Bid to oust Gordon mayor from office is racially motivated, attorney says

Two and a half years after Mary Ann Whipple-Lue took office, testimony began in a trial that seeks to remove her from the mayor’s post.

The trial pits Whipple-Lue against two city councilmen and members of the Concerned Citizens of Gordon group that are seeking her ouster.

The mayor’s attorney contended Monday that the case is racially motivated. Her opponents said she has overstepped her authority and violated both the city charter and state sunshine laws.

The city’s charter allows for the mayor’s removal under instances of “incompetence, misfeasance and malfeasance.”

Councilmen Terry Eady and Freddie Densley, along with members of the Concerned Citizens group, filed suit in 2014, soon after Whipple-Lue took office.

Testimony in the trial is set to continue Tuesday. Judge Robert Reeves will decide whether Whipple-Lue remains in office. There’s no jury.

In his opening statement, Devlin Cooper, the plaintiffs’ attorney, said Whipple-Lue has engaged in a pattern of Open Meetings Act violations, casting votes in council matters in violation of the city’s charter and making financial decisions without authority.

He said the mayor’s actions are evidence of her “arrogance” and “disdain for the law.”

“There hasn’t been one or two incidents of incompetence, malfeasance and misfeasance. There’s been a lot,” he said.

When considering how much evidence of misconduct is needed to remove a mayor from office, Cooper said, “I think it’s like obscenity. You know it when you see it.”

Whipple-Lue’s attorney, Wayne Kendall, said the case is “racially motivated and racially maintained.”

Elected in November 2013, Whipple-Lue became Gordon’s first black mayor when she took office in January 2014.

Speaking of the mayor’s alleged “arrogance,” Kendall said the plaintiffs “don’t like her attitude. ... A lot of people don’t like her because she’s arrogant.”

He denied that Whipple-Lue had violated the state’s Open Meetings Act.

One issue set to be discussed during the trial — expected to last at least two days — is an allegation that Whipple-Lue transferred $150,000 from one city account to another without council approval to pay the city’s bills.

Being an authorized signer on the accounts, she moved the money so city employees would be paid, Kendall said.

“They may not like her. They may not like her politics. ... But there’s nothing here, judge, that indicates she was incompetent or acted with misfeasance or malfeasance,” Kendall said. “This case is about race, pure and simple. … This is a racist case.”

Densley testified Monday about witnessing Whipple-Lue’s “ranting,” “pounding on her desk” and threatening to fire the city clerk and replace her with a black employee.

He said the mayor also threatened to fire the council members.

Answering a question posed by the judge, Densley, a black man, denied that the lawsuit was racially motivated.

Eady, who is white, also denied that race was a factor.

During his testimony, Eady said the city is without liability insurance and can’t get a company to write a policy that would provide more coverage than the premium charged. Gordon’s property and vehicles are insured, he said.

The Georgia Municipal Association, which previously insured the city, sent officials a letter in 2014 saying that Gordon’s policy would not be renewed due to “apparent dysfunction among the elected officials ... which has created conditions that increase risk of loss to the city beyond acceptable levels.”

City Clerk Towana Brown testified that she had filed a whistleblower suit and two U.S. Equal Opportunity Employment Commission complaints against the city since Whipple-Lue took office. All three cases have been settled.

“She has repeatedly threatened to fire me and hire a black,” Brown said.

Brown testified she refused to sign a check to pay an auditor because council members hadn’t approved the payment.

She said Whipple-Lue reprimanded her because of the refusal.

Brown also testified that city personnel files went missing after the mayor demanded her keys and that Whipple-Lue made expenditures not included in the budget.

Among the expenditures was for a company to check City Hall for listening devices — “bugs,” she said.

Since Whipple-Lue took office, the city has lost volunteers and has been forced to pay bills that have taken money away from other possible projects, Brown said.

She said whites and blacks have both complained and “there’s a lot of conflict.”

Whipple-Lue admitted in her testimony that she received a letter April 1, 2014, from attorney Ronnie Jones accepting an offer to be city attorney nearly two months before the City Council voted on whether to fire its longtime city attorney. A judge later ruled that Jones’ hiring was improper.

At times during the mayor’s testimony, she seemed to cast doubt about whether the clerk’s meeting minutes were accurate and said that Brown sometimes acted as if “she’s the mayor.”

Whipple-Lue is likely to testify again later in the trial when her attorney presents her side of the case.

Judges from the Ocmulgee Judicial Circuit, which includes Wilkinson County, disqualified themselves from handling the case. Reeves, a judge from the neighboring Middle Judicial Circuit, was assigned to the case.

Whipple-Lue was suspended from office twice during the summer of 2014 due to the illegal voting allegations.

Reeves later returned her to office on multiple conditions, including that she abide by the Open Meetings Act requirements and vote only in instances allowed by the city charter.

This story was originally published June 20, 2016 at 11:34 AM with the headline "Bid to oust Gordon mayor from office is racially motivated, attorney says."