaulting her wheelchair-bound teenage daughter. Cook was later suspended from her job in the Mayor’s Office after being arrested a second time when the charges of aggravated assault and child cruelty were upgraded to felonies.
Opinion: Augusta Taxpayers Deserve Accountability
In addition to his full-time staff, Davis has also hired at least two outside consultants, Lynthia Ross and Carla Smith. The mayor paid Ross, who is head of public relations for the Richmond County Board of Education, through his PayPal account.
The Augusta City Charter establishes the position of mayor largely ceremonial. The mayor’s role in government is to issue proclamations, to attend ribbon cutting ceremonies and to cast a tie breaking vote on the commission, a relatively rare occurrence.
Scott Hudson is the Editorial Page Editor of The Augusta Press. Reach him at scott@theaugustapress.com.
[adrotate banner=”44″]
