Better or Bitter?
Over the past several weeks, a new political action corporation has emerged as an unapologetic critic of city government, targeting both the mayor and the entire city council for mismanagement as well as leveling thinly-veiled accusations of corruption.
“A Better Columbus” (ABC) formed a nonprofit corporation with the Mississippi Secretary of State’s Office on Nov. 5. They are seeking 501(c)(4) status as a social welfare organization with the Internal Revenue Service.
Founded by Leslie Sorrell and her husband, Will Sanders (no relation to Lowndes County Port director of the same name), the group has been directing sharp criticism of the city’s administration, largely through social media.
“We’re still getting organized,” Sorrell said. “We’re trying to get the word out not only about who we are, but what’s going on in the city, which is the most important thing.”
Last week, A Better Columbus took another step in its efforts to spread its message, renting billboard space on Highway 45. The message it bore reflects the group’s pull-no-punches approach.
It read: “Mayor and Council. Where’s our money? What are you hiding? Who else is going to jail?”
The group paid Lamar Outdoor Advertising $1,400 for a month’s worth of billboard advertising, but Lamar took the billboard down a few days later, prompting ABC to post a message on its Facebook page claiming the billboard had “gone missing” and urging citizens to “Please be on the lookout for the billboard. Maybe, if Columbus had the number of police officers it needs and paid them what they deserve there would be less crime.”
Sorrell said Friday the decision to pull the billboard was made at Lamar’s Jackson office.
“At first, I was told that the problem was that the disclaimer about who paid for the billboard was too small,” she said. “I told them that they had designed the billboard, so then the reason I was given was because they weren’t comfortable with the part that said, ‘Who’s going to jail?’ They said it came to their attention in their Jackson office, which seems odd to me. I’ll leave it at that.”
Lamar representatives did not respond to a request for comment by press time.
The since-removed billboard’s “jail” language is a reference to former Columbus Chief Financial Officer Milton Rawle, who was indicted in August for embezzling $290,000 in city funds. Rawle is currently awaiting trial.
Sorrell said her group has brainstormed some different messaging for the billboard and hope to have it approved by Lamar next week.
“We’re looking at several ideas, maybe ‘Who’s going to be indicted next?'” Sorrell said Friday.
The billboard reflects the often harsh nature of the group’s criticism. On its webpage (abettercolumbus.net) a post about a scheduled trash pickup event — something many cities do to encourage citizen participation to help keep neighborhoods clean — was equally pointed.
“The city is no longer able to keep itself clean from garbage and has resorted to calling for volunteers to help,” the post read.
Sanders makes no apologies for the tone of the messaging.
“It may be shocking to people, but the problems behind it are even more shocking,” he said. “We’re trying to inform people about what’s going on, and it isn’t pretty.”
The ABC’s of the ABC
Sanders, 50, grew up in Columbus, graduating from Lee High School and earning his accounting degree from Mississippi State. A CPA, Sanders worked at T.E. Lott Accounting in Columbus before moving to Dallas, where he worked as an auditor for the public company Accounting Oversight Board, which oversees the audits of public companies and SEC-registered brokers and dealers.
Sorrell, a 46-year-old from Hopkinsville, Kentucky, owned her own political consulting/lobbying firm.
By 2014, both Sanders and Sorrell had retired, splitting their time between Belize and Columbus, where Sanders still owned a house on Second Avenue he had purchased in the 1990s.
Their displeasure with the city’s code enforcement department could be considered the origins of what would become A Better Columbus.
“When we moved into the house in 2014, all of the houses were owner-occupied,” Sorrell said. “Now, every house across the street is vacant and for sale and has been for some time. They’ve deteriorated and have become a place where people go to use drugs.”
The couple said they attempted to work with the city to address two properties near their home, but became disillusioned with what they say is inaccurate record keeping and unresponsiveness from the city’s code enforcement department to take action on blighted, dangerous properties.
Mayor Robert Smith, when asked to comment on the emergence of A Better Columbus, said in a prepared statement the ABC was created to air the personal grievances of Sanders and Sorrell.
“I am of the belief that the folks who are behind this campaign to tarnish our reputation are angry at the city because there is a house they want to buy for below market value and the city has not been cooperative enough to help them in their quest,” Smith said.
The mayor’s statement included a PDF attachment of a letter the mayor said Sanders sent to a local real estate agent asking for help in acquiring the property for a reasonable “as-is” price.
“Clearly, these people will go to great lengths to hurt the reputation of people who don’t cower down to their every wish and aid them in acquiring property below its true value,” the mayor’s statement said. “What they are posting on social media is false and is targeted at running down my reputation as well as the majority of the members of the city council.”
While Sorrell and Sanders don’t deny their initial concerns began with the city’s code enforcement, their criticism doesn’t end there nor should ABC be characterized as the work of a couple of disgruntled homeowners.
Recent ABC criticism has focused on the city’s budget, which they believe city officials have mischaracterized.
They say the city leaders’ assertions that the city is sound financially is a gross inaccuracy.
“I love accounting and I love auditing,” Sanders said. “But I’m a CPA, and I can’t understand the document the city council presents every month that’s supposed to show the city’s finances are sound. You have to have that in context. Out of context, it’s meaningless.”
The couple referred to a spreadsheet of the city’s budget between 2007 — the year Smith took office — and 2018 which showed a 252-percent increase in debt and 48 percent in taxes. During that period, the couple said the city’s revenue exceeded expenses in only one year (2010).
Dispatch reporting confirmed much of those claims, including that the city’s debt increased from about $9 million in 2010 to $36.4 million by March 2020. The Dispatch also reported that the city operated at deficits exceeding $800,000 in both 2017 and 2018 and amended its budget in November to show a surplus of $2.8 million in Fiscal Year 2020.
Grassroots growth
Sorrell said A Better Columbus evolved through casual conversations and reading social media posts where citizens raised complaints about city government.
“We started out as just a motley crew of people concerned about the direction the city is going in,” Sorrell said. “In all that time, I never heard one person say they felt good about what was going on. When people saw how vocal I was about it, they started asking about forming some kind of group to see what we could do about it.”
As a 501(c)(4) organization, A Better Columbus is not required to divulge its members, but Sorrell did say the group now has more than 400. The group has a current budget of $75,000.
Under Internal Revenue Service rules, a 501(c)(4) is a social welfare group that’s contributions are not tax-deductible. However, there are fewer limits to the advocacy and lobbying such groups can engage in compared to a 501(c)(3) — a nonprofit for religious, charitable or educational purposes to which contributions are tax deductible.
Apart from calling attention to the city’s budget and operations, ABC is also active in identifying candidates for next year’s municipal elections.
“We’re not recruiting candidates, but we are trying to encourage people to run for office,'” Sanders said.
Sorrell said ABC believes the mayor and entire city council should be voted out of office.
“I think the mayor and the entire city council have failed,” Sorrell said. “The council’s job is to hold the mayor in check. They haven’t done their job. When I watch the council meetings, what I see is a group of tired people going along with the status quo. What we need are energized people who want to get things done.”
In his statement, Smith said the claims made by A Better Columbus are inaccurate and unfair.
“In the past few days, people who are hiding behind corporate status have posted statements in the public domain which strongly imply that the mayor and council have stolen and/or are hiding money and/or information related to stolen money and alleging that ‘Columbus Deserves Better’ than this administration,” the statement read.
“These people even went so far as to purchase a billboard containing these allegations,” he continued. “A better question is whether the people who published such a thing have any evidence to back up their implications. These people formed a company called ‘A Better Columbus,’ so I ask how does posting these false insinuations make Columbus better?”
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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