The city-ordered investigation into whether Statesboro City Council members violated the Georgia Open Meetings Act during the tenure of former City Manager Frank Parker has cost roughly $27,500.

By a unanimous vote Tuesday evening, the council authorized spending “up to $25,000 with the Law Firm of Tom Peterson for professional services” associated with the investigation. But that did not include two other bills, totaling $2,935, from Bryant Reporting Inc., a Vidalia-based court-reporting service.

Tom A. Peterson IV, a Vidalia attorney, was chosen to conduct the investigation in part because of his lack of previous dealings with the city of Statesboro. He interviewed about 40 people, many of them current or former city employees, during the investigation, which began July 7 and resulted in a report made public Dec. 4.

Interim City Manager Robert Cheshire reported to the mayor and council Tuesday that Peterson’s bills came to $24,541. Because legal reports sometimes result in follow-up calls, Cheshire asked permission to pay up to $25,000.

“In case there’s one last question that we might have of Mr. Peterson, that would give me a little bit of flexibility to be able to approve that without having to come back to council,” Cheshire said.

Mayor Jan Moore previously had reported efforts to hold the costs to $20,000. Under the city’s purchasing policy, that is the maximum expenditure the city manager can authorize without City Council approval.

So, the council’s vote, in effect, authorized the additional $5,000.

But the transcription bill was not included in the $25,000 authorization. When the Statesboro Herald asked about this, Cheshire supplied the two invoices from Bryant Reporting, which he said did not come under the spending limit because they were a separate item.

“It was two separate vendors, and I had the authorization to approve those as we went along,” Cheshire said.

So, the $24,541 already spent with Peterson and the $2,935 to Bryant add up to $27,476, and Cheshire could still spend up to $459 more with Peterson without additional approval by the council.

Transcription costs

With an Oct. 17 transcript, Bryant Reporting charged $2,435, or $2.50 per page, for preparing the 974-page typed transcript. This reflects almost 24 hours of audio recordings.

The second bill, dated Nov. 21, was for $500 for creating a digital copy of the transcript.

“So that we didn’t have to copy all of those transcribed sheets, which were nearly a thousand pages, we decided to get them in a digital format so that we could forward those as needed,” Cheshire said Friday.

Indeed, the digital transcript was the version provided to the Statesboro Herald, which requested and received free access to the transcript. But the newspaper obtained a printed copy of the 48-page report plus a cover sheet, paying the usual copying fee of 10 cents per page.

Peterson obtained three price quotes for transcription services, and Bryant Reporting offered the lowest rate, Cheshire noted.

In his investigation report, Peterson concluded, “It does not appear that any member of the Council or Parker committed any misdemeanor violation pursuant to (the Open Meetings Act).”

Therefore, he did not recommend referring the matter to the state attorney general for further investigation.

Reviewing interviews about gatherings that City Council members held with Parker while attending Georgia Municipal Association meetings in Atlanta from 2010 to 2013, Peterson commented that conflicting versions of one discussion in a hotel room in 2011 raised “questions of fact that appear to merit attention.” But some alleged participants recalled no such gathering.

Peterson also opined that these gatherings, and an April 2014 private luncheon attended by Parker and council members Will Britt, Travis Chance and John Riggs at the invitation of private engineers marking the conclusion of a city-funded project, probably were covered by exemptions to the Open Meetings Act. One exemption allows a majority of council members to attend social events “so long as no official business, policy, or public matter is formulated, presented, discussed or voted upon by a quorum.” 

A 3-2 majority of the City Council members fired Parker June 24 on the grounds that he either took part in Open Meetings Act violations or impugned the council’s character with a false accusation. In a June 19 meeting with city department heads, Parker stated that he had sometimes met with three or more council members to discuss city business.

Parker filed a wrongful firing lawsuit against the city Sept. 3. Among other things, his complaint alleges that he acted as a whistleblower in reporting Open Meetings Act violations and asserts that he could not have violated the act himself because it applies only to the elected council members.

Also Tuesday, after an open session that lasted from 5:15 p.m. until roughly 6 p.m., City Council met in closed session for about 90 minutes to discuss “potential litigation.”

Al Hackle may be reached at (912) 489-9454.