In some ways, Macon officials are flying blind as they try to get a grasp on the potential $1 million lawsuit that has been threatened by the U.S. Department of Justice.
The department, which accused the city of misusing $350,000 in federal grant money, as well as the Bibb County district attorney, have carted away dozens of boxes and file cabinets full of financial and grant records during the past several years that detailwhere and how money was spent.
Meanwhile, many of the city officials who oversaw the grant - such as former Police Chief Rodney Monroe and some of his administrators - have left Macon for jobs elsewhere.
Then-Finance Director Kelly Clark is gone, and former Mayor Jack Ellis left office in December.
That has left those who are now in charge scrambling to find information about the $1 million grant, which in 2002 disbursed $730,000 to various church organizations for after-school and other programs.
Among the unknowns, they say, is exactly who got money, how much they were given and who certified how much money was spent. The federal government has said those certifications were false.
Gathering facts has not been easy, say officials, who are waiting to meet with federal investigators next week to see what evidence will be disclosed to support the allegations.
The length of time since the grant was awarded has contributed to the city's difficulty, said Mayor Robert Reichert, noting that normally many civil lawsuits would be governed by a statute of limitations.
"Institutional memory has faded or departed," Reichert said. "People are having a hard time trying to figure out what they knew or what they heard. It's going to be very, very difficult I'm afraid."
The Justice Department alleges that city officials falsely certified that federal money was spent "in accordance with the terms of the grant."
But the department has not said which city officials made those claims, and the city is having trouble finding documentation for them, having turned over much of its paperwork to investigators.
The Telegraph collected more than 2,600 pages of documentation on the initiative through a 2004 open records request. But it is not clear from those documents, which were wildly disorganized when the city provided them, who certified expenses to federal overseers.
Also unclear is whether the federal government is saying those claims for funding were intentionally falsified or simply did not meet reporting standards.
"The honest answer is I don't know who certified what," said City Attorney Pope Langstaff, who along with assistant city attorneys, Tuesday combed through files looking for additional information.
Langstaff said he found a stack of contracts between the city and the various church groups. But they may not represent the complete group of grant recipients, he said, and some of them may not have ended up participating in the initiative.
The city also has asked The Telegraph for additional time in complying with the newspaper's Open Records Act request from last Friday for documents related to the Safe Schools Initiative.
City leaders are scheduled to meet with officials in U.S. Attorney Max Wood's office May 13.
Reichert says he is walking a fine line in trying to properly disclose public information while at the same time not revealing anything that might put the city at greater financial risk.
Before the allegations were made public, he said, he had been hoping to gather information more quietly on the matter from federal officials.
"This is a very sensitive and very inflammatory issue," the mayor said, "that is going to cause a lot of heartburn."
Staff writer Travis Fain contributed to this report.
To contact writer Matt Barnwell, call 744-4251.
