Friday, July 13, 2012
Augusta, GA
By Bradley Owens
I am pretty sure everyone has heard about the shootings that took place last Friday night on Broad Street so I won’t bore you with a recap. I will just say that I was downtown that night having attended the earlier First Friday event and was shocked to find out after the fact that there is no real group organizing and controlling the event of the law enforcement after to manage the left over crowds who stay late into the night.
It seems that the DDA, of which I was once a member, has again dropped the ball on supporting the downtown small businesses that are the backbone of the revitalization. This isn’t the first time that has happened, in fact I challenge anyone to show me where we have gotten a return on the over $3,000,000.00 in tax money that has been given to the DDA over the past 15 years. Look hard, you will find lots of studies (trolleys anyone? parking meters anyone?), loans to insiders (Mr. Millionaire money bags do-gooder Boardman got $370,000.00 for four years tax and fee free to purchase two properties in Olde Town), and grants to cronies and clients of DDA Board members.
On the final note there, the grants to cronies, I would like to talk about a one in particular that led to me not being reappointed to the DDA.
When WJBF News had a report just the other day regarding how the downtown business owners were frustrated with the DDA and the CADI program for which they were paying $360,000 a year, there was one supposed "downtown businessperson" they interviewed who defended the program and and the DDA: Paul King. Hmmm. This is not surprising since Paul King has managed to get quite a bit of our tax dollars steered towards his pet projects and those of his cronies and business associates.
So Let’s talk about Paul “Sidewalk” King and his sweetheart deal he got a client of his in the form of a grant from the DDA when he was Chairman of that board.
The story starts when I was appointed to the DDA where there were many ongoing wastes of public funds going on and a distinct lack of action on most items we needed downtown so I vowed to make it my business to try to correct that. At one of the monthly meetings there was a vote to approve more money to go towards a project at the old District Attorney’s office at 551Greene Street called the DeLaigle House. The vote was concerning a sidewalk grant for $50,000.00 to repair and replace what was termed a “dangerous” stretch of sidewalk in front of the property. I was wondering what part they were talking about because I walked past there several times a week and never saw anything “dangerous” about it at all. IN fact, I only remembered a beautiful Victorian Era herringbone brick sidewalk being in front of “Danny’s” office.
After the meeting I walked down to see what they were talking about, just two blocks from where the meeting took place on 8th Street, and I was shocked at what I saw. There was a big “YOUR 1cent SALES TAX AT WORK” county sign and it was flanked by two smaller signs, one was for “REX Properties” and the other was for “REX Contracting” both owned by none other than DDA Board Chairman Paul King. I snapped a picture (I have lost that picture unfortunately) and proceeded to try to figure out why the DDA Chairman was directing such a large grant to a property he had an obvious financial interest in. I despise unethical or corrupt behavior.
I hopped onto the computer and did some deed research and was shocked to find out that the house was not owned by the DeLaigle family or the county. I found out it was owned by Jan Hodges and had been sold to her by a company listed as “KHK” which Paul King was a partner in.
I decided to do some research to find out how the DeLaigle House ended up in Paul King’s hands and why was the DDA unethically directing grants to a property he had an interest in. As far as I knew, the DeLAigle House had been returned to the DeLAigle family, in fact, I knew there was a commission meeting where the vote took place to sell the property back to the family for the land value only.
Historic Augusta rep Erick Montgomery got up in front of the commission and said they intended on helping get the family some sort of support in restoring the house. All involved just brimmed with enthusiasm and even Mayor Bob Young voiced his direct support of the move to reduce the cost of the property so that it could be returned to the family. How could it have ended up being sold without an auction for such a paltry sum?
It seems that after the commission approved selling the DeLaigle House at a much reduced rate (for the land value only minus the improvements on it) to the DeLaigle family, they were not able to get the money put together to buy it. In stepped “KHK” and purchased it at the much reduced rate without an auction. They only owned it four months before they sold it at a huge profit to Jan Hodges’ Olde South Investment Group LLC for $220,000.00. Paul King justified the huge difference between what the county sold it to him for and what they sold it for by claiming they spent over $100,000.00 on it during that time. That was funny because I pulled all the construction permits issued by the county during the time King owned it and there were only two. Those permits were to repair the rotten wood on the porches only. Is it possible to do $100,000.00 worth of work without pulling one single permit for that work or did they spend 100grand on just the steps? That was the justification for the much inflated immediate resale when they had bought the property at a bargain basement rate on an inside no-bid deal.
