Wells Fargo Bank has filed two lawsuits in Richmond County Superior Court seeking repayment of over $880,000 in outstanding debts from Augusta Mayor Garnett Johnson, his wife Toni Seals-Johnson and their affiliated companies.
Filed in March, the lawsuits target two loan agreements involving the Johnsons’ companies: Modern Business Workplace Solutions LLC, Augusta Office Solutions LLC and G&T Johnson Properties LLC. The legal filings come as Johnson has listed a major property for sale.
Monday, Johnson placed the 20,000-square-foot office building at 1018-1024 Telfair Street on the market for $4.35 million. The building, which opened in 2019, is owned by G&T Johnson Properties LLC, one of the entities named in the lawsuits.
Reached for comment Wednesday, Johnson said he listed the property because he is dissatisfied with the Telfair building’s lack of warehouse and loading space.
Since it opened, “We have continued to operate out of two different locations,” he said. “We need one location that makes better sense to operate out of.”
The March 11 lawsuit centers on a $1.04 million loan issued in April 2020 to Modern Business Workplace Solutions. According to court documents, the company defaulted, with $695,815 in principal and $715,517 total owed as of Dec. 5.
The loan required Modern Business to make monthly payments of $11,446. Wells Fargo issued formal notices of default to the Johnsons and their businesses, Augusta Office Solutions and G&T Johnson Properties, on Aug. 27 and Dec. 11 of last year, according to the filing.
The second lawsuit, filed March 10, involves a $150,000 line of credit extended to Augusta Office Solutions LLC in May 2019. Wells Fargo claims the company failed to meet payment obligations and owed $166,262 as of Feb. 24. Johnson, Seals-Johnson and Modern Business are listed as guarantors.
Publicly available uniform commercial code filings show Johnson took out other loans, including a $2.2 million loan secured by the Telfair Street address in October 2018. He borrowed $200,000 loan from Queensborough Bank Apr. 30 and $250,000 loan from HFC Enterprises last July.
The loans and lawsuits have nothing to do with Johnson’s duties as mayor. All are tied to his successful office furniture and supply business, which he founded in 2010.
The matters are “totally independent” of his service as mayor, Johnson said.
Ethics advocates said the situation really isn’t cause for concern since it’s removed from Johnson’s role as mayor.
“Elected officials will often go through economic turmoils themselves,” said Craig Holman, an ethics expert for the watchdog group Public Citizen. “It raises ethics issues when conflicts of interest are involved.”
But details about the mayor’s finances could come back around election time, openly or otherwise, said Charles Bullock, who holds the Richard B. Russell Chair in Political Science at the University of Georgia.
“It might be something that voters would consider in a future election,” he said.
