Now-former County Manager Carlos Tobar was asked to “gather his possessions” and “exit the building” after being fired last week during a called meeting of the Board of Commissioners.
The vote to terminate Tobar’s contract was 5-0 and followed a lengthy executive session.
The following day, District Attorney T. Wright Barksdale announced that he was asking the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to look into county’s finances.
The heat originally was turned up on Tobar last October, when Hank Griffeth, who was in his final few months as Milledgeville city manager, went public with the fact that the county government owed the city government roughly $5 million in SPLOST payments. The county government basically hadn’t paid the city government its portion of sales tax collections for almost nine months.
Questions quickly arose. Why was the county government’s SPLOST fund depleted? Where did all the money go? In the process, the county’s finance director and assistant county manager – Dawn Hudson – was placed on administrative leave, and county commissioners requested a full forensic audit. The results of that audit were revealed at last Thursday’s called meeting, and Tobar was fired in short order.
It’s all speculation, but the question now becomes did Tobar move money from the two sales tax accounts – SPLOST and TSPLOST – into other county government accounts. That would create issues with the Georgia Department of Audits and Accounts, and it could also open up the county government to civil lawsuits. However, only on rare occasions is moving money from SPLOST accounts actually “illegal.” SPLOST funds can only be used on specific capital projects.
In terms of anything that would put Tobar in deep legal trouble, Scott Little doesn’t believe there’s anything there.
“It’s my personal belief that Carlos wasn’t here to steal money from the county. I actually think he has a big heart,” said Little, the county commissioner from District 5. “I just think his focus was in the wrong place. His focus should’ve been on running the day-to-day business of the county, but instead it was on all his projects.”
Those “projects” included a series of initiatives, ranging from splash pads to golf course renovations to water parks. Projects became more expensive than originally anticipated. More recently, Tobar had become gung-ho about a series of redevelopment projects around the southside of Milledgeville and Hardwick. Tobar was extremely effective at winning government grants.
In his enthusiasm for the different SPLOST projects and different grant projects, Little says that Tobar allowed the county government’s overall financial health the suffer. At one point recently, the county government had “cash reserves” of $212,000, a dire position for a government entity with a $30 million budget.
Little also believes that Tobar “intentionally misled commissioners about the county’s financial health.” This was reiterated by David Sawyer, the forensic auditor from last week’s meeting.
“Based on your findings here, do you believe that it’s possible that commissioners had an inflated sense of our cash position,” Commissioner Andrew Strickland asked Sawyer.
“That would be an accurate statement,” Sawyer replied. “Yes.”
After voting to terminate Tobar’s contract at last week’s meeting, the county commission then voted unanimously to install Sammy Hall as “interim county manager.” Hall is the county commissioner from District 3, and he’s not seeking re-election this year.
Hall spoke with The Baldwin Bulletin earlier this week, reassuring the public that no services will be disrupted and that the county government will bounce back.
“We’re not, in my opinion, broke. But, we do have some severe financial problems,” Hall said. “No services are in jeopardy, and we’re not contemplating layoffs or a reduction in force. We’re just going to have to really, really tighten our belt.”
Hall added that he doesn’t expect his interim county manager job to last very long.
“It’s my expectation that I won’t be in this position for more than a month. Our next step is finding ‘a more permanent interim manager,’ I guess you could say,” he said.