lajuana woods Archive

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CITY PROBE: Closer To Getting the truth?

NOW THAT GREG EDWARDS, the Dougherty Judicial Circuit district attorney, has his hands on the long-awaited Georgia Bureau of Investigation report into the downtown manager’s office, what’s next? When will the public get to see what’s in it? There’s no telling.

“I literally just got the report a few minutes ago,” Edwards said Tuesday. “We are doing it now as an investigation that is still ongoing.”

The obvious focuses of the criminal investigation, in addition to fired downtown manager Don Buie, are Buie’s estranged wife, Shanon, who was on Buie’s payroll; Buie’s former girlfriend, Nicole Brown, who also was on Buie’s payroll; and Lajuana Woods, the Albany-Dougherty Inner City Authority member, who also was on Buie’s payroll, but in a bigger way. (She received a secret $50,000 “grant” for her L’Jua’s restaurant on Radium Springs Road.)

Whether others including City Manager Alfred Lott and additional ADICA board members will be charged with crimes due to missing money or violating their fiduciary responsibilities seems to be up the air.

“We’re going to review it and try to get it to a grand jury as soon as practical,” Edwards said, noting that a grand jury is in session. “Certainly, we’ve got to review all the documents to decide who to charge and what to charge them with.”

Kevin By Kevin Hogencamp

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City scandals may convene Ethics Board

For the first time since then-Albany City Commissioner Henry Mathis was indicted, removed from office and ultimately convicted on public extortion charges, the city’s Ethics Board may be convened, a board member said Tuesday.

Albany resident Carol Tharin said Tuesday that she thinks some current city hall issues – including Mayor Willie Adams’ role in a taxpayer-financed development on East Oglethorpe Boulevard for Adams’ campaign manager – are worthy of the board’s review.

“There have been numerous ethical issues, particularly in the last six or eight months, that I think need to be brought to light before the Ethics Board,” said Tharin, who recently sought and received clarification from city officials regarding when and how the ethics board can be convened.

The Ethics Board has met only once since being created in 1990.

Tharin served on the board in 2005 when Mathis was sentenced to 2½ years in prison. Although the board deliberated, it took no action, apparently because the Mathis matter was judicially handled, Tharin said.

Another longtime Ethics Board member, Dunn Stapleton, said Tuesday that he thinks the board can only be convened by the Albany City Commission.

“It’s my understanding that we don’t have independent jurisdiction,” he said.

But the city’s ethics law says otherwise. Any citizen can file a complaint to the board and makes no note of the commission’s involvement; indeed, the board exists to ensure that the commission and its appointees operate ethically, according to the code.

“The Ethics Board serves for the benefit of all persons who have a bona fide question regarding a possible conflict between governmental duties and private, personal or financial interests,” the city law says.

Two Ethics Board members are appointed each by the City Commission and the Dougherty Circuit Bar Association, and one member is appointed by the judicial circuit’s chief judge. The Ethics Board’s other members are Patrick Flynn, Rita Brown and Tommy Duck.

The Dougherty County Taxpayers Association has recommended convening the board as a public corruption case and numerous city hall scandals, including various ethics violations by elected and appointed officials, have been revealed in news reports. In one matter, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation is probing misappropriation of taxpayer funds by ousted downtown manager Don Buie and Albany-Dougherty Inner City Authority member Lajuana Woods, who has been building a taxpayer-subsidized and publicly financed restaurant since 2007.

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Outlook: ADICA board must resign.

Last week, the Albany-Dougherty Inner City Authority board of directors agreed the Dollar Square store must leave from downtown Albany, yet they refuse to leave the board themselves as negligent board members. They have completely lost the trust of the public, and continue to eliminate any chance for improvements. No future actions by the current board will be trusted or should be trusted. If they truly care for downtown, they must realize these facts and get out of the way of progress.

The current ADICA board has knowingly operated without bylaws, without forming necessary committees, and certainly without exercising proper oversight over issues their responsibilities called for.

The City Commission also has guilt here. They did not exercise control of the ADICA board and have not directly called on their appointed board member to resign. The public has clearly spoken; the complete ADICA board must resign immediately…

The city manager also shares the guilt for not staying informed of downtown manager Don Buie’s activities. A simple get-acquainted conversation with Dollar Square owner Tim Washington, or restaurant owner Lajuana Woods, would have uncovered the details of their grants, rents, and promises made. Now we hear of more promises made to Alltel and the Dowtown Bistro.

