Dear Fellow
Citizen:
It pangs my heart to have to reduce to writing my concerns about the careless
and indifferent ways in which this school board has spent obscene and vulgar monies in a cavalier and illegal manner. This is the people’s money that this board is spending, and it is the people
to whom this school board must answer. The latest in the long train of missteps
and mishaps committed by this board is the hapless and inappropriate manner in which this board has interacted with Dorsey
Hopson and the Miami
law firm. I have said over and over that Clayton
County is replete with competent and professional attorneys, but, no, under the
so-called leadership of this school board, this board has now become bogged down in the quagmire of legal quicksand. Because of the apparent and inordinate desire of a few board members, this board
now finds itself without legitimate legal counsel. Let me explain in words which
cannot be misunderstood.
1. The State Law of Georgia only allows the superintendent
of each school system to recommend personnel (employees) to the board of education.
ONLY the superintendent. “All [note this absolute pronoun] teachers,
principals, other certificated professional personnel, and other personnel [included here would be staff attorneys] of a local
unit of administration shall be [note this imperative phrase] employed and assigned by its governing board on the recommendation
of its executive officer [in our case, this would be Dr. Gloria Duncan]” (O.C.G.A. 20-2-211[a]). If the intention of the current Chair and Vice Chair was to make Mr. Dorsey Hopson a staff attorney, then
their attempt to do so was aborted by Mr. Rod Johnson making a recommendation instead of Dr. Gloria Duncan. Only Dr. Duncan can make employee recommendations, not any board member.
2. Since I just mentioned a recommendation by Mr. Rod Johnson,
let me now address this recommendation. On page 18 of the Board Meeting Minutes
of August 6, 2007, Mr. Johnson stated:
“Madam Chair, I make a motion that we approve the Superintendent’s recommendation…” He was then quickly interrupted by Ms. Ericka Davis. She stated: “It’s ours.” Mr. Johnson
then responded: “It’s our recommendation, [sic] I stand corrected. I make a motion that we accept approval of in house [sic] legal counsel.” Thereupon, as usual, Ms. Yolanda Everett immediately stated: “I second it.” I have looked at the motion many
times, and I cannot find the name “Dorsey Hopson” in the motion. I
also cannot find the word “contract” in the motion. Only Mr. Johnson
could have amended his motion or accepted a friendly amendment from a fellow board member.
He did neither. The Chair, Ericka Davis, spun some phases in an apparent
attempt to modify what Mr. Johnson said in his motion, but this unsolicited attempt to editorialize upon Mr. Johnson’s
motion was just that: unsolicited and irrelevant editorializing from the Chair.
3. I have in my possession an alleged contract. It purports to be a contract for employment (“CONTRACT EMPLOYMENT”). Let me quote from the first paragraph of this bogus contract: “This
Contract of Employment (the ‘Agreement’) is made and entered in [sic] this [“7th” written
by hand] day of August, 2007, by and between the Clayton Board of Education, [sic] (hereinafter, the ‘Board’ of ‘CCSS’ [CCPS, I presume] and Dorsey E. Hopson, II (hereinafter ‘Hopson’
or ‘General Counsel’), pursuant to the authority of Georgia law.”
First of all, this is patently inaccurate. The school board never voted
on any contract for Dorsey Hopson or for anyone to serve as in-house counsel. Until
this past week, I had never seen this bogus contract nor have other members of the board with whom I checked. I firmly believe that this bogus contract was not even in existence on August
6, 2007 (although the writer of this bogus contract keeps referring inaccurately to a date of “August 7, 2007”). In fact, let
me quote this bogus contract again: “WHEREAS, the Board voted on August 7, 2007 to appoint Dorsey Hopson as General Counsel of the CCSS [CCPS, I presume]
upon the terms and conditions set forth herein[.]” Again, the board voted
for no such thing, especially since the school board never had seen such “terms and conditions.” Furthermore, the school board met on August 6, 2007,
not August 7, 2007. I think
that I can safely say that many members of this board, when they read this alleged contract, will be outraged at the obscene
and embarrassing “terms and conditions” of this bogus contract. I
understand that Mr. Hopkins explained the delay in sending out the Request For Proposals (RFP) for the Alternative School Program because he had been working on his contract for employment. If this is true, then the contract could not have been in existence at the August 6, 2007 school board meeting (which is inaccurately stated “August 7, 2007” in the bogus contract).
