Meeting called to discuss allegations of pornographic e-mails

The board for a state planning organization will meet Wednesday to discuss reports the executive director of the Three Rivers Regional Commission sent hundreds of e-mails containing pornographic pictures on a government website.

Barnesville Mayor Peter Banks, one of 36 board members for the Three Rivers Regional Commission, said any possible discipline of executive director Lanier Boatwright will be discussed in a closed meeting. A vote on actions to be taken against Boatwright will be made in a public session after the closed meeting, he said.

According to e-mails obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Boatwright spent significant parts of his work days sharing with friends and colleagues graphic pictures of women performing sex acts on others and on inanimate objects, videos of a group performing a Christmas carol by blowing on the top of beer bottles and making fun of Walmart shoppers.

A few of those e-mails were sent to or by at least one other board member and some of his staff.

Banks said he had heard about the e-mails but he had not seen any.

One of the e-mails was forwarded from Boatwright’s assistant to a former planner, who discovered a plethora of questionable e-mails when she requested documents for a case she was preparing to challenge her dismissal earlier in the year.

Boatwright has not responded to several phone messages left at his house and his office but in a television interview he denied sending the e-mails.

The board chairman, Coweta County Commissioner Tim Lassetter, also did not respond to e-mails or telephone messages but he told the Newnan Times Herald an investigation was started about two months ago.

“Some of them were jokes and things like that. And some were very inappropriate,” Lassetter told the Newnan newspaper.

Former planner Carter Thompson told the AJC Monday she sent copies of the objectionable e-mails to Lassetter, another board member and the Governor’s Office. She said no one responded when she asked for an investigation.

Thompson discovered the e-mails among thousands she got after submitting a request for electronic documents, citing the Georgia Open Records Act. Thompson is preparing a legal complaint that says she was fired for reporting her supervisor was sexually harassing her.

But Lassetter told the Newnan newspaper that he could not tell if Boatwright sent the e-mails or had just received them.

“It is my understanding that, if me or you or other people … even if we get it and we never open it and we delete it, it still could be showing that it was an e-mail that came to me,” Lassetter said. “That is why you have to investigate … if they were actually forwarded by the individual that received them.”

He said he didn’t recall seeing evidence that Boatwright had forwarded the e-mails to others.

The e-mails the AJC reviewed show that Boatwright was the source of the e-mails.

“That’s a complete false statement,” Thompson said of Lassetter’s contention that he knew little of the e-mails. “I’m sick of everybody lying and making me out to be the bad guy … These e-mails were sent to them in August and they absolutely did not to try and rectify the situation until it was sent to the news [media]. There was no movement toward any resolution that I was aware of.”

Until earlier this year, the Three Rivers commission used the city of Griffin’s server and its e-mail address -- cityofgriffin.com. It has since has been given its own address, according to the city manager.