County supervisors and Columbus City Council members will meet Friday to confront a months-long dispute over $455,000 in unpaid jail and emergency services bills the city has declined to pay.
Whether those discussions will be open to the public remains an open question.
When questions of whether the city would advocate for the meeting to be held in executive session arose during a board of supervisors meeting Monday at Lowndes County Courthouse, Board Attorney Tim Hudson advocated for a public discussion.
“I’m very cautious of closing information (off from) the public,” Hudson told the board. “I don’t know how this could adversely impact us for the citizens to know what’s going on.”
While City Attorney Jeff Turnage said the city has not discussed an executive session for the meeting, he told The Dispatch it may be prudent for the boards to discuss the matter behind closed doors, given the “prospective litigation posture” of the matter. Potential litigation is a legal justification for executive session, and both the city and county have suggested petitioning a court to settle the dispute.
“I guess it’s for the governing boards to determine if the public discussion would hamper either side’s bargaining position, but I could easily see where such a finding could be reached that it might hamper our position if we have this discussion in public,” Turnage said, noting the decision is ultimately up to the two boards.
In April, the county sent a letter to the city demanding $263,000 to help cover costs of housing city inmates in Lowndes County Adult Detention Center as well as $192,000 to cover the city’s share in E-911 costs for Fiscal Year 2025.
The city had been paying a $45 daily rate per inmate under a 2022 interlocal agreement until March 2025 when the attorney general’s office issued opinions to other municipalities that state law caps the daily rate at $25 daily per inmate for the first 30 days and $32.71 each day thereafter.
Following those opinions, the city stopped paying the invoices altogether on the grounds that the city had “overpaid” by roughly $165,000 over the 2 1/2 years it paid a higher rate than statute allows.
The E-911 issue centers on whether the city is obligated to pay its half of a “handshake deal” with the county for Fiscal Year 2025 when the two sides do not have a written agreement. Further, the legislature has prohibited new interlocal agreements for E-911 until 2027, pending a true measure of how much an increased telecommunications surcharge will cover those costs.
The city in May sent a letter to the county outlining its position and $172,725.89 in obligations the county has failed to pay on interlocal agreements, specifically for animal control, recycling bins, mowing rights-of-way along Highway 45 and operating the Columbus-Lowndes Airport.
Trip Hairston, president for the board of supervisors, told The Dispatch the county has not yet made those payments.
“We’re holding all payments because the fact that there’s going to be a shortfall when it comes to what was budgeted and what has been received, which is $0 for the city prisoners in the county jail,” he said. “… We’d like to know what the outcome is before we release any payments.”
As for whether the boards will hold an executive session Friday, Hairston said he is open to hearing the argument but is skeptical on whether it’s warranted.
“I think there’s some legitimacy for going into executive session for a legal matter, but I really am interested to hear what that argument would be since both of the (parties) sitting there, they represent two different sides of an opinion,” he said. “I can’t imagine one would be trying to hold from the other any information that would be detrimental to their position because they’re both sitting there anyways.”
Alternatively, Turnage said an open session could hamper productivity in the meeting, set for 9 a.m. Friday at City Hall.
“If I had something to say about what I thought might be something that I would concede a weakness about, I might not want to say that in an open meeting,” Turnage said. “And if I wanted to say, propose what we might do to reach a compromise and I didn’t know if I had the support of other members of the council or the members of the board of supervisors … I might not want to say it because it might give the impression that the entirety of the board’s position is different than my own.”
Either way, Hairston hopes Friday’s meeting moves the matter forward, even if that means jointly petitioning the circuit court for guidance.
“Hopefully, it’s productive, even if it comes down to the point where the city council and board of supervisors disagree on whether or not it can come to some resolution outside of the courtroom,” he said. “… I certainly intend to petition the court in an agreeable manner to where we both agree that we need a court to make that decision and not get into a whole lot of rock throwing at one another.”
McRae is a general assignment and education reporter for The Dispatch.
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