Newspaper Page Text
The Champion, Thursday, January 7-13, 2016
LOCAL
Page 13A
Year Continued From Page 12A
District 5 gets representation again
For two years the District 5 seat on the
DeKalb County Board of Commissioners was a
political pawn as county leaders could not agree
on how to fill the seat.
Technically, interim county CEO Lee May
was still the District 5 commissioner, although
residents said he stopped representing their local
concerns upon his appointment in July 2013 by
Gov. Nathan Deal to the interim CEO position.
May took over that position following the indict
ment and suspension of DeKalb County CEO
Burrell Ellis.
May and commissioners wrangled on how
to fill the seat. May, following the county’s Or
ganizational Act, nominated George Turner, a
District 5 Community Council president and a
retired MARTA manager, to fill the position on
an interim basis. The commissioners eventu
ally rejected that nominee and May’s second
choice, Kathryn Rice, a Greenhaven cityhood
proponent. The commission then selected five
candidates of its own, none of whom were ap
proved.
May eventually resigned from his commission
seat, paving the way for an election.
District 5 residents finally got representation
again when attorney Mereda Davis Johnson was
sworn in July 20 as their commissioner after de
feating nine other candidates.
The election went to a July 14 runoff in which
Johnson, wife of Congressman Hank Johnson,
received 53.12 percent of the votes to become the
new commissioner. Her opponent, Turner, re
ceived 46.88 percent of the votes.
Special investigator calls county ‘rotten to the core’
Calling a corruption report he commissioned
“laughable,” interim DeKalb County CEO Lee May
said he would not resign as it recommends.
Former state attorney general Mike Bowers,
who investigated the Atlanta Public Schools cheat
ing scandal, was picked in March by May to root
out county corruption.
Bowers’ team was “charged to investigate the
day-to-day operations of DeKalb County govern
ment and to bring back various recommenda
tions.. .to let us know those areas where we need to
tighten reins, where we need to work on our fiscal
controls and other opportunities to prevent those
areas from waste, fraud and abuse,” May said about
the 40-page report, for which the county spent
$850,000.
In his report, delivered to the county Sept. 30,
Bowers stated that the county’s poor leadership and
widespread corruption “are a disgrace to its citizens
and an embarrassment to our state.”
In another document, Bowers called DeKalb
County “rotten to the core.”
The report states that “May and others con
spired actively to block” the corruption investiga
tion.
Among its other recommendations, the report
suggested that a new day-to-day supervisor for
all county operations be appointed; the county at
tempt to recover all misspent funds; all spending
by commission members and their staffs should be
displayed weekly on a public county website; and
the purchase cards program be eliminated.
May said he would use the recommendations
in the report to “weed some of the bad apples.”
And May said he would not step down.
“I’m not resigning,” May reiterated. “Now if
the people of DeKalb—the taxpayers, the residents
of DeKalb—ask me to step down, then absolutely,
that’s something that I’m willing to do.”
Sharman White wins gold medal
Miller Grove basketball coach Sharman White won
a gold medal for the 2015 USA Basketball Men’s U16 Na
tional Team.
White was an assistant coach on the team that won the
FIBA Americas Championship June 14. USA (5-0) came
back from a 20-point second quarter deficit to defeat Can
ada (4-1) 77-60 and win gold. The championship game was
held in Bahia Blanca, Argentina.
The gold medal was the fourth gold for the U16 team,
and USA now has a 20-0 record overall in U16 play since
the biennial tournament launched in 2009.
White was named one of the assistant coaches for the
2014 USA Basketball Men’s Junior National Team in Sep
tember 2014. White coached under Don Showalter of Iowa
City High School in Iowa City, Iowa. Showalter has now
directed USA teams to seven gold medal finishes as head
coach of the USA Basketball Developmental National Team
since 2009.
DeKalb mourns fallen officer
DeKalb County Master Police
Officer Kevin Toatley, a seven-
year veteran of the department,
was killed Sept. 19 in a car accident
while driving home in his patrol car
in south Fulton County.
Fulton County police charged
Arimentha Best, 65, with homicide
by vehicle in the second degree and
driving on the wrong side of the
roadway.
Cedric Alexander, the county’s
public safety director, described
Toatley’s final watch, including re
sponding to a “Signal 63—officer
down” at 4 p.m. An officer had been
shot during a gun battle and Toatley
was one of the first officers on the
scene.
Interim DeKalb County Police
Chief James Conroy said, “There’s
no words. There’s absolutely no
words that can replace his loss. We
all owe him a great debt.”
See Year on Page 13A