This morning’s Albany Herald contained a bit of good news for Lee County:
Al Crace, the LYING Interim County Adminsitrator who had told everyone he would not seek the permanent post before eventually seeking the permanent post, will be gone by Friday.
He will be replaced on Feb 7 by Tony Massey, who was forced to step down from his most recent position as City Manager in Frankfort Kentucky over ethics charges that sound remarkably similar to issues currently plaguing Al Lott.
Massey reached an agreement with the city government of Frankfort to step down from his position with the city at the first of the year. He’d served as city manager there since 2004.
“It was apparent that the new group (of city commissioners) coming into office wanted to go in a different direction, so I’d agreed to step down from my position at the first of the year,” Massey said in a previous interview with The Herald.
However, in this article from the State-Journal of Frankfort Kentucky, it is clear that Mr. Massey isn’t being quite as honest as he would like us to think (emphases mine):
But the damage is in the books: The city’s Board of Ethics found Carter got an unwarranted benefit she shouldn’t have received from Tony Massey, Frankfort’s city manager, when he granted the license for temporary occupancy so she could rent the Hoge Avenue duplex, even though he lacked the authority and with the outstanding inspection issues.
The ethics board penalized Carter and Massey $1,000 each.
As a result of the ethics investigation and violations, Carter slipped on the primary ballot as a previous top vote-getter and Massey recently lost a bid for a job as city manager in another city. The shadow of the duplex and that temporary certificate of occupancy loomed in the background.
Carter, currently mayor pro tem and one of the top finishers in previous general elections, wound up in a sixth-place finish in May’s primary in the City Commission race. By some accounts, she faces a tough challenge for re-election Nov. 2.
And Gerald Watkins, a city commissioner in Paducah, says the ethics violation kept Massey from getting the city manager’s job there.
“We all think the world of Tony Massey,” Watkins said in a phone interview last week. “If that ethics charge hadn’t happened, I could say with some confidence he would’ve been offered the job.”
Watkins said he thought there was hesitancy among the Paducah city commissioners “to take the chance at the potential bad publicity from the ethics charge.” The commission there had a public relations headache when its first candidate for the job, Ben South, lied on his résumé, according to various news accounts.
Massey declined to appeal the ethics board’s decision but has maintained his innocence. In an interview after the ethics board penalized him $1,000 in August, Massey said he was only resolving a conflict between the city’s Planning and Building Codes staff and Carter, and he acted on advice from Planning and Building Codes Director Gary Muller.
Note that this State-Journal article was the very top of the Google search, other than the Herald’s articles naming him as a candidate and selectee for the Lee County post.
Sources tell me that the primary reason they went with Mr. Massey is that he was so similar to the superb former County Administrator Alan Ours.
Please don’t insult the honorable Mr. Ours by sullying his name in associating him with with known ethics violations. Apparently Mr. Massey has MUCH more in common with Al Lott than Alan Ours.
Traci’s message was also on the front page (below the fold) of the Lee County Ledger this week, but its publisher doesn’t see the need for a website.
Traci needs all the help she can possibly get with this. As of the last update I heard, her project was in the low 30s in voting. It has to be in the Top 10 to win.
Voting is easy, and I encourage you to do it every day. You can vote through the Pepsi Refresh site twice daily (once by logging in there, once by logging in via Facebook) as well as via text message once daily. To vote via text, send 103013 to 73774. The vote is free, though standard text messaging rates apply if you don’t have some form of unlimited texting plan.
Videos of the Leesburg City Council meetings from last Friday (October 1, 2010, Special Called Meeting on SPLOST) and this past Tuesday (October 5 2010 Regular Meeting) have been uploaded. They are on the Leesburg City Council Videos page.
Also, Tom’s “What is Libertarian?” post from last week’s Albany Journal will debut here on SWGAPolitics.com at 8am today. My latest edition of “Liberty Locally” will debut on United Liberty at some point in the next day or two. (I’m not an editor there, just an author, so I have no control of exactly when it publishes.)
Finally, please VOTE for Leesburg citizen Traci Henry’s project to build a Special Needs playground in Leesburg via a Pepsi Refresh Project $50K grant. You can vote via the website linked on her name, and you can vote by sending 103013 to 73774. Both are completely free, and I encourage you to do both every day. Voting ends at midnight on Halloween (Oct 31), with winners announced the following morning. She is currently ranked in the 50s, and needs to be in the top 10 to win.
Tonight, the Leesburg City Council will go all the way to Wynfield Plantation on Leary Road outside of Albany to discuss potential SPLOST projects. The meeting is scheduled from 5p-9p, and I’ll be there with my video camera.
