Fresh Loaf

Megan Matteucci of the AJC reports that Clayton County Sheriff Victor Hill, everyone’s favorite lawman, has put his four-bedroom ranch home on the market for nearly $300,000. He bought the joint for $240,000 three years ago. Perhaps the real estate market is in shambles everywhere but Riverdale. Who knew?

Hill may have good reason to leave the embattled county. The controversial sheriff had a knack for attracting lawsuits as well as getting the attention of the media. The New York Times wrote about his memorable first day in office that included snipers dispatched to rooftops to ensure no shenanigans took place when he unceremoniously fired 23 employees. He lost any chance he had to continue as sheriff on Aug. 5, when Kem Kimbrough bested him in the county’s Democratic runoff for the office.

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BULLDOGGED: Did an Athens site for a federal research facility get left off the finalist list because of politics? It’s suspicious that a site in Mississippi that scored lower than Athens on the Department of Homeland Security’s checklist made the pool of finalists, and Athens didn’t.

ADULT SWIM: Squirty the loggerhead sea turtle makes its first foray into the ocean, and 1,000 people gather at Tybee Island to watch.

STEEP HILL: Clayton County is so exasperated with Sheriff Victor Hill that it has filed papers in federal court asking that a special monitor be appointed to run the sheriff’s department until Hill’s term expires.

SKIPPING A BEAT: The Braves are back in Atlanta for the first time since Skip Caray died. And Pete Van Wieren dreads a press box that doesn’t have Skip holding court.

JUDGMENT DAY: The former judge in the Brian Nichols trial joins the chorus of those who say the reason the trial is so costly is because Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard has turned a simple, one-week trial into a tangled mess of hundreds of witnesses and a dozen crime scenes.

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We haven’t seen turnout figures yet for yesterday’s runoffs, but the results in most cases seemed to confirm predictions.

The Democratic Senate nominee, of course, is former Atlanta lawmaker Jim Martin, having trounced DeKalb CEO Vernon Jones 60% to 40%.

Some folks might look at this result as the triumph of funding, since Martin entered the race late, spent little time stumping across the state and instead focused his efforts on collecting enough money from PACs and other sources to wage a TV campaign. That’s all true, but Martin did have high name recognition and none of the negatives that Jones brought to the table.

Martin’s victory opens the door for an aggressive, high-dollar assault on GOP incumbent Saxby Chambliss this fall. It all but ensures that top Senate Democrats will attempt to turn Georgia into one of their key battleground states.

(more…)

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ABRIDGE OVER STUBBLED WATER: Georgia Agriculture Commissioner Tommy Irvin is instituting Razor-Free Fridays, asking male ag employees to conserve water by skipping shaving.

BAT SIGNALS: A graduate student’s research uncovers an unknown population of about 900 Rafinesque’s big-eared bats living in South Georgia bottomland forests; scientists had previously spotted just 17 of the bats in all of South Georgia and thought they lived only near the coast.

ECO LOCATION: The Golden Isles are popular with ecotourists.

CLAYTON: Embattled Clayton Sheriff Victor Hill has responded to a former employee’s election-season lawsuit by filing a flurry of 30 defenses. Also, the county school board will outline at a meeting Friday why SACS shouldn’t revoke the school system’s accreditation. Read more about Clayton’s panoply of problems in this week’s CL cover story by Thomas Wheatley.

A FEATHER IN THEIR CRAP: Stephen Colbert called Canton, Ga., “crappy” on his show Monday night, leading defensive city leaders to invite him to visit, hoping to salvage some positive publicity.

T-STORMS AND ASTHMA: Are apparently correlated, according to a joint study by UGA and Emory researchers.

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The Clayton Daily News reports a Clayton County Sheriff’s Department employee has filed a discrimination lawsuit against Sheriff Victor Hill and the state. The plaintiff, Pamela Blasingim, alleges Hill lavishly spent vending machine and forfeited drug funds on various items, including office artwork that sounds so wild it’ll blow your mind. Click here to read the lawsuit.

In the lawsuit, Pamela Blasingim, the plaintiff, alleges Hill demoted her because she had a disagreement with a friend of Hill’s who cut inmates’ hair and because she was white. Blasingim says in the lawsuit Hill wanted an all-black department.

Here are some choice snippets from the Clayton Daily News‘ report on the lawsuit:

The lawsuit also outlines allegations of egregious misuses of money in the sheriff’s office. According to the accountant, three days into Hill’s term, he called her into his office and asked about expense accounts and discretionary funds. Blasingim expected to be asked to brief the newly elected sheriff about purchasing policies, but Hill, she said, seemed to only be interested in finding out where there was money he could use as he saw fit.

Blasingim reportedly said “the only thing even close” to a discretionary fund would be the “employee fund,” which was money from the vending machines in the jail and was, under previous sheriffs, used for retirement parties or a Christmas dinner.

At the time Hill took office, there was about $8,339.47 in the vending machine account, according to the lawsuit.

According to Blasingim, Hill bought seven of his own vending machines, placing them in the jail, collecting “thousands of dollars weekly,” spending it on “whatever Sheriff Hill wanted to spend it on.” What it was spent on is, apparently, unaccounted for, but Blasingim alleges Hill spent the money faster than he made it.

…

Some of the money was spent on art for Hill’s office, according to the lawsuit. Blasingim implies the artwork — African-American cowboys and “a lynch mob scene portraying Caucasian people with shotguns” — had racist overtones that matched the sheriff’s alleged employment policies.

Hill continued to spend money, even when there wasn’t any left in the drug forfeiture fund or the vending machine fund, she alleged. Hill would, allegedly, make purchases or create debts and then tell Blasingim to sort out the finances.

(Photo from Re-elect Victor Hill)

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