Atlanta City Council wants a no-bite watchdog

But an unusual Monday visit by Manigault to a city council meeting angered council members, leading one to privately express “buyer’s remorse” over hiring her. . Some wonder if she might be too aggressive. Or at least aggressive demagoguery.

Manigault, a Harvard-trained lawyer and former New York City inspector, told the council that her office was hampered in its investigative efforts. Instead of articulating her concerns in a strong note, she waited her turn with aggrieved Atlanta citizens to address council members during the public comment portion of the meeting.

I guess she figured there was a stack of strongly worded memos going unread at City Hall. A face-to-face meeting was therefore necessary.

The Inspector General said there was a “concerted effort to interfere” with her team’s investigations. She said they found an email in which a department manager ordered an employee who had been questioned by investigators to summarize in writing what he was looking for.

“That means the investigations are compromised, that the leadership of the department has intentionally compromised the work (of the investigators),” she said, later adding: “Rather than giving the office what it needs, Obstacles have been erected to delay, obstruct and disclose our confidential investigations. »

“But there’s more,” she said. Some city officials are slow to turn over requested records, instead turning them into open records requests. This means that investigators must comply with their requests, alongside the media and ordinary citizens. It often takes weeks or months, if ever, to obtain the information.

“This, of course, exposes our investigations to more people, which increases the likelihood of altered testimony, destruction and withholding of evidence and obviously slows down our investigation,” she told them.

Of course, Mayor Andre Dickens could write a strongly worded memo warning department heads not to do any of this.

Manigault’s surprise visit to the council came just days after she released an explosive report on alleged nepotism gone wild. The investigation found that the city’s Human Resources Commissioner, Tarlesha Smith, created a job posting for her daughter and placed her in a $52,000-a-year position. This may not raise eyebrows – at least in Atlanta – but the investigation revealed that the girl, who was not qualified for the job, then stopped showing up for work after becoming angry with her supervisor because she could not work from home.

The supervisor decided to fire her recalcitrant young employee. Instead, HR ended up investigating supervisor then decided to fire her for “bullying”.

You just can’t make this stuff up.

Credit: Natrice Miller / [email protected]

Credit: Natrice Miller / [email protected]

Now that the report is public, Smith has been placed on administrative leave while the city addresses this issue. Or until it explodes.

All of this seems to be why you hire an inspector general in the first place.

However, council members were largely not supportive of Manigault’s concerns.

Some complained that Manigault created unnecessary drama by disclosing his investigation without first informing them and then coming to council to publicly air his complaints about its obstruction.

City Councilwoman Andrea Boone, who said she spent 32 years working at City Hall, said it’s just too open. She said council members were not informed and learned of the investigation while watching television news.

“I hope we’re not being selfish and playing with people’s lives,” said Boone, who spoke in the first person plural but obviously meant “You.”

“I spoke with employees. They say your office knocked on their door,” she said. “They say your office looked at their cash payment apps. They say the equipment was confiscated. They say you’re holding their phone.

“I mean there’s something called the FBI,” Boone said.

I guess the FBI wouldn’t even slow down their SUV to look into a case of aggravated nepotism.

Manigault responded to concerns about confiscated phones by telling council: “I operate as an independent entity. That’s what the investigating entities do.”

(She later told me she took city-issued equipment, not employees’ personal iPhones.)

Boone told him, “I want this agency to take a deep look at your office,” which sounds disturbingly similar to the human resources investigation that ended up trying to fire the human resources commissioner’s daughter.

Later, Boone told me she meant the city should look at how other cities investigate alleged wrongdoing.

I called Stacey Kalberman, an attorney who was once removed from the state ethics post for investigating the former governor and who later outraged top DeKalb County officials over her initiative.

“I used to say I wanted a sign in my office that said, ‘First, let’s kill the ethics officers,’ because that’s what always happens,” he told me. she says, with a variation of Shakespeare’s line about lawyers. “No one really wants ethics officers to do their job. »