Mayor Kautz Says Recent Allegations are 'Blatantly False'

According to Mayor Kelly Kautz, allegations by members of the City Council that she "retained a law firm to represent [her] personally in a lawsuit and then in December without authority paid the law firm with city funds" are blatantly false. 

During the May 13 City Council meeting, council member Bobby Howard claimed that a check was written to Cruser and Mitchell well before they were appointed as city attorneys to represent Kautz in the case between the city and Marilyn Swinney. (Swinney claimed that her First Amendment rights were violated when the mayor would not let her speak during the public comment portion of a council meeting. The city ended up paying Swinney $15,000, which she donated, to settle the case.)

"Under cover of darkness," Howard said in the meeting, "a check was written to Cruser and Mitchell for their services. Our city manager never saw it, but a check was written."

Kautz, however, said in an email to Snellville Patch that everything she did was known and legal. She brought Cruser and Mitchell into the case to replace City Attorney Tony Powell, who had a conflict of interest in the case due to being an "independent witness," according to Kautz.

Kautz forwarded to Patch an Oct. 19, 2012, email from City Manager Butch Sanders stating that the judge would "likely need to call on [Powell] as a supporting witness in the case."

(Update May 16, 5 p.m.: Patch was informed after this article was written that it was later determined there was no conflict of interest.)

"Per the City Charter the Mayor has sole authority to appoint assistant City Attorneys," Kautz said in an email to Snellville Patch. She added that Cruser and Mitchell were hired to represent the city, not just Kautz.

In fact, Kautz noted, she received an email from Mayor Pro Tem Tom Witts on Oct. 30, 2012, in which he advised: "the letter from [Cruser and Mitchell] states that it is for your representation; please have her correct it to reflect that she is representing the City as your first email implied." 

(Update May 15, 2:15 p.m.: Tom Witts told Patch that he never received a response from the mayor after that email.)

The check that was issued to Cruser & Mitchell was a computer-generated check, according to Kautz, to which she did not have access. The signatures were stamps that, once she approved an invoice, were automatically posted. 

"This check was not written by me alone without authority, but to the contrary followed the proper procedures of the City," Kautz stated in an email to Patch. "It was for city work, not individual work, that all members of Council may not be happy about but they were aware of the contract and the legal services being performed."

But according to council member Dave Emanuel, the issue is not who wrote the check and when. Emanuel told Patch on May 15 that neither he nor any of the council received a copy of the invoice. 

"It's standard procedure for Karen McCay (city executive assistant) to send out Tony Powell's bill to council members," he said in an interview with Patch. "Why wasn't this done with Cruser and Mitchell's? As far as I know, there has never been a situation where we don't see the bill. If there's nothing being hidden, why are the invoices not sent to the council?"

Kautz confirmed Wednesday afternoon that the invoices were not sent to the council, but disagreed whether that was standard procedure. 

"Over the years, some have been sent and some have not been sent," she told Snellville Patch in an email, "and to be honest I do not know how that decision is made. I do not, as standard procedure, send the invoices to Council personally (unless I am specifically asked). I send them to staff, which is what I did with this invoice. All I can say is that I never asked or told or implied to any staff person not to share the invoices."

Council member Bobby Howard agreed with Emanuel, though. He told Patch Wednesday afternoon that the council receives an attachment with the attorney's invoices from the city every month. He personally received them regularly from the time he was first elected in November 2011. However, he did say that he failed to receive invoices in August, September, October and November of 2012, and had to request copies. He provided emails to Patch that confirmed Karen McKay had, excluding those dates, sent invoices from various city attorneys every month from November 2011 up through May of this year. 

"Those missing months are anomalies and don't prove anything," he said. The invoices didn't come through like clockwork, he said, but they did regularly receive them.

Mayor Kautz disagreed. Referring to the invoices that were not provided to council from August through November, she said: "These bills had been paid but Council had not received a copy of them. ...This goes directly to the point that emailing the bills to all of Council is not standard procedure."

City Manager Sanders told Patch in an email Wednesday evening that "we always sent out copies of the bills just as an FYI, but never did so looking for approval."