An ousted Forest Park councilwoman is fighting to get her seat back.
Karen Brandee Williams has spent the last two years trying to clear her name after losing her Ward 2 seat in 2011 over ethics violations. She implored the city council this week to consider returning her to the seat which remains vacant, but the council adjourned without making a decision on the matter.
Williams wants to finish her term which ends in December. She hasn’t ruled out running for the seat again if she’s unable to complete her term. Qualifications for the seat as well as the mayor’s post start Aug. 26.
With a new mayor, city manager and city attorney, Williams said she believes she has a good shot at a comeback. But it’s unclear if she will get her wish to serve out her term.
“It may require a vote from state legislators,” said Mayor David Lockhart, an attorney who became mayor in a special election earlier this year, filling the vacancy left by Corine Deyton, who resigned for health reasons.
However, Lockhart noted the council could possibly amend an ordinance that blocks Williams from running for office for five years.
“I don’t think it would be an issue if the council is so inclined,” he said.
A spokesman for the Georgia Municipal Association called Williams dismissal for ethical reasons “unusual.” The city council voted in July 2011 to oust Williams after a hearing found her guilty on 15 or 25 ethics charges leveled by several residents. Williams was accused of ordering city workers to do a variety of tasks and using city funds for T-shirts with her name and phone numbers.
But a recent court decision motivated her to try to regain her seat. A judge for the U.S. Northern District Federal Court awarded Williams $35,000 in a judgment against Forest Park. The court found the city discriminated and retaliated against Williams after she asked for an ergonomic chair to use during council meetings to help ease a chronic pain disorder called fibromyalgia.
Williams has maintained that the city’s refusal to accommodate her disability has been at the core of her fight with the city officials and led to what she claims was a “political conspiracy” that resulted in her being removed from office.
“They (Forest Park officials) prosecuted and persecuted me for doing my job,” Williams told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “So this judgment means a lot to me. This is where all of the discrimination and retaliation started. This shows the citizens that I never lied to them.”
She was arrested in March 2012 on a series of charges tied to the purchase of the T-shirts but later worked out a deal with the Clayton District Attorney’s Office and those charges were ultimately dropped. District Attorney Tracy Graham Lawson said Williams is “not a convicted felon. Her case is over.”
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