On stand at bribe trial, Dallemand tells of stormy tenure: ‘I was called a Communist’

He says he received death threats, that his children were harassed at school and that the 28 months he served as the head of Bibb County’s public schools devolved into, as he puts it, “a very terrible time.”

Romain Dallemand’s tumultuous tenure as the school superintendent here was one of the more memorable or, depending on how one views it in hindsight, forgettable governing roles in modern Macon history. It was, largely, a civic and educational whirlwind of his own creation, one fanned by racial tension and, as prosecutors now contend, his own greed.

As Dallemand admitted on the stand while testifying as the government’s star witness in the federal bribery and money laundering trial of two of his alleged partners in crime, he spent at least part of his time as superintendent scheming to line his pockets.

Meanwhile, his brusque, my-way-or-else management style, perhaps by design, more than rubbed some locals the wrong way. Dallemand, now 50, was widely criticized as some of the programs he introduced were less-than-well-received, perhaps most notably the teaching of Mandarin Chinese to schoolchildren.

“I was called a Communist,” Dallemand said, recalling the reception his highly-publicized 2012 foreign-language effort drew from critics.

Against a backdrop of public outcry and institutional strife after many of his initiatives failed to find traction, Dallemand’s contract was bought out and he left town in mid-2013 after two and a half years in office.

Dallemand on Friday returned to the witness stand in U.S. District Court for a second day in the now week-old trial of Macon businessman Cliffard D. Whitby and prominent Tallahassee, Florida, attorney Harold M. Knowles.

Whitby, 55, a construction firm owner and former chairman of the Macon-Bibb County Industrial Authority, and the 71-year-old Knowles, who headed a construction firm in north Florida, are alleged to have conspired with and funneled payoffs to Dallemand.

The payoffs, prosecutors contend, came at least in part in return for Dallemand’s influence over business dealings between the school system and companies linked to Whitby and Knowles. Dallemand allegedly received more than $450,000 in bribe payments, with the promise, all told, of more than twice that, prosecutors say.

The supposed scheme began unraveling in late 2016 when federal investigators who were probing Dallemand’s finances discovered six-figure checks deposited in one of his checking accounts that he hadn’t reported on his 2012 tax return. Dallemand, who was by then living in Naples, Florida, has since pleaded guilty to tax crime and agreed to testify against Whitby and Knowles.

On Friday, at prosecutor Elizabeth S. Howard’s behest, Dallemand spoke of his mercurial months as superintendent.

When Howard asked if it would be correct to characterize Dallemand’s time as superintendent as controversial, he replied, “That would probably be an understatement.”

Dallemand, who was Bibb County’s second black schools’ chief, said he had lived many places over the years, but he had “never been in a place in my entire life” that was as divided along racial lines as Macon.

“Macon is the most racially polarized community that I have ever seen,” he said, adding that “racial tension on the (school) board ... was beyond comprehension.”

He said he had “wholeheartedly” wanted to “fundamentally” alter for the better the course of the low-performing school system here. Dallemand, as his tenure grew more contentious, mentioned asking the sheriff’s department to, for his family’s safety, step up patrols around his house. He said that his school-age son and daughter were picked on “by adults and students.”

“It was,” Dallemand said, “a very terrible time.”

Prosecutors on Friday laid out more of their case by introducing a string of allegedly bribe-related checks from Whitby to Dallemand. The government was expected to rest its case in the next few days, likely on Wednesday.

The trial will probably stretch into the second week of October and possibly longer as defense lawyers have yet to begin their cross examinations of Dallemand and, later, present their own witnesses should they opt to.

Dallemand testified for more than five hours Friday.

Toward the end of the day’s proceeding, prosecutors played an hour-long recording Dallemand secretly made in April of last year with the help of federal agents. Dallemand met with Whitby at a south Georgia truck-stop Denny’s near the Florida border. Prosecutors say that at the end of the meeting, Whitby gave Dallemand $24,000 cash, an alleged bribe payment, which Dallemand then handed over to the feds.

Jurors listened to the recorded exchange on headphones and followed along using printed transcripts of Whitby and Dallemand’s conversation. Courtroom observers, however, were not privy to the hearing nor the reading aides. Though the recording was played over courtroom speakers, save for few snippets, the sound was all but unintelligible to the naked ear.

Testimony resumes at 8 a.m. Monday.

This story was originally published September 28, 2018 at 5:05 PM.