Hart BOC Calls on Rep Powell and GBI to Investigate Missing Airport Records

Hart County Commissioners have voted to ask State Representative Alan Powell and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to look into missing documents from the Franklin-Hart County Airport.

At their meeting this week, Commission Chair Marshal Sayer wasted no time in calling for a motion.

“There’s been some talk in the news about missing records. They’re getting bills and they don’t know what they owe because of missing records,” Sayer told the Board. “This has been going on for a year. So, they’ve asked us to contact Rep. Alan Powell to get involved with the GBI to get some movement on retrieving these records, whether if they’re stolen or if they’re destroyed. So, do I have a motion to request Alan Powell and the GBI to get involved?”

Commissioner Jeff Brown then motioned to send an email to Rep. Powell that night.

“All that’s needed, I understand, is an email. Is there any way we can send Alan an email tonight giving him the go-ahead?” he asked.

“Sure,” said Sayer.

” Then, I make a motion that we get this ball rolling,” Brown said.

Brown’s motion was seconded by Commissioner Frankie Teasley and it passed unanimously.

In June, Airport Authority Board Chair Eddie Addison came before the Franklin County Board of Commissioners to request an investigation as to where eight boxes of airport records had gone.

At the time, Addison told the Board they were receiving invoices for work done on the airport runway from prior years that they had no records for.

Addison said between 2017 and 2018 when the County was still handling the Airport’s finances, Croy Engineering did work for phase two of the parallel runway and lighting project. He said recently the Airport Authority received an invoice from Croy for $19,000 claiming they were never paid.

Addison told the Board, that they don’t have any of the Airport records from that time to determine whether Croy was paid or not.

“We thought we were totally finished with phase 2….but they (Croy) hit us with this invoice, and because we don’t have those records, we don’t know if the Airport Authority at that time actually voted for them to go ahead and complete that or start that. So, we really need those records,” he said. “When we first started, we were doing shared services. The County was buying $3,500 for shared services and you were taking care of our accounting. Well as we went through and discovered things, the County elected not to go forward with that and we hired Brian Messner’s firm to take on that service but we weren’t allowed to have our records back. The previous administration felt that the Airport Authority fell under the County’s purview but we’re sovereign in both counties. And we really need those records so we can determine if, in fact, we owe them this money.”

At that June 30 meeting, former County Commission Chair Jason Macomson asked if bank records from that time would shed light on whether the invoice to Croy was paid, but Addison said that because they don’t have the records from that time, they don’t know what bank was used.

Macomson said then that the County had no knowledge of missing records and a search for the files within the County Commission offices turned up nothing.

At Tuesday’s meeting, Hart County Commissioner Joey Dorsey emphasized the missing airport authority records are Franklin County records and were not being kept by Hart County.

According to the Airport Authority, the missing records had been stored in the Franklin County Clerk’s office but disappeared.

A subsequent search for the records in the County Commission building turned up nothing.