Corruption at City Hall
Corruption at City Hall
Corruption in Contracting
In January of 2017, longtime construction contractor E.R. Mitchell and Charles P. Richards, Jr. pleaded guilty to conspiring to pay bribes in return for millions of dollars in city contracts. Also accused by indictment in their schemes was Reed’s appointee and political consultant Mitzi Bickers, who currently remains on bond awaiting trial. Mitchell plead guilty to paying more than $1 million in in bribes to an unnamed person under the belief that the funds would be paid to one or more Reed administration city officials with influence over the contracting process. Mitchell was sentenced to five years in federal prison, but the sentence was later reduced to four years.
In previous years Mitchell had donated or helped to raise over $10,000 in campaign contributions to Reed’s campaigns for office. Mitchell did at least $7.3 million in emergency work for the city from 2010 to 2015, during which Mitchell admitted to paying bribes, to officials in the Reed administration or persons with influence over the Reed administration.
Chief Procurement Officer Pleads Guilty to Accepting Bribes
The City’s Chief Procurement Officer for the entirety of Reed’s two terms in office was sentenced to 27 months in federal prison for his part in taking $44,000 in bribes in January, 2018. At his sentencing, Smith said: “I let my guard down. I slipped,” – a slip is usually defined as a one-off event, an accident, an anomalous occurrence, but accepting $1,000 in cash, stuffed into envelopes 44 times is not a slip. That is more appropriately defined as a deliberate corrupt pattern of behavior.
Chief Financial Officer Indicted
Notwithstanding Kasim Reed’s prolific abuse of city credit card privileges, the gold medal goes to his Chief Financial Officer, Jim Beard. Beard worked for Reed for almost the entirety of his mayorship and a short time for the current mayor. According to the AJC’s reporters, Beard used his card for more than $150,000 in questionable purchases from 2014-18. Expenditures were for airfare, luxury hotels and high-end restaurants and guns that he was not authorized to purchase with taxpayer funds. The city of Atlanta's ethics office filed a complaint against Beard in January, alleging he charged nearly $150,000 in potentially improper expenses to his taxpayer-backed credit card. In September of 2020, Beard was indicted on eight counts of wire fraud, theft from the government, possession of machine guns, making a false statement, and obstructing federal tax laws. Beard currently remains on bond awaiting trial.
Illegal Bonuses to City Department Heads
Prior to leaving office, in December of 2017, Kasim Reed authorized giving away bonuses to City employees in an amount determined to exceed $800,000. Two investigations found that the bonuses were not only inappropriate, but illegal. Both City Auditor Amanda Noble and City Ethics Officer Jabu Sengova found the payments violated both city code and state law governing gratuities. The City hired the firm of Thompson Hines to investigate the legality of the bonuses. The firm was paid $151,272.86 to investigate the matter, later finding that the bonuses awarded to select employees during the waning days of Reed's administration violated the state Constitution's gratuities clause, which prohibits extra payments to public employees without a clear benefit to taxpayers.
Payment of Girl Friend’s Legal Bills with City Money
Widely reputed to be in a romantic relationship with Reed, Terrinee Gundy, a municipal court judge, first appointed by Reed in 2012, was charged with ethical violations before the Judicial Qualifications Commission (JQC). A lawyer was engaged by the City to represent Gundy before the JQC at the rate of $600 per hour. The representation was approved by then City Attorney Jeremy Berry. After the AJC reported on the matter, the Bottoms administration terminated the City’s obligation to continue to pay for the engagement claiming that the engagement was legally improper under state law to use public money to pay for a private legal matter. The total City funded expense for the representation was $56,000.
It was also discovered that Gundy spent almost $7,000 of taxpayer funds budgeted for her courtroom on gifts, engraved envelopes and other stationery, beverage napkins and other items for a party after Reed’s Annual Masked Ball in December of 2017.
Illegally Charging Roughly $150,000 on City Credit Cards
Based on hundreds of pages of Kasim Reed’s credit card bills and nine bodyguards, the AJC reported that Reed spent tens of thousands of dollars for resort trips to the Bahamas, Las Vegas, and other destinations. “At least 32 times, bodyguards purchased rooms at Atlanta’s Marriott Marquis, The Omni, or the Hyatt for one of two nights costing more than $6,200.” They charged $3,768 on more than 120 trips to pick up Reed’s laundry.
“We would flag charges and give him the opportunity to repay, and in many cases he did,” interim Chief Financial Officer John Gaffney said. “I’m not making any excuses for inappropriate charges. We do our best to change behavior, but that’s all we can do. There was no behavior change.” According to AJC reporting, Reed reimbursed taxpayers for only a fraction of the identified personal expenses.
