During an interview with Augusta Mayor Hardie Davis last week, WRDW-TV investigative reporter Liz Owens asked him why he thought there was so much focus on his spending.
“One, you’ve got a trashy blog post that has taken an opportunity to write things that The Augusta Chronicle, WRDW, WJBF have talked about since 2015,” Davis said.
In case you don’t know what Davis was referring to when he said, “trashy blog post,” it was The Augusta Press, but you know what they say: “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”
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The Augusta Press published the first news story in April about how Davis spent money from his My Brother’s Keeper’s account to pay a consultant to help him get reelected in 2017. Thousands of dollars that were supposed to be spent helping at-risk youth in what has turned out to be a mainly non-existent program despite being budgeted at $37,500 a year since 2016.
“Every single year, there is a review of not only the mayor’s travel, but the mayor’s spending,” Davis told Owens during the interview. “It’s written about every single year. Many of the conversations we’re having about this blog post are rehashes.”
You wish they were rehashes, Hardie Davis. No news organization except The Augusta Press has looked into the mayor’s spending in depth until now, except for the Chronicle’s Susan McCord. First of all, he discouraged it by telling finance officials not to give the news media any information when they made a request but to send them to his office.
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When the Chronicle reported he’d charged $2,000 on his city-issued credit card to rent the Miller Theater for his second inaugural ceremony, he accused city employees of leaking the information although it was right there on the check registry for the world to see.
And you’d think if the media had been talking about his spending since 2015, he would have saved the receipts. Also, although he says he’s been open and transparent, it took dozens of freedom of information requests from the newspaper and hiring a lawyer to get them. And we still don‘t have them all. Many invoices that would show what the mayor spent your money on are still missing.
Comments in Parentheses Are Mine
During the WRDW interview inside the Marble Palace recording studio, Davis built with taxpayers’ money, it was obvious his lawyers are earning their money. I expect they wrote everything he said, especially the many disclaimers of illegality, such as “Every single charge, every single expenditure was not only legal and allowable but appropriate in how we serve the citizens.”
(So why didn’t you keep the receipts?)
Or, he said, “It’s within the law” and such every other breath.
Since he knows so much about the law, you’d think he’d know that ignorance of the law is no excuse, but he said he didn’t know about the 2016 law that requires the governing body to authorize specific policies regarding credit-card use for officials. That’s surprising because he’s an officer in the Georgia Municipal Association, which provided education on that law to its members.
Whistling Past the Graveyard
In setting the stage for why he spent so much tax money on videos, Davis told Owens, “It is very important for Augusta to have a very positive image.”
“How much tax dollars should go toward promoting that image?” she asked, but didn’t get an answer.
“It’s one thing to allow everyone else to tell our story, but I believe the city should tell its own story,” he replied instead.
So that’s why he paid the owner of LC Studios, who was a vice president of a nonprofit that Davis’ chief of staff Petula Burks was president of about $17,000 to tell Augusta’s story.
(But who has seen the video?)
And when Owens asked him whether he thought the owner’s ties to his chief of staff were a conflict of interest, he said he did not use a vendor with ties to Burks and that there was no conflict of interest.
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Later, when Owens asked him about bringing Eva Marcille, a model and ambassador for Reed for Hope, to Augusta to speak during Davis’ “Move With the Mayor” initiative and making a $5,000 donation to Reed for Hope the next day, Davis said it wasn’t a donation but a speaker’s fee. The money was paid to Reed for Hope with no explanation of what it was for. A donation or payment for past services with taxpayers’ money is illegal.
Owens noted that some city budgets, such as Newman Tennis Center’s, were cut last year while his increased by $31,800.
“And some of that money was given to someone to talk about moving,” she said, significantly.
“When I think about the pandemic, ‘Moving with the Mayor’ was central to us to engage with our citizens, many of whom were isolated and quarantined to, ‘Now the mayor’s providing the opportunity to get outside the house,’” he said. “‘He’s leading the charge on this.’ And citizens got involved. They got connected and said, ‘We can go outside.’
“It was legal. It was the right thing for us to do.”
(So, you spend $6,000 on a speaker’s fee and transportation for the speaker, and that doesn’t include the cost of making the video–and only 500 people watched it.)
Toward the end of Owens’ outstanding interview, Davis gave a testimonial to himself.
“I am not only transparent, but a person of integrity, character, and that’s how I led the city,” he said. “That’s what people know about me.”
(See Above. This is the same transparent guy The Augusta Press had to hire a lawyer to try to get receipts and invoices from.)
Davis also made this pronouncement: “There’s nothing to hide in the mayor’s office.”
(We know there’s nothing to hide in the mayor’s office. The question the citizens want answered is “Is there anything of value in the mayor’s office?”)
As for his future, Davis told Owens he was listening to the Lord.