How could a supervising city manager not follow up, thanking these businesses for opening downtown, and in the process, become educated about at least the broad structure of their business plan? Stay informed about this, it is far from over.

Written by Jim Wilcox, general manager of  WALB.

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Our Perspective: Albany City Commision Candidates need to commit to end public corruption

cor·rup·tion [kuh-ruhp-shuhn] – noun

1. the act of corrupting or state of being corrupt.

2. moral perversion; depravity.

3. perversion of integrity.

4. corrupt or dishonest proceedings.

This fall’s Albany City Commission races aren’t any more critical than any other, really; indeed, every local election is and has been important to a community’s success and failures.

Still, the opportunity to reverse the culture of corruption, mismanagement, cronyism and waste that is occurring on the watch of the current commission and city manager seems to be at an optimum level. That’s because – thanks largely to the blatantly vile shenanigans occurring in the city manager’s office and police department in recent years – citizens throughout the community are more engaged than they’ve been since Willie Adams was first-elected mayor in 2004.

At stake when voters go to the polls on Nov. 3 are the community’s desperate economic condition, the municipal government’s burgeoning budget, and criminal activity that is so rampant in Albany that it is even occurring with regularity and blatancy on the fifth floor of city hall without consequence.

Indeed, we submit that City Manager Alfred Lott’s mismanagement of downtown redevelopment, including having a convicted felon on the job as manager and criminal conspirator for 18 months, isn’t an anomaly, by any means. Indeed, corruption is largely – but not exclusively – the status quo at city hall. We would even classify city government as a criminal enterprise.

In addition to former downtown manager Don Buie illegally giving taxpayer money to one of his bosses and to selected business owners, here are some examples of corrupt activities in Albany city government:

  • Albany City Commissioner Tommie Postell and Lott schemed to spend $40,000 of taxpayer funds on a private development project – Curtis Davis Personal Care Home – to bring it up to code. When the scheme was revealed in the newspaper, the city decided instead to allow the personal care home to open in spite of it violating building code.
  • Postell took a $2,500 campaign donation from Lajuana Woods and, within a month, had her appointed to the Albany-Dougherty Inner City Authority. Woods later accepted a secret $50,000 taxpayer-funded “grant” from Buie.
  • The Albany City Commission plotted in an illegal meeting to abolish the Albany Water, Gas & Light Commission. The conspiracy ended when it was revealed in the newspaper.
  • * Without declaring a conflict of interest, Mayor Willie Adams violated state and local law by voting to spend federal funds administered by the city on a housing project developed by the mayor’s campaign manager. Adams later supported the developer’s request to rezone the development property; after none of the housing units sold, the developer declared bankruptcy, leaving taxpayers with a $500,000 bill.
  • Adams’ 2004 campaign debt has been reduced by contributors who subsequently received city consulting jobs, including but not limited to Adams’ campaign manager and an Atlanta insurance executive whose company began providing services to the City of Albany after Dr. Adams was elected.
  • Contrary to city law and in spite of City Attorney Nathan Davis’ advice, Adams donates public funds to churches, sororities, fraternities, service organizations and charities.
  • * The Albany City Commission illegally spent $1 million of special-purpose local option sales tax funds on an environmental cleanup. The money wasn’t allocated by Albany Dougherty County voters to be used for the cleanup; besides, state regulations prohibit it being used for that purpose.
  • Lott’s violations of federal wage and hour law have cost taxpayers more than $500,000.
  • When Lott publicly declared that the only way to award Christopher King a liquor license to open an East Albany nightspot would be to break the law because of its close proximity to another club, who would have known that – five weeks later — the city would do just that? At Adams’ urging, Lott broke the law and King got his license to open Club Fahrenheit.
  • Former District Attorney Ken Hodges told WALB-TV that as a matter of practice, former Police Chief James Younger’s officers deliberately manipulated crime statistics by reporting felony crimes as misdemeanors. Lott and the City Commission’s response: There was no response; later, Lott gave Younger $40,000 of taxpayer funds to resign.
  • Systematically, Lott and his staff commit misdemeanor crimes by withholding information from the public.
  • Buie testified in court that the Albany-Dougherty Inner City Authority board of directors has negotiated privately with a developer in executive session. Such a meeting would be a violation of the Georgia’s open meetings law.
  • The City of Albany’s rules prohibiting some members from the public from addressing the City Commission violates the city charter and the U.S. Constitution’s First and 14th amendments.

