With 22 of its 24 members present Monday night the County Commission voted 20-1-1 to authorize $93,000 out of the 2011-12 budget to pay the Federal Emergency Management Agency back for a hazard mitigation grant that went awry during the administration of former County Executive Kenneth Rogers, who was in office from 2002-2006.
Commissioner Ron Lee voted against the resolution and Rogers, who is currently a District 7 commissioner, abstained from the vote.
The FEMA money was originally designated to purchase and demolish a house located at 58 Donovan Drive which had suffered extensive flood damage. The structure was owned by Michael Hubbard.
However, rather than having the home demolished, as per the language of the FEMA contract, Rogers contracted with local businessman Randall Dunn, of RWRP Properties, to have the home dismantled and moved. As part of this contract Dunn provided a donation of $16,000 to the county, with Rogers then paying Dunn $6,000 with two checks, one for $4,500 and the other for $1,500.
When contacted about the situation, FEMA investigated and ultimately decided Roger’s actions constituted a breach of contract, resulting in the action to recover the funds, which in turn generated the county’s resolution to allot the funds in order to reimburse FEMA.
Once the resolution was introduced by Budget and Finance Chairman Herschel Wells Lee rose to address the issue and was recognized by current County Executive John Pelham.
Lee basically wanted to add language which would obligate the commission to enter into litigation with Rogers to recover the funds, an option which had been discussed in a meeting of the Budget and Finance Committee last month, but no decision was made at that time.
“Mr. chairman I understand the seriousness and the gravity of this problem we’ve got to deal with,” Lee said. “But there’s no way that I can vote to pay this unless we amend this resolution to guarantee to the taxpayers of this county that we’ll seek restitution from the party involved.”
“Are you making that as a motion?” asked Pelham. “You’re asking that we amend this resolution to say what?”
“That we tell the taxpayers of this county that we will pay this on condition of seeking restitution from the responsible party,” Lee said.
“I have a motion on the floor to amend this resolution,” Pelham said. “Does everyone understand the motion? If so, then I would ask is there a second to this motion.”
No second was forthcoming.
“The motion dies for lack of a second,” proclaimed Pelham, who then invited discussion from the floor. Commissioner Les Trotman was recognized and expressed his concerns about the county’s options to recover the funds.
“I’d like to ask our county attorneys where we stand legally on this,” Trotman said. “Commissioner Lee brought up a very good point. We’re looking at taxpayer money here to be spent by the action of this commission, and I’m wondering what options we have for sources to look at for this money.”
Pelham then asked county attorney Larry Stanley to address this question. Stanley began by saying his office had been busy with other issues, including the city county lawsuit, and hadn’t had adequate time to devote to the FEMA issue, but questioned the ethics of his office entering into litigation with a sitting commissioner.
“We haven’t fully researched this yet, but does look like, and I have asked several attorneys around, we still do not have an opinion from our ethics committee as to whether I can handle this or not,” Stanley said. “I don’t think I can. I think it’s a violation of ethics because Mr. Rogers is just as much my boss as you are, so I don’t think I can do it. I think we’ll have to go outside the county attorney’s office if we do that.
“But we still have not looked into all the defenses, we’ve not talked to all the people involved yet, so it’s just too early for us to say one way or the other,” Stanley said. “I don’t know that there’s a time constraint on this, but we will keep checking into it and report to you as we see what we can do.”
One alternative discussed at the Budget and Finance meeting was the $50,000 bond on Rogers when he was county executive.
“We have filed against the bond,” Stanley said. “But they’ve come back and said they’ve got to have more information than what we’ve got, so it may be a process of going through depositions and all that. So that’s where we are.”
In the end, the commissioners voted to approve the resolution and allot the funds per FEMA’s request.