Garner resigns from AFCRA board, Eaves requests investigation into controversial Bottoms’ hiring

• Courtesy Fulton County
• Fulton County Commissioner Joan Garner

A board member who voted to hire Atlanta City Councilwoman Keisha Lance Bottoms as the next head of an authority that oversees Turner Field, Philips Arena, and other facilities has stepped down from her appointment.

Fulton County Commissioner Joan Garner this week resigned from her Atlanta-Fulton County Recreation Authority board seat. Fulton Chairman John Eaves tells CL that he asked Garner, who most recently served as the board’s vice chairperson, to resign her AFCRA seat because he wanted to see increased representation for North Fulton on the authority’s board.

“Going forward, especially as we get into the conversation about Turner Field, I think we need to have a deliberate presence on the board that represents North Fulton,” Eaves said. “These are taxpayer dollars that have come from all parts of the county. In the interest of Fulton County, north and south, we need North Fulton representation.”

Garner’s departure comes on the heels of a controversial special-called AFCRA board meeting on April 14. At the meeting, five AFCRA board members in attendance unanimously voted to hire Bottoms, one of Mayor Kasim Reed’s closest allies and a potential candidate for either mayor of Council president in 2017, to run the body that looks over the sports complexes, along with Zoo Atlanta and other facilities. The mayor controls six board appointees, while the Fulton County Commission, which Eaves heads, appoints the remaining three spots.

Eaves said he pushed for the board shakeup despite Garner’s desire to serve out the remainder of her term through the end of the year. But he says Garner’s resignation had nothing to do with Bottoms’ hiring despite the fact the two incidents happened within roughly one week of each other. When asked about the commissioner’s resignation, Fulton spokeswoman Jolene Freeman confirmed Garner no longer served on the board but declined to elaborate on why she stepped down.

Now Eaves is continuing to blast AFCRA for the lack of transparency and hiring process with Bottoms. He says he’s still waiting for an explanation about why they removed outgoing Executive Director Violet Ricks from her position, whether her job performance justified such a change, and why there were no advertisements for hiring her replacement. He also questions whether Bottoms is qualified for the gig that would pay her a $135,000 annual full-time salary on top of her $60,300 part-time annual Council salary.

“It stinks,” Eaves says of the hiring. “The process stunk. It was not transparent. There was no process. There was no selection. To me, there’s no indication that Keisha Lance Bottoms is the most qualified person for that job. City Hall is fine about saying that she’s served honorably as a councilperson and a lawyer. That is not sufficient.”

In an interview last week, Bottoms told CL her past experience as a lawyer and magistrate judge qualified her for the gig. She disagreed that the hiring was politically motivated or that her double duty would create a conflict of interest. In her Council role, Bottoms pledged to recuse herself of all votes related to AFCRA or its properties. She also received a vote of confidence from Atlanta Ethics Officer Nina Hickson, who found that “no per se conflict of interest” existed, but that a further analysis into potential “appearances of impropriety” might be needed from AFCRA.

Eaves has now asked the county attorney to investigate the potential ethics violations with the hiring process and whether Bottoms can hold both positions without creating a conflict of interest. If the investigation turns up anything, Eaves will “begin to push toward some sort of action” from the county. He would also like to see the hiring process for future AFCRA executive directors reformed.

Newly-elected Fulton Commissioner Bob Ellis, who represents Milton, Alpharetta, and Roswell, will be recommended to be her replacement, Eaves says. Ellis tells CL that he’s interested in the AFCRA appointment because of its importance to the entire metro area. Regarding the recent hiring, he says he has never met Bottoms and doesn’t know much about her qualifications. But he likely would have voted against her hiring given the questions surrounding the process.

“On the outside looking in, the appearances of Bottoms playing a dual role, serving as a councilperson and that AFCRA role with fairly substantive pay, probably doesn’t look good from an appearances standpoint,” Ellis says. “Had I had a vote on it, I probably would’ve vote no based on her playing dual roles.”