Qualifying for the city elections for Wards 2, 3 and 5 begins Monday and ends Sept. 4. We hope that at least one of the winners has a direct line to the Federal Bureau of Investigation; there’s a municipal government in need of some serious policing.

Albany Outlook is a town square for local issues.  It includes The Albany Journal’s perspective and columns written both by well-known names in the community and “just plan folks”.  The Journal is not responsible for views expressed by guest comments.  The best Outlook writers are passionate, persuasive, logical, and concise (750 words or less).  Have something on your mind that you are willing to share?  Email us: ajournal@thealbanyjournal.com

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Alfred Lott accountable for 50K given to ADICA’s Brown

In spite of his claims to the contrary, City Manager Alfred Lott was directly responsible for a $50,000 grant awarded to an Albany-Dougherty Inner City Authority board member and at least $61,000 in additional unauthorized expenditures that are now part of a Georgia Bureau of Investigation probe, public records show.

Lott spent at least $102,000 of the $500,000 bond-issue advance on “normal operating expenses” including a carelessly administered grant program for ADICA, says city Finance Director Kris Newton, rather than the funds’ purpose: “Capital expenditures (including purchasing options on downtown real estate), all so as to begin its efforts at redevelopment”, records show.

Public records contradict Lott’s public claim that he is not accountable for mismanagement that occurred on his watch by downtown manager Don Buie, Lott’s employee. Rather, Lott says, ADICA board members Jane Willson, Lajuana Woods, Andrew Reid, Phil Cannon, Elvis Muldrow, James Griffin and LaNicia Hart are to blame for Buie’s misuse of taxpayer funds.

Lott fired Buie on July 29, weeks after the GBI began a probe into whether Buie received a kickback from a girlfriend who was on his payroll. The ADICA board last week rejected Cannon’s request to require restaurateur Woods to repay the $50,000 grant she received from Buie despite her being on the board and her business being outside ADICA’s boundaries,

Newton says another $9,000 of funds for which Lott is responsible was spent without proper documentation. Meanwhile, additional funds mismanaged by Buie were approved by Lott through his downtown manager’s account, records show.

Lott, who refused to answer questions on the matter Tuesday, was granted specific oversight of the $500,000 advanced to ADICA from $6 million the city expects to receive in an upcoming bond issue. The “Intergovernmental Agreement Concerning Redevelopment of Downtown Albany Between City of Albany and Albany-Dougherty Inner City Authority,” signed by Mayor Willie Adams on Sept. 2, 2008, established the framework for the City to advance ADICA $500,000.

Paragraph 3 of the contract states: “Following the City’s advance of any part or all of the Funds, ADICA will provide on a monthly basis a written description of the use of any funds; as well as an accounting of the Funds, all as the City Manager in his reasonable judgment may determine is necessary or appropriate. The accounting shall provide such reasonable detail as necessary to show how amounts received by ADICA have been spent”.

Newton says Buie spent $102,846.81 of the $500,000 advance. Of that, Buie paid ADICA board member Lajuana Woods $50,000 on April 23; Dollar Square $11,114 on April 24; and Subway $22,246 on June 8, records show.

Albany businessman Tim Coley asked city officials on Tuesday to provide further explanation of records detailing Buie’s business dealings with ADICA and City Manager’s Office funds.

“I am prepared to present this in the form of an open records requests if required,” Coley wrote to Newton, who hadn’t responded Tuesday night. “However, I prefer that the City simply help us understand. We have a meeting planned for Thursday night and hopefully your response will help me provide the citizens with a better understanding of how ADICA is funded.”

In response to an earlier inquiry about the $500,000 advance, Newton said: ADICA used these funds to pay a combination of normal operating expenses (that would be reimbursed by the City of Albany or some other entity) and façade grant activity. Façade grant activity makes up the larger expenses.”

Written by Kevin Hogencamp.

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