My first reaction to the Bowers Report on corruption in DeKalb County was a shrug. Maybe because it felt like I was watching a rerun. Or maybe it was a syndrome diagnosed as DeKalb Fatigue.
Much of what was in the report already has appeared in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, work from reporters Johnny Edwards and Mark Niesse, who have been dogging the county for more than a year.
When Interim CEO Lee May entered the Manuel Maloof Auditorium Wednesday afternoon and derided the 40-page investigative report as an $850,000 boondoggle of his own making, I knew we had some good Kabuki theater in the making.
On one side of the stage, you have the slender and youthful divinity-student-turned-politician, Lee May. On the other, you have the grouchy and obdurate investigative team of Bowers and Richard Hyde, who were walking away with a small fortune in the six-month operation.
Wow, I figured, doing a quick calculation — that’s $21,000 a page, or about what Stephen King makes for typing.
“The content of this report is at best laughable, and at worst pitiful,” May said of the report that urged the interim CEO to get lost. And get lost fast.
May had no choice but to come out swinging. He has repeatedly looked to be in over his head in the job that he inherited two years ago when former CEO Burrell Ellis was indicted on corruption charges. (He is now in prison.) May is already known as the Million Dollar Mistake Man in some DeKalb circles for giving the veteran sleuths an open tab to come in and cast a caustic eye on the county.
Bowers has said they have been paid $600,000 and will not bother billing the county for $300,000 still owed them.
Hiring the Bowers/Hyde tandem was a gambit to give May instant honesty cred, which is currently in short supply in DeKalb. Four years earlier, Bowers, the former state attorney general, and Hyde, a former Atlanta cop, released an investigative report that found serial cheating on tests in Atlanta Public Schools. It was a probe that also validated AJC reporting that said the too-good-to-be-true test increases were just that.
The APS investigation was the blueprint for a wide-ranging criminal indictment that snared dozens of teachers and administrators. Last time, the Bowers squad had platoons of GBI agents helping.
This time, it was a more civilianesque affair, one that investigators say was stymied by a ham-handed May. Remember: he’s the man who hired the investigators in March to great fanfare.
Back then, May, who was trying to look bold, faced the TV cameras and said that hiring Bowers and Hyde was “absolutely risky. I think Mike would throw me in jail if he thinks I’m doing something wrong.”
Well…
'I hate to call anyone a liar'
Bowers isn’t exactly trying to slap handcuffs on May, but he’s accusing him of dumping pepper on the ground to throw the bloodhounds off the trail. The report says May, among other things, suggested they not interview Morris Williams, a longtime DeKalb inner-circle player who pulled the ripcord and left county employment when investigators came sniffing about.
The report said May borrowed money from the subordinate Williams, a claim that May steadfastly denied a couple times in his press conference Wednesday.
The following day, Bowers told the AJC, “I hate to call anyone a liar” and then did just that.
They produced a transcript of a recording of a May 7 interview in which the CEO allegedly told Hyde, “I may have, you know, say ‘Hey, can I borrow a couple hundred dollars?’ It hadn’t never been more than a few hundred dollars.”
I hate when you come to work and your boss hits you up for a few hundred bucks now and again. And the interim CEO probably hates Hyde had a tape recorder.
The Williams loan accusation is significant because it hints at a mysterious set of circumstances that remain over a payment from a county vendor.
A sliding scale of corruption
The vendor arranged for $6,500 in repairs to May’s home after a sewage line backup and claims he gave $4,000 to Williams with the understanding it would find its way to the CEO to help with his personal financial problems. The vendor won a $300,000 county contract later that year, the AJC and Channel 2 Action News found.
May says he never saw any of the $4,000 and has never taken graft.
Possibly the oddest thing in the report was what I’ll call The Lundsten Test, a sliding scale of corruption created by Bowers and Hyde to determine the level of allowable malfeasance in DeKalb County government.
Bob Lundsten is the former commission aide who the feds tossed back into the pond when scooping up his boss, Commissioner Elaine Boyer. The commissioner was convicted of siphoning off more than $100,000. Lundsten was later indicted by DeKalb County DA Robert James on what appears to less than $300 of alleged fraud, a charge that Lundsten denies.
So, $300 was the going standard of what is a felony fraud case in DeKalb, Hyde and Bowers determined. And they knew they were going to have their work cut out for them because $300 is not a lot of money. They determined they would have to ferret out all the scoundrels cheating DeKalb to the tune of $300 or more. Or they would ferret out none of them. Fair is fair, they reasoned. They rolled up their sleeves, looked at 50,000 purchases and related documents and then, they say, were stymied by May.
May and other officials, including DA James, ignored requests for records, they say. Eventually, May told the hamstrung investigators to wrap it up.
$537,000 in questionable spending by officials
The report demonstrates that controls for spending in DeKalb are loosey goosey. It lists $537,000 worth of “questionable” spending by May, commissioners, some officials, and even DA James. The expenses ranged from a $2.99 cup of boiled peanuts (Morris Williams) to a $34,570 consulting contract paid by Commissioner Sharon Barnes Sutton’s funds to her former boyfriend. And, it seems, Commissioner Jeff Rader loves to donate commissioner funds to park, library and historical groups.
Barnes called the investigation a “witch hunt.” Rader said his donations to such causes benefit the public.
Much of the spending is picayune and some of it is probably reasonable and warranted. But because the investigation was short-circuited and never completed, we may never know. The probe’s resulting thud is frustrating to those of us hoping a light might be shined and some truth discovered. It just feels like all the rocks never get turned over.
But there are federal investigators digging into the county. Stay tuned.