(If he was listening to the Lord, I’m sure the Lord would have told him to keep receipts. Even when Jesus fed 5,000 people, there were records showing he used five loaves and two fishes. And they had 12 baskets of fish and bread left over.)
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By the Book
The continuing saga of the mayor’s credit cards reminds me of peeling an onion. As we go deeper toward the core, the taxpayers of Augusta should cry more and more. Meanwhile, Davis digs deeper into his copy of the “Politicians Playbook,” which he probably bought with tax dollars like he did his $500 resume.
The playbook’s first chapter, “Clam Up,” calls for politicians caught with their hands in the cookie jar to at first ignore the allegations and the alligators, which Davis did for a while. But when The Augusta Press’s freedom of information requests just kept on coming, Davis turned to the second chapter, “Stall.”
He scheduled meetings with the newspaper’s publisher but canceled them. Next, he minimized the whole thing by feigning ignorance that his office hadn’t responded to the requests. Then he moved on to “Kill the Messenger” with an Op-Ed in the newspaper blasting its coverage.
Then, probably after reading the chapter titled, “Hire a Mouthpiece,” he hired a big Atlanta lawyer, former Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens.
I thought the city hired Olens but was later informed that Davis hired him himself, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he hasn’t hired a political consulting firm too.
Now Davis is in the third-to-last chapter, “Throw Yourself on theMercy of the Court of Public Opinion” with the WRDW interview and his “trashy blog post” comment that will live as long as his indecipherable statement after the vote against building a new James
Brown Arena at Regency Mall: “We find ourselves in a juxtaposition of inconclusiveness.”
The second-to-last chapter is “Throw Yourself on the Mercy of the Court.”
And the final chapter is “If They Throw the Book at You, Appeal and Blame the Newspaper.”
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Another Layer Peeled Back
Augusta Press editorial writer and news reporter Scott Hudson wrote another humdinger of a story for Friday’s newspaper, headlined “Augusta Mayor’s Credit Card Bills Continue to Shock.”
“Amidst media pressure to provide receipts and calls from commissioners for a forensic audit, Mayor Hardie Davis has ramped up his credit card spending over the first four months of this year,” Hudson wrote.
“By far the biggest bills come from a company called LC Studios out of Florida. So far this year, the mayor has spent $16,219 on video production services. The charges did not go through standard city procurement procedures, which require any charges over $5,000 to besent out for competitive bids.”
And there’s more. Much more you’ll be shocked to read.
“Embarrassed and Angry”
Jimmy Rivers of JRPW Racing emailed last week to say that he’d written Augusta commissioners with questions and concerns regarding their recent hiring of Antonio Burden as the city’s new fire chief, but that only two had responded, commissioners Brandon Garrett and Catherine Smith McKnight. He sent me a copy of the email he’d sent all 10 of them. I asked him if I could use his email in this column, and he said, “Yes. Absolutely.” So, because his questions are the same ones we’ve all been asking, I’m using his email here and challenging the other eight commissioners to reply to me, and I will include their responses in next week’s column.
“Let me begin by thanking you for your contribution to our local community to make it a better place for us all to live in and enjoy,” Rivers wrote. “I have lived in this area all my life and love all the things our community has to offer.
“However, some recent events really bother me to my core.
“Richmond County/ City of Augusta has spent thousands of dollars approved by you, the Board of Commissioners to a firm to conduct a search for a new Fire Chief. I think it’s safe to assume, the same board wants the most qualified of available candidates to lead our Fire Department.
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“Therefore, when again, this same Board of Commissioners allow another elected official to bring another candidate forward with little resistance, this is extremely troubling. Not only was this person not selected by the recruitment firm, but is by his public record, not a good candidate at all.
“Then, a short time later, this same Board approved the hiring of this same under-qualified individual. Only two Commissioners voted against it, and several voted to hire without even watching his video interview.
“My questions are;
“(1) How can duly elected officials just completely ignore the policies and procedures for hiring a Fire Chief?
“(2) Why did the board approve paying a recruitment firm if they were going to ignore the results?
“(3) Why does the County Administrator suddenly have the authority to do as he pleases?
“(4) Is the position really for Fire Chief, or is it for a “ Yes Man” for those in power?
“(5) In the event of a fire at your home, would you want an unqualified leader?
“I am not only disappointed in the actions of my elected officials. I am also embarrassed and angry at the same time. It is appalling that the majority of the Board don’t seem to give an ounce of care in the way this was handled.
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“I welcome your calls and correspondence in this matter. I think we can do much better than this as a City and County.
“Thank You,
“Jimmy Rivers
Garrett responded, “I agree. We three that voted against this hire brought all, these questions up and were simply out voted. No one could answer why or how this chief candidate was placed in the finalists’ pool. I think you will see quickly what the purpose is behind this when some commissioners go after Augusta getting back in the ambulance business.”
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