Grand jury may look into Cherokee deal with wood recycling company

She called for a grand jury investigation and Cherokee County District Attorney Garry Moss said that's a possibility.

“I don’t direct the grand jury, the grand jury directs me,” Moss said. “But it’s one of the things they’re considering.”

Cosby's accusation centered on an affidavit from the ex-husband of Commissioner Karen Bosch, Keith Mahurin, who described a scene where Bobo delivered $1,000 in cash to him, stuffed in 10 different envelopes, on each of which was written a different name.

“The next time I saw the envelopes is when I found them in [my wife's] old campaign folder, which she left in a box of files at our old residence,” Mahurin states in the affidavit. “There was no cash in the envelopes at that time.”

According to state campaign laws, candidates do not have to record the names of contributors who give $100 or less, whether it’s cash or check. Bosch disputed her ex-husband's claim of how the transaction took place, but she confirmed Bobo did approach her in 2004, saying he wanted to support her campaign.

"He told me he wanted to collect money from people in his office and bring it to me," Bosch said.

She said she didn’t know until a tea party news conference last week that the contributions were in 10 different envelopes.

“I filed them appropriately, since they were less than $100,” she said, adding she thought they were from 10 different people. “I did not list them as campaign donations from Jimmy Bobo."

Bobo said last week he gave cash to Bosch but didn’t do anything illegal. “Isn’t it the candidate’s responsibility to keep track of and report contributions?” he said.

Other commissioners dismissed the tea party claims.

Commission Chairman Buzz Ahrens said he’s never received a cent in campaign contributions from Bobo, and he wasn’t in office in 2005 and 2006 when the county agreed to the partnership.

Commissioner Harry Johnston said Cosby’s claim that he had an increase in anonymous contributions in 2008 made no sense because he wasn’t running for office in 2008.

Commissioner Jim Hubbard said he did receive a $100 donation from a Bobo family member but didn't identify him as a contributor because of the campaign law "and I believe he wanted to remain anonymous."

The commissioners all said the Bobo deal looked like a good one in 2005, boom times when the county was growing by leaps and bounds.

In those days neighbors were complaining about the noise and pollution from Bobo's recycling plant on Blalock Road, but the county needed the plant.  It recycled stumps from land cleared for development and converted them to mulch for landscaping -- and it employed about 100 people.

So the commission agreed to the partnership in 2005 with the idea of finding a new location. Since a county government can only legally borrow money through a development authority, they created the Resource Recovery Development Authority in 2006, and in 2007 sold $18.1 million in bonds to move Bobo's business  to a 36-acre tract south of Ball Ground.

For four years business was fine. Then, last year, Ball Ground Recycling couldn't make its monthly bond payments of about $100,000 to the Bank of New York and, according to the contract, the county had to step in and pay. Since then, Cherokee has paid about $1.2 million, with another $600,000 set aside for future payments.

“In hindsight I wish we hadn’t have done this,” Johnston said. “But we didn’t do anything wrong, anything illegal.”

Bobo hasn't given up. "If the economy picks up, we can get back, if we can just keep it together long enough,” he said.

Meanwhile, the county is looking for a new business partner and a deal could be reached in a matter of weeks. "Our patience has run out," Johnston said.