Editor’s note: A word was left out of Sylvia Cooper’s column as it originally ran. In the fourth paragraph, the sentence should read, “A city administrator who could present a budget that increased $79 million in one year and say without cracking a smile that there was no budget increase except “baked in” costs and federal money is certain to be in high demand.” The error has been corrected in the column. The Augusta Press regrets the error.
City Administrator Odie Donald told Augusta commissioners in the dark of night Tuesday he was resigning. When the sun came up the next morning, the Groundhog came out of his hole and saw Odie’s shadow running away, and it scared the Groundhog so much, he scurried back inside, and we’re going to have six more weeks of cold weather.
I wonder what Odie and the Groundhog know that we don’t know. Could it be he’s leaving an unsustainable billion-dollar budget and doesn’t want to be around when the American Rescue Plan money runs out? Or could it be he doesn’t want to be associated with Mayor Hardie Davis Jr.’s spending scandal and widening ethics investigation?
Probably not the latter because he’s leaving to become Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens’ chief of staff. And, according to the Groundhog, Odie might be jumping from the frying pan into the fire because Atlanta mayors haven’t had such good track record with ethics and money either.
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People were shocked when he up and resigned out of the blue like he did, but it was inevitable. Every city would welcome an administrator like that.
So, when the American Rescue Plan money runs out, and it’s time to pay the Piper for all the employee raises he handed out like monopoly money, remember the Groundhog was the last one to see Odie fleeing Augusta.
I don’t want to detract from Odie’s obvious talents, mental ability, skills or his diplomacy and circumlocution when dealing with his 10 Augusta bosses by not giving them a yes or no answer to their questions. It’s just that I don’t believe some of the things he says, such as he wasn’t involved in getting DeKalb County Deputy Fire Chief Antonio Burden’s on the list of finalists for the Augusta fire chief’s job. He totally was, and rendered the $20,000 spent on hiring a recruiting company a mockery and a waste.
I also don’t believe what he says about working to increase diversity, inclusion and transparency because all three people he hired for his executive staff are Black, and his four-member administrative staff is all Black, which doesn’t seem at all inclusive. And the same goes for Davis, who uses the same buzz words, but during his seven years, one month and six days as mayor has hired only one White person to work or intern in his office.
As for transparency, Odie did preside over upgrading the city website dashboard to better enable citizens to track the progress of sales-tax projects, but he refuses to answer his phone or return calls to the media, and his Public Information Officer doesn’t much either. And although he’s hired a transparency officer, there’s been no positive change in how open records requests are handled.
His resignation caught some commissioners off guard, but they quickly recovered.
“I guess Odie is looking for greener pastures since lately the Garden City isn’t so green. His hefty salary sure was green though. Our Garden City could look a lot better and greener…that’s why I want to know where the money is going,” said Commissioner Catherine McKnight.
Commissioner John Clarke said, “Odie Donald got hired at $240 a year base salary, and with that base salary came benefits, such as health insurance, and he received a $600 a month auto allowance. And you have to ask, ‘Why would he go somewhere else to work for somebody else who makes less money than he’s making in Augusta?’”
The mayor of Atlanta makes $183,674 a year, according to Zip Recruiter.
Under the terms of his contract, Donald must give written notice of his resignation 45 days before leaving to be eligible for a severance package which he didn’t do. But seeing how this commission operates, I believe he’ll get something. Maybe not a whole year’s severance, but something.
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Odie Called Him a “Visionary Leader” Which Just Goes to Show Anybody Can Make a Mistake
The Augusta Press reported Thursday that the state ethics commission has filed an amended complaint against Mayor Hardie Davis alleging he used “dark” money to fund a campaign bank account that was supposed to be a dormant account.
The complaint filed by the commission does not allege criminal activity, but the financial irregularities related to that bank account could lead to a fine of between $10,000 to $25,000, according to the Georgia statute.
The complaint might not allege criminal activity, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t any.
The newspaper’s story by Senior Reporter Scott Hudson states that over time, $100,000 disappeared from Davis’s campaign contributions. That was intriguing because if he spent $100,000 of campaign contributions on personal expenses and only got a $10,000 fine that would be a very good deal. And if the fine was $25,000, he’d still come out ahead. That’s a whole lot better than the interest rate at the banks these days.
The amended ethics complaint states that in January 2020, Davis filed an affidavit of exemption with the elections board stating he would no longer be soliciting contributions for his mayoral campaign. But after filing the affidavit that exempted him from having to file any further campaign reports, he accepted $10,276 in unreported contributions which voided the exemption. He also made $6,099.64 in unreported expenditures, according to the complaint.
He used $3,171.81 in campaign contributions which were not to defray ordinary and necessary expenses from March 2, 2020, on, the complaint states.
In 2020 and 2022, Davis used campaign contributions he swore he would not solicit and should have reported, but didn’t, to make credit cards payments of $858.58; $1.500 and $350.
He spent $179.99 for Linked-In Premium; $19.96 for ESPN +; $170 for a Washington Post subscription; $25 at Starbucks and $38.49 at a Shell gas station.
The purchases were so similar to ones he made with his city issued credit card it got me to thinking of just how many pockets his fingers have been in since becoming mayor. I came up with four, none of them his own.