That only served to peak my interest in Paul King’s business dealings and his tenure on the DDA. Was he a genuine redeveloper helping downtown with public service or an unethical opportunist abusing his appointed position for personal gain? The facts speak for themselves.
After uncovering the fact that King had bought the DeLAigle House, sold it to the current owner, had been contracted to not only refurbish the property but also rent and manage it after it was done I felt it was an obvious conflict of interests for him to push this grant for the sidewalk. And push he did. The records at the DDA show that not only did Paul King make the original motion to approve the grant, he voted on it too. That means he directed $50,000.00 to a project he had a substantial financial interest in which is in direct violation of the Augusta Richmond County Code of Ethics.
I raised this fact to other board members, one of which is Tax Commissioner James “What $25,000.00 you talkin bout?” Kendricks, who said they felt it was OK for folks to help their clients out by dipping into tax monies like that. Once I made it known that I intended on filing an ethics complaint unless the grant was rescinded I was called by fellow board member and Augusta Chronicle “Rising Star” Julian Williams III to try to talk me out of it. He said, “Can’t we just find something you are interested in doing with some of the other SPLOST monies we have?”
Not exactly an overt bribe attempt but he was trying to get me to not file my complaint against the unethical Paul King and offered to help support something I wanted to spend our tax dollars on if I would just forget all about Paul’s $50,000.00. Julian also directed one of those handy dandy Georgia Cities Foundation loans to the new owners of the Whites Building (Paul King ended up with that one too I might add) when he and his partners were selling it. At least Roberts didn’t vote on it, but it was only because I promised to try to expose it if he did, I bet.
Well, I filed my complaint and it was noted by quite a few folks but I was out maneuvered by the slick attorney for the DDA named Byrd Warlick. Byrd felt his job was to figure out how all the unethical characters on the DDA could funnel tax money to their clients and pet projects with as little hassle from a legal standpoint as possible. Byrd once characterized me as “an asshole,” a description I wear as a badge of honor coming from a guy like him, because I asked to see copies of all the agreements concerning another sweetheart deal the DDA gave Mr. Boardman. Boardman got a $370,000.00 four year loan with no fees or interest so he could buy the Confederate Widows Home and Houghton School, guess who was involved in that one too? Yep, Ol’ Paul but I will save that one for another article.
To finish up the Paul “Sidewalk” King story I will just state that it was a solid and very clear violation of the ethics guidelines set down by the county and had it been heard by the commission Paul would have been removed for the DDA. Byrd used the fact that the DDA is created by a Georgia State law and so hence answers to the State Board of Ethics on matters. He was right but that should not have stopped the commission from doing the right thing and bouncing King off the DDA.
The DDA held a sham revote on the sidewalk deal with Paul King abstaining but it really didn’t matter, Paul had the votes on the DDA thanks to the trust fund baby, the wannabe mayor and dim wits like James Carter who just loves being a “Big” man on a board.
One would think that after all that the commission would at least look into it? Nope. Instead I was voted off by the commission led by none other than “Mr. Ethics” himself, Dandy Don “Good Ol’ Boy” Grantham. He convinced Commissioner Jimmy Smith (not that there was much convincing going on, Jimmy was Don’s second vote) that I was an obstacle to progress and so they replaced me instead of Paul. The one lesson I learned in all that was to never expect people to do the right thing and to never underestimate the power of the CABAL in protecting their water boy Paul King.
There is much more on this and all the other rotten deals the DDA has been at the center of but I think that is enough for one installment. I would just leave you with a few questions that have been swirling in my head since the First Friday attacks and the CADI scam that have come to light the past few weeks; Does Paul King have any direct connections or contracts related to the CADI program? Does he benefit from the CADI? Why didn’t the DDA send the First Friday money to the Greater Augusta Arts Council to pay for additional security of First Friday? Why is Paul King on TV defending both CADI and the DDA?
There are a lot of unanswered questions about Paul King and his group of cronies that always seem to slither out of having to answer for their activities, I wonder when, if ever, anyone will ask them? In any case, when it comes to getting sweet heart deals from the DDA, it's good to be "The King".***
B.O.
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