CALEDONIA – On the afternoon of Oct. 14, Caledonia Alderman Bill Darnell was in the mood to celebrate.
As co-chairman of the eighth annual Caledonia Day committee, he and some 30 residents — including three other aldermen — had spent hours planning every detail, attending numerous meetings to make sure everything went off without a hitch.
Two hours before the festival’s kickoff, Darnell received a letter from the Mississippi Ethics Commission: Caledonia Mayor George Gerhart had filed an ethics complaint against him, stating that as chairman of the festival committee, he had violated the state’s open meetings laws by failing to post public notice of the committee’s planning sessions, which were attended by four of the town’s five aldermen.
Tuesday night, following the town’s regular monthly meeting, Darnell said he has filed for a Nov. 21 extension to respond to the complaint.
Last week, Gerhart provided a copy of the complaint to The Commercial Dispatch.
In the complaint, which is dated Sept. 1, Gerhart states that he appointed Darnell as chairman of the committee, and Darnell asked the other aldermen to assist.
Gerhart provided minutes from the June 6 meeting which list Darnell, along with Aldermen Mike Savage and Stephen Honnoll and Alderwoman Brenda Willis, in attendance. According to the minutes, 12 other people attended the meeting.
“The town attorney did make a statement to the Board of Aldermen about the open meeting act,” Gerhart writes in the complaint. “The mayor has not attended any of the committee meetings because of the possibility of this violation.”
However, in an interview with The Dispatch last week, Gerhart said he did attend the June 6 meeting, but when he saw that a quorum of aldermen was present, he immediately left.
“This committee decides how much money will be spent on all activities for this celebration (bands, fireworks display, entry fees and others),” Gerhart states in the complaint. “All of these meetings were not made known to the press or the public as far as the time and the meeting place. I understand that when a quorum of a board is present at meetings such as these, these board members are in violation of the open meetings act.”
Town Attorney Jeff Smith would not confirm or deny knowledge of the complaint Wednesday morning, but he characterized the relationship between Gerhart and the aldermen as “a rocky road.”
“It would be untrue to say they fight all the time, but … the majority of the board and the mayor do not get along very well,” Smith said.
He added that a lot of people misinterpret ethics laws, believing they prevent three or more members of a governmental body from convening under one roof, but if it’s a public function outside the realm of their official position, and “there’s no action attempted or strategy for the town taken, there’s nothing wrong with it.”
According to the state’s ethics laws, if Darnell is found in violation of the open meetings act, he could face a fine of $500 for a first offense and $1,000 for subsequent offenses. Previously, the fine was levied against the entire governmental body, but it was changed to be levied against individuals earlier in the year.
Gerhart said he filed the complaint solely against Darnell and not against the other three aldermen because Darnell was chairman of the committee, and that was the advice he received when he called the Ethics Commission to inquire about proper filing procedure.
Last month, Gerhart admitted that he and the Board of Aldermen failed to post public notice of a Sept. 13 meeting in which they approved the town’s 2011-2012 budget, which Leonard Van Slyke, hotline attorney for the Mississippi Center for Freedom of Information, called “a pretty clear violation” of the open meetings law.
Gerhart said last week that he did not file a complaint about that meeting because he “forgot,” and he has no plans to do so.
But he feels justified in his complaint against Darnell, saying he believes the aldermen’s participation in the Caledonia Day meetings “violated the trust of the people” and that his complaint will make every board in the state “take a second look at the way they’re doing things.”
For Darnell, it’s just another twist in what has been a sometimes fractious relationship between Gerhart and the board.
Over the years, Gerhart has filed numerous complaints against various aldermen and other governmental agencies, has sought the state attorney general’s opinion in several cases and has even resorted to name-calling, Darnell said.
The aldermens’ attendance at the Caledonia Day meetings was not borne of an intent to violate state ethics laws, Darnell said. Instead, it was simply a matter of Caledonia being a small town (population just over 1,000) and accepting the willing hands of any and all volunteers.
He said at the first planning session, a paper was distributed with all the meeting dates listed, but Gerhart “just didn’t want to come.”
“We weren’t trying to break the law,” Darnell said. “It was just a bunch of volunteers, and three of them happened to be aldermen.”
From Gerhart’s standpoint, he sees nothing divisive about filing complaints against board members. If anything, he sees it as a way to get the board “to do what’s right.”
“It’s just petty politics in a small town,” Gerhart said. “It’s doing what I thought was right. If somebody didn’t straighten it up now, they’d (keep) doing the same thing.”
He said some people still “hold a grudge” against him for his narrow, five-vote win over former mayor Bill Lawrence in the 2009 mayoral election, and he feels like any issue he raises is “just like raising a flag in front of them …”
By law, once an ethics complaint is filed, the recipient has 30 days to respond. After receiving the response, or if no response is filed, the Ethics Commission will then dismiss the matter, voluntarily settle with the respondent or investigate further.
If an investigation ensues and a violation is suspected, the Commission will then set a hearing and may impose penalties of up to $10,000 and possible removal from office depending on the nature of the violation. Decisions rendered may be appealed in the Hinds County Circuit Court.
As for Darnell, who has been an alderman for more than three decades, following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, the matter has cast a pall on an event that was otherwise “a tremendous success.”
An estimated 5,000 to 6,000 people attended Caledonia Day, which he characterized as “the biggest blast we ever had,” saying it garnered compliments from many attendees.
He said receiving news of Gerhart’s complaint against him just hours before the festival was “bad timing.”
“We felt good about the whole thing we had planned, and this just upset everybody,” Darnell said.
He intends to file a response to the Ethics Commission by the Nov. 21 extended deadline.
“This town’s not really bad,” he said. “We don’t need to have bad things in the paper and on television. This is my little town, and it’s where I was raised. I’d like for (this) to be over with.”
Jackie Savage, an organizer for Caledonia Day and the wife of Alderman Mike Savage, said Darnell and the others did not attend the meetings with malicious intent, they simply wanted to help. She called Darnell a “fine Christian man,” saying “his heart is in the right place.”
“We’re a small town here, and it takes all of us to make things happen,” Savage said Wednesday morning. “… We have to look out for the best interests of everybody, not just one or two people. I don’t think George gets that.”
She said as she works with Gerhart and others to plan the Christmas parade, she hopes they can move forward.
“This is a small town; we’re family,” Savage said. “… It’s time to sit down at the table, work it out, and move on. We can’t keep going like we’re going. I see it in the (Lowndes County) Board of Supervisors — how spiteful it’s become, in the town of Columbus, with the issues they have. I don’t want to see our town become that way.”
Carmen K. Sisson is the former news editor at The Dispatch.
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