GBI investigates congressman’s stepdaughter

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation is investigating the stepdaughter of a Georgia congressman who is employed by District Attorney Paul Howard because Columbus officials report the woman was on their payroll for the same hours she was billing Fulton County.

“It is hard to be in two places at once,” said Clifton C. Fay, the city attorney for the Columbus-Muscogee County government.

Attempts to reach Howard for comment by e-mail, phone and through his public-information officer were unsuccessful.

An internal audit showed Aayesha Owens Reese, stepdaughter of U.S. Rep. Sanford Bishop (D-Albany), was paid $7,500 as an administrative assistant at the “Junior Marshal” program in the Muscogee County Marshal’s office from Sept. 22 until her pay was suspended about two weeks ago, Fay said.

The audit indicated she was being paid for hours that she was also working at Howard’s office, and there was no evidence she had done any work for the Columbus wages, Fay said.

Her husband, Stephen Reese, is also being investigated because he received paychecks from the marshal’s office from November 2007 to July 2008, Fay said. He didn’t know how much the husband had been paid although the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer reported the figure at more than $7,000.

Aayesha Reese’s paycheck was directly deposited in her Wachovia Bank account, Fay said. Her husband’s checks were directly deposited into the Columbus Bank & Trust Co. account of his mother-in-law Vivian Creighton-Bishop, the congressman’s wife who is the clerk of the Municipal Court in Columbus.

Muscogee Marshal Gregory Countryman said he hired both Reeses on a part-time basis and contended they telecommuted from their Lithonia home. He said he asked the GBI to investigate to ensure that politics didn’t color the investigation.

“I understand how this may look on the surface,” he said. “But a lot of this stuff could have been answered by sitting down and talking.”

He said Aayesha Reese has a Master’s degree in criminal justice and was paid $75 for each day she performed some task, with no required work hours.

Her payroll records, as outlined by Fay, suggested she billed each week for between five and seven days of work. She would have had to perform one duty a day for more than 100 days to earn what Columbus said she was paid.

Countryman said he started the “Junior Marshal” program in 2005 to mentor to “at-risk children” with the help of a $118,000 federal grant that Bishop had helped secure.

Bishop learned after the controversy erupted that his daughter was employed with the program and wrote a letter saying that she shouldn’t be a staffer because of his involvement in securing the grant, Countryman said.

Attempts to reach Aayesha and Stephen Reese by telephone for comment were unsuccessful.

Her voicemail at Howard’s office said she worked in the appellate division and dealt with expungements, which is the removal of criminal convictions, usually for people convicted under the state’s first-time offender law. She is not listed on the State Bar of Georgia’s Web site as a lawyer.