DeKalb County CEO Burrell Ellis stopped advocating pulling a contract from a vendor after one of the company's owners made a $2,500 contribution to help pay off his 2012 campaign debt, one witness testified Friday.
Another said Ellis threatened to end a contract held by her employer — a different vendor — when she said neither she nor the company would give to his campaign.
“He said well you’re not going to get any more business from DeKalb County,” said Joanne Wise, who worked for Ciber, a company that provided IT support for DeKalb County government.
Ellis is accused of strong-arming vendors for campaign contributions, threatening to end their relationship with the county if they did not give. Ellis said he only pushed to cut off venders who did not return his calls and not because they didn’t give to his campaign.
Wise testified that she returned the first message Ellis left in February 2012. “He said Ciber had benefited from relationship with DeKalb and he hoped he could count of Ciber for a political contribution,” Wise said.
She said Ellis was persistent even after she said Ciber did not give to politicians and she was not in a financial situation that would allow her to make a personal contribution. Wise said he called several more times, leaving messages that were increasingly angry. She called him back at the end of March.
“He said ‘well, you’re not going to get any more business from DeKalb County,’” Wise said.
At the time, DeKalb was renegotiating the contract and Ciber withdrew because it did not agree with the new terms, she said.
Kelvin Walton, a key witness in the case, was called back to talk about a change in attitude toward another vendor, National Property Institute.
Ellis had called a meeting on Oct. 1, 2012, with the company’s co-owners to talk about unreturned phone calls. With the husband and wife owners and others present, Ellis said the meeting was not to talk about campaign contributions; it was to talk about unreturned phone calls. Ellis said he was angry because Trina Shealey, one of NPI’s owners, did not respond to any of the 17 messages Ellis left for her.
Ellis later told department heads not to give NPI any more of DeKalb’s business. “Dry ‘em up,” Ellis said on one of the recordings played Friday.
But in a meeting on Oct. 25, 2012, Ellis told Walton to take NPI off the list of vendors to call for help, according to Walton and a recording of that meeting.
“I’m going to leave them alone,” Ellis said on the recording.
Walton testified that the owners of the company had given Ellis $2,500 two days earlier.
Walton is key to the prosecution’s case. Since he has admitted lying to a grand jury, prosecutors are using the secret recordings he made to confirm his testimony. Walton agreed to be wired when faced with the possibility that he could be charged with lying to a grand jury investigating corruption in DeKalb.
Ellis — charged with extortion, perjury and bribery — is facing a jury for a second time. Last year, an all-female jury could not agree on a verdict so it ended in a mistrial.
About the Author