There is his annual office budget from which he spent freely on such things as food, makeup, photos, video productions, actresses from Atlanta and limousines to chauffer them to Augusta, a recording studio in his Marble Palace office and much more.
Then there was his My Brother’s Keeper’s account of $37,000 to $38,000 a year which he spent on everything except what it was supposed to be spent on, such as $9,000 to a political consultant in 2017 to help with his reelection campaign.
And there is his campaign contributions account to dip into to make unspecified PayPal payments and to buy other things he wanted. There was also an account he set up that is not subject to public scrutiny during his first election and three-day inauguration that included a $50 per person ticketed gala.
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All the World’s a Stage
After Commissioner John Clarke made a motion at Tuesday’s meeting to deny raising commissioners’ annual travel budgets by $3,000 to $7,500 each after urging Mayor Pro Tem Bobby Williams behind the scenes to ask for the increase, the meeting became drama central starring Clarke as the villain and Mayor Pro Tem Bobby Williams as the victim.
Before Commissioner McKnight – Clarke’s understudy – could get her lines out to second Clarke’s motion, Williams, the main character as well as the victim, made a substitute motion to approve the increase and then railed against Clarke and McKnight.
“I just want to say one thing,” he said. “The person that just pulled the item and the person that just seconded the item are the people who asked me to increase – to do this – and then they turn around and do this. That’s ridiculous! “It’s ridiculous. Backbiting.”
“Are you going to make a motion?” Davis asked, as Williams continued his tirade.
“Everybody just suspend,” Davis said, rapping on the dais like an orchestra conductor rapping a music stand.
“You asked me to do this,” Williams shouted at Clarke, playing his part as commission Thespian to the hilt. “You’re the main one. My God!”
“Everybody suspend,” said Davis.
“You asked me to do this!” Williams kept saying, his voice rising so many octaves everybody thought the fat lady had entered the stage and had started singing.
But alas, she hadn’t, and the tirade continued.
Oh, it was a tragicomedy filled with pent-up resentment, especially against Clarke who had objected publicly about the devious way the fire chief’s hiring process was being conducted. And Clarke made no commission friends by calling for a forensic audit of the entire government after Davis’ credit card shenanigans had been exposed.
After Williams had said his piece, Commissioner Alvin Mason, who played the role of Pompous Professor, lectured everybody on the importance of education and professional training which he said he’d had a lot of during his previous tenure on the commission and had saved the city millions of dollars. And anybody who doesn’t believe that commission travel could turn a pig into a silk-stocking know-it-all just doesn’t know what they’re talking about.
Besides, the extra $30,000 a year was such a miniscule amount in the city’s billion-dollar budget, Mason couldn’t even calculate the percentage.
That’s the way they think about spending other people’s money once they get on board. I’ve heard that argument more times than I have fingers and toes. Most seem to be unaware or don’t care that the additional $30,000 a year they spend on travel or $50,000 on hiring a headhunter and then ignoring his recommendations has to come out of some taxpayer’s pocket. It’s an addiction to spending other people’s money, or the “Politician’s Rapture.” It makes their judgment disappear and replaces it with something else called “What’s in it for Me?” It happens the minute step onto the public stage, and most never recover until they take their final bow.
The drama and denouement so overshadowed the travel budget increase, it passed 7-3 in the blink of an eye before the curtain fell.
Afterward, Clarke delivered the epilogue.
“Nobody tells Bobby Williams what to do,” he said. “And I pretty well think nobody tells Alvin Mason what to do. So how in the hell did I tell them what to do and they paid attention? They voted against everything else I put up. They just wanted to showboat and put somebody in their place.”
Nevertheless, when Clarke takes his first trip with the new travel budget money it might be a trip down the creek to retrieve his paddle.
Garbage In, Garbage Out
The Augusta Press has filed an Open Records request seeking documentation about the pending or potential litigation that prompted the city’s General Counsel Wayne Brown to call for a closed-door meeting to discuss transferring funds at the Deans Bridge Road landfill. When they came out of the meeting, they authorized transferring $7 million from the solid-waste restricted reserve funds to the landfill operations budget.
Budgeting and funds transfers are not permitted topics for a closed meeting under the umbrella of pending or potential litigation unless there is some documentation of that fact, according to David Hudson, counsel for the Georgia Press Association.
The Deans Bridge landfill has multiple problems, and the city has spent millions trying to keep it in compliance with the state Environmental Protection Division and to keep trash and leachate from getting into a nearby creek which if not remedied could result in heavy fines.
The landfill has been problematic for years except when Mark Johnson was Environmental Services director.
Too bad Johnson took his eye off the ball and let an employee take an excavator to Lincoln County to work on some land where none other than political activist Al Gray spotted it on his morning coffee walk. Or so he said.
Anyway, Clarke said the commission is just trying to keep the landfill operating. And when asked why commissioners can’t talk about that in public, he said, “I’m not a lawyer. I just go by what our lawyer says.”
Then, he said, “It’s like somebody has a kid that’s on drugs and stealing from him. He doesn’t want the world to know about it.”
Sylvia Cooper is a columnist with The Augusta Press. Reach her at sylvia.cooper@theaugustapress.com
