Former Athens-Clarke County Internal Auditor Stephanie Johnson has settled her lawsuit against the local government after fighting in federal court for over two years. In March, she released her legal claims against the county in exchange for $44,653, the exact amount of a severance package she was offered but declined in 2021.
This happened after Johnson acknowledged under oath that she had no concrete evidence for a key part of her lawsuit.
Johnson’s lawsuit stems from her time as ACC Internal Auditor, a position she held from 2015 to 2021 under her maiden name of Stephanie Maddox. As auditor, Johnson was criticized for creating a hostile work environment in her office, for often not being physically present and for being slow in doing her work. She was placed on a formal work improvement plan in 2019 and again in 2021.
The ACC Commission approved her contract renewal in 2021 on the condition that she would make steady progress on improving her performance. After a few months, commissioners believed that Johnson had failed to satisfy the requirements of her contract, which included completing audits in a satisfactory amount of time, hiring for open positions in her office and attending required check-in meetings. Johnson’s work improvement plan also required that she make progress on obtaining professional certification as an auditor, something she never accomplished during the time she was employed with the ACC government.
Johnson was fired on Sept. 24, 2021 in a unanimous vote.
According to her recollections of these events during her deposition on Jan. 18, Johnson recognized that she had not completed three audits a year on average as the commission expected. She knew that she had not filled the open positions in her office, even after a period of a year or more while having multiple applicants. She also acknowledged that she did not attend a check-in meeting with the commission that September as required.
Even so, throughout this time she has continued to claim that she was terminated, not for the reasons above, but instead because of retaliation against her for an open records request she filed in 2018.
Johnson sued the ACC Unified Government as a whole, in addition to Mayor Kelly Girtz and ACC Manager Blaine Williams as individuals. She alleged that she was fired improperly, and she called for protection under the First Amendment and the Georgia Whistleblower Act.
In her complaint, Johnson accused Williams of misusing public money by inappropriately handling a wage and compensation study of local government workers in 2018. Johnson said she heard “innuendos” from unnamed advocacy groups about a potential misuse of funds in the study, so she decided to take a look for herself.
In October 2018, she filed a formal open records request for virtually every document related to the salary study in the local government’s possession. Williams asked her to withdraw her request, saying that such a large task would be burdensome to ACC human resources staff. Four days later, she obliged, withdrawing her formal request. Even so, she still gained access to many of the documents she requested through normal internal channels. She received three different versions of the wage study, including a spreadsheet listing the recommended salary adjustments for all ACC employees.
After reviewing these documents, Johnson allegedly discovered that Williams had mishandled $4.8 million in public funds, according to her complaint. In Johnson’s telling, Williams was opposed to her open records request because she might take the documents and go public, thereby exposing his wrongdoing. After the open records request incident, Johnson reported that Girtz and Williams began to obstruct her work as auditor, and started to hinder her from obtaining other documents as well. Furthermore, they denied her request for a salary reevaluation and placed her on a performance improvement plan in retaliation for the request, as Johnson saw it.
Johnson’s complaint also claimed that Williams inappropriately took SPLOST funds intended for an economically disadvantaged district and used them for projects in another district.
U.S. District Court Judge Ashley Royal dismissed Johnson’s case against Williams and Girtz because some of the charges happened too long ago and fell outside the statute of limitations. Johnson’s attorneys argued that the alleged behavior was part of a continuing pattern of intimidation and that the statute of limitations should not apply, but Royal disagreed.
The court found that the other charges also did not apply to Williams and Girtz individually. Public officials are protected by qualified immunity, meaning they cannot be held individually liable when acting in their official capacity in a reasonable manner. Those charges were dismissed. However, Royal did not dismiss the charges against the ACC government as a whole.
Johnson’s firing happened years after her open records request, making the two events somewhat difficult to connect. As a result, Johnson’s case hinged on her claims that Williams had misused public funds during the 2018 wage study. Patrick Lail, an attorney representing the ACC government, asked her directly about the allegations regarding the $4.8 million. “I don’t know any facts,” Johnson responded. “I wanted to know, but I don’t have any information.”
Further pressed by Lail, Johnson said, “I don’t know how else to tell you, or explain, that I have no factual information, because I did not receive the information that I asked for.”
Lail also asked Johnson under oath which SPLOST project funds she was alleging that Williams had handled inappropriately. She couldn’t provide the project name, nor could she name the economically disadvantaged district for which the project was originally intended. Johnson implied that her suspicions might have been verified had she gained access to all of the documents she requested.
Johnson agreed to settle her lawsuit in exchange for $44,653, the same amount as the severance package she was offered before the lawsuit began on the condition that she not sue. She will cover her own attorney’s fees. She also agreed not to seek employment with the ACC government again, although this does not preclude her from running for elected office. Even if they have a strong case, governments often settle lawsuits at the request of insurers that don’t want to run the risk of an unpredictable jury verdict.
Johnson is running against Rashe Malcolm to be the next ACC commissioner from District 6. The election will be held on May 21, with early voting starting on Apr. 29.
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