Deputy Chief of Staff Pleading Guilty to Accepting Bribes
Katrina Taylor-Parks was Kasim Reed’s deputy chief of staff for eight years. She was accused of accepting $4,000 in bribes to help an unidentified vendor win about $100,000 in city business. Reportedly, after initially denying that she took money from the vendor she pled guilty to the charges and agreed to cooperate in the federal investigation involving other city hall corruption. Reportedly she met with investigators on 16 occasions and took part in four interviews by phone and provided the FBI with the contents of two cell phones. Taylor-Parks was sentenced to 21 months in prison and ordered to serve three years on parole and payment of restitution of about $15,000.
Official City Spokesperson Found Guilty of Criminal Violations of the ORA
When the GBI opened a criminal investigation of the Reed administrations responses to open records responses, the initial focus of the GBI’s open records investigation was on Reed’s communications staffer, Jenna Garland, and the text messages she sent to another communications staffer in the City’s watershed department regarding a request for water billing records for Reed, his brother Tracy, and city council members, which prompted Garland to instruct the watershed employee to “be as unhelpful as possible” and to “drag this out as long as possible”. The watershed employee had previously reported to Garland that properties owned by Reed and his brother had thousands of dollars in unpaid water bills.
Garland was ultimately convicted of two misdemeanor criminal counts for frustrating and participating in causing the delayed response to the open records request. She was the first governmental employee in the State of Georgia to be criminally prosecuted and convicted of an open records violation – attempting to prevent public disclosure of Reed’s thousands of dollars in unpaid water bills from becoming public knowledge. At the time of her trial, Reed was quoted as saying that Garland was an “exemplary colleague”. Her boss, Reed’s communications director, and current Reed campaign spokesperson, Anne Torres, praised Garland for her “integrity and work ethic” and called the charges against her frivolous. It can be concluded that their praise of her is an indication of their acquiescence and consent to her violations of the law and a lack of a sense of outrage at brazen violations of the law.
Director of Contract Compliance Pleads Guilty to Wire Fraud and Filing False Tax Returns
In September of 2019, Larry Scott plead guilty to wire fraud and filing false tax returns. At the time, Mr. Scott was Director of Contract Compliance for the City of Atlanta. He was accused of receiving payments from a company by the name of Cornerstone U.S. Management Group, LLC. According to reports at the time, Mr. Scott received approximately $220,000 in payments from Cornerstone during the Reed Administration from 2012 to 2017.
Secretary of State records indicate that Conerstone was initially formed by Mr. Scott and Crystal Reed in 2011. Ms. Reed is the wife of Tracy Reed, Kasim Reed’s brother. Secretary of State records also show that Tracy Reed is involved with the company as its registered agent and that the principal place of business of the corporation was at 1755 Loch Loman Trail, a property owned by Crystal and Tracy Reed. According to statements reportedly made by Scott, he helped his friend Tracy Reed establish the company to consult with persons seeking to do business with the City of Atlanta.
2017 – 2020 Inductees into the Reed Administration Corruption Hall of Shame
1/25/17: Contractor Elvin “ER” Mitchell pleads guilty to bribery charges.
2/16/17: Contractor Charles “CP” Richards pleads guilty to bribery charges.
9/25/17: Former Atlanta Chief Procurement Officer Adam Smith pleads guilty to accepting bribes.
11/6/17: Former city employee Shandarrick Barnes pleads guilty to trying to intimidate a federal witness.
3/27/18: Former Atlanta employee and Mayor Kasim Reed political consultant Mitzi Bickers is indicted on 11 counts of bribery, money laundering, wire fraud, filing false tax returns and tampering with a witness.
1/10/19: Former Atlanta Deputy Chief of Staff Katrina Taylor Parks pleads guilty to accepting bribes.
5/5/19: Contractor Jeff Jafari is indicted on 51 counts of bribery, tax evasion and witness tampering.
9/4/19: Former Atlanta Contract Compliance Officer Larry Scott pleads guilty to wire fraud and filing false tax returns.
5/1/20: Airport contractor Hayat Choudhary pleaded guilty to paying bribes.
6/19/20: Former Atlanta Watershed Commissioner Jo Ann Macrina is indicted on charges of bribery, conspiracy to commit bribery and aiding or abetting the preparation of false tax returns.
9/16/20: Former Atlanta Chief Financial Officer Jim Beard is indicted on eight counts of wire fraud, theft from the government, possession of machine guns, making a false statement and obstructing federal tax laws.