But why do they feel the need to hide this tax preparation meeting from the citizens of Leesburg by having it on a night reserved for one of South Ga’s finest traditions – high school football? Granted, tonight is an away game for the Lee County Trojans, but I would imagine that at least a few people will be making the trek to Warner Robins.
The Council has a perfectly fine meeting chamber in Leesburg City Hall that doesn’t cost them a dime. Why do they need to spend more of our tax money to go to a fancy plantation – to plan to spend MORE of our tax money?
Unfortunately, there is precedent even in Lee County, as the Lee County Board of Commissioners earlier this year was so desperate to hide from the citizens of Lee County that they didn’t just go to the south side of Albany – they went clear to Pine Mountain, Callaway Gardens specifically. So I guess we should at least be thankful that they’re wasting our tax money in Dougherty County, rather than going all the way to dang near Columbus, right?
The bulk of this meeting – from around the 5 minute mark of Part 1 until around the 6 minute mark of Part 4, of a 58 minute long meeting, was sign ordinance stuff. The video of Commissioner Muggridge I uploaded individually last night is around the 30 minute mark.
Interesting to see what Republicans REALLY think about Liberty and Government. And remember, this isn’t a “fluke” of not knowing he was on camera – I sit in the front row of every meeting videotaping, and have been doing it for more than 9 months now, every single meeting.
After making numerous requests for documents pertaining to the sign ordinance amortization clause over the phone and via e-mail, I am filing the attached Freedom of information act request to get the documents. It is clear the board is determined to pass a sign ordinance tonight that is wrong for Lee County and violates the Constitution as well as the Laws of the State of Georgia. For months we have pointed out these legal issues, but the board continues to side with the Southwest Georgia Regional Development Center (SWGRDC), who has been proven multiple times to be misleading with information and steadfast the the ordinance is best applied through strategic application, or in layman’s terms looking the other way.
Over the last two weeks, I have been struggling to get the county to enforce their current sign ordinance on an 8400 acre parcel of land in Northeast Lee County. I have been met continually with the statement, “We only have one code enforcement officer, and sign complaints aren’t urgent unless the involve the safety of the traveling public.” This is a glaring failure of the current Board of Directors. Who now want to increase the amount of regulation without increasing enforcement. This is simply unacceptable.
Patrick Henry stated “The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government – lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.”
It is clear that you are willing to violate the Constitution of the United States because the SWGRDC tells you it is alright to do so. Has any board member checked their legal research? I myself had to showed SWGRDC that they were in violation of O.C.G.A 16-7-58(a)(2):
“Your concern over O.C.G.A 16-7-58(a)(2) is a solid concern. I looked it up; although I am not completely certain that the state code is legal, we certainly do not intend for the Leesburg and Lee County ordinance to be the test. Therefore, we will be changing that part of the ordinance to be in compliance with state code.”
Sincerely,
Stephen O’Neil, AICP
Southwest Georgia Regional Commission
Yet they are still willing to move ahead blatantly disregarding this law.
As a Board are you really willing to make a statement that a person advertising a gallon of gas has sign rights that a person advertising a gallon of milk doesn’t? Are you willing to tell a business that they cannot place any political signs at their place business going directly against State law? Are you willing to shut the lights out on church and school signs across the County?
I am asking the board to seek a second opinion from a different consultant outside of the region, one who actually has a sign ordinance in place that has withstood Constitutional arguments. SWGRDC is of the opinion that if a sign ordinance is not or has not been challenged it is Constitutional, this is a very risky choice for the County to follow.
If this sign ordinance is passed tonight, I am putting you on notice that I will personally challenge the Constitutionality/legality of EVERY aspect of this ordinance. Commissioners it is time for you to quit listening to consultants and bureaucrats and read your own document and consider the constitutionality of each limit you are trying to apply. You are the elected officials, and if you don’t understand the document you are instituting, I ask you tenure your resignation as you are not serving the people who you represent.
The agenda for tonight’s meeting is up, and because it is the voting meeting, it is largely the same as the Agenda from two weeks ago.
Bob Alexander is requesting approval of the proposed design of Westover Rd Extension from Ledo to Fussell. On the Ledo side, the road will join west of the road IHOP is on, possibly right beside the skating rink. This end of the road is to line up with the proposed Westover Extension that is currently being proposed for Dougherty County. On the Fussell side, the road will pass close to the Grand Island property before meeting with Fussell just east of the 7th Day Adventist Church – causing two stop signs within a few hundred feet of each other. He also is proposing another sign ordinance moratorium (that still only affects permitted signs, even though it is another section that is in violation of State law) and hopes to have a new Ordinance to propose next month.
Mike Sistrunk, director of Public Works, has a proposal to buy a Bat Wing Mower using money that was allocated in the budget for another purchase which he does not need at this time. [Continue Reading]