4. Besides trying to serve two masters (being both a General
Counsel to the School Board and an in-house legal staff member serving under the supervision of the superintendent which presents
a classic conflict which I presume that the State Bar of Georgia would frown upon), this bogus contract is loaded with one-sided
benefits for Dorsey Hopkins at the expense of the taxpayers of Clayton County. This
bogus contract allegedly gives Hopkins a base salary of $175,000.00 plus a tax-sheltered
annuity of ten percent of his base salary each year (meaning $17,500.00 in the first year alone). Included in this bogus contract is a $500.00 monthly car allowance, “a paid life insurance policy
in the amount of twice his annual salary,” a two-week home assignment for the birth of a child, and a whole host of
other benefits, the following of which are included: “In addition to the
compensation specified in the Agreement, Hopson shall be entitled to receive all benefits which now are, or which during the
term or any extension of this Agreement may hereafter be received by CCSS [CCPS, I presume] employees, including [,] but not
limited to, (i) [sic] vacation, medical[,] and personal leave, (ii) [sic] life, medical, disability[,] and dental insurance,
and (iii) [sic] retirement and pension benefits[.] Hopson shall receive these
benefits in the maximum amount provided to other annual duty CCSS [CCPS, I presume] administrative employees.” Hmm. It appears that Hopson wants it
all, but he is definitely not shy about being classified as an “employee”; in fact, this bogus contract uses “employee,”
“other employees,” and “employment” ten times. I think
that this certainly removes any doubt as to whether Hopson, had he been hired legally, would see himself as an “employee.” All employees (including a staff attorney) have to be first recommended by the superintendent,
and if the board acts favorably upon such recommendation, then this employee-attorney would answer to the superintendent,
not to the board of education. Hence, the board of education needs its own General
Counsel which answers to the board, not to the superintendent. This is what the
Clayton County Board of Education had in the firm of Weekes & Candler before this firm resigned in apparent disgust at
the maneuverings of Ericka Davis.
5. In addition to putting Mr. Hopson in an untenable classic
conflict-of-interest situation, this bogus contract says that “[t]he General Counsel [I presume that Mr. Hopson thinks
that this is him] [,] in his sole discretion[,] shall be responsible for the engagement and oversight of all outside counsel
hired to perform legal services for the CCSS [CCPS, I presume], including the Board and the Superintendent and shall supervise,
manage[,] and direct, as appropriate, the work of such outside counsel.” I
certainly recognize that Mr. Hopson, in this audacious power-grab, has chutzpah and temerity, but this gall to have “sole
discretion” is laughable and indefensible. I presume if, in Mr. Hopson’s
fantasy world, the Board should ever decide to end his services, it would have to ask him to select one of “his”
lawyers to fire him. No board member in his or her right mind would ever agree
to this abject abdication of power; however, I presume that this apparent legal cabal between Hopson and Chairperson Davis
was hastily thrown together in an attempt to secure the lion’s share of the legal services for the Miami law firm from
which Hopson hails and from which he apparently shall secure his end-of-the-year bonus very soon. Again, if this bonus is forthcoming, then we have a situation of Hopson sending business to a firm which
employs him.
6. In or about February of 2007, this Board voted to permit
the Miami law firm to “investigate” the now notorious Davis-Pulliam Land Deal; however, this legal work was specifically
to be conducted in “tiers,” with the firm’s re-authorization to continue to work beyond a certain financial
threshold to be brought back to this Board. This never happened. I do not know if this was an oversight on the part of the Chair or if this was intentional, but it never
occurred. Meanwhile, I secured documents from the Central Office which delineates
the work done by the Miami law firm which was paid for by the taxpayers of Clayton
County. NOTE: This Miami law firm never even responded to the Board’s
request that law firms which wanted to do supplemental legal work for the school system send in a response to a Request For
Qualifications (RFQ). Local firms like Hecht, Mack & Harris and Fincher Denmark
& Williams LLC as well as other local and national firms responded to the RFQ. One
large firm (in fact, the largest firm headquartered here in Georgia), King & Spalding, turned in its response to the RFQ
a few minutes late, and its response was returned to the firm unopened. Nevertheless,
I see that the Miami firm did a good bit of work apparently for Ericka Davis on May 24 and May 25 of this year concerning
whether Chairperson Davis had the authority to create committees (specifically mentioning the “appropriations committee”)
as well as looked at “statutes regarding authority of Superintendent and general law regarding board [sic] and Chair
Powers [sic].” Almost $7,000.00 was spent of taxpayers money to determine
the powers that Ericka Davis might or might not have. She could have asked me
these questions because I simply read the Board’s policies and informed her that she did not have the power by herself,
apart from the board acting in concert as a whole, to create any committee. Who
authorized the spending of this money? The date of the bill from the Miami
law firm is “June 14, 2007,” but the stamped date when this
bill was received in “Accounting” was “Aug 08 2007,”
a little over two weeks after Superintendent Pulliam had resigned. Another note
of interest about this Miami law firm is that someone or some people (perhaps Davis or perhaps Davis and Pulliam or perhaps
others too) authorized over $14,000.00 in legal fees to be paid to this firm for its research on how to ban Dr. John Trotter
from attending school board meetings and on other matters related to Dr. Trotter. Now
this is interesting since Dr. Trotter was the target of a silly and unconstitutional charge which was within a couple of weeks
unconditionally dropped by the Solicitor’s Office. Anyone who has even
a rudimentary understanding of the First Amendment knows that the banning of content-related speech warrants the highest scrutiny
from the Court and if the State has some compelling interest in a time, manner, and/or place regulation, then the State has
to delineate its interest and has to provide a least restrictive alternative for the speech.
I hardly think that Ericka Davis’s disliking the content of Dr. Trotter’s two signs (which, by the way,
were held one at a time in front of his chest quietly and without disturbance and without blocking anyone’s vision since
he was standing in the very back of the room) rises to the level of a “compelling State interest” and that Dr.
Trotter’s egregious, false, and unconstitutional arrest and incarceration in Sheriff Victor Hill’s jail was a
“least restrictive alternative” for Dr. Trotter’s free speech. The
Miami law firm was paid up to $455.00 per hour to deal with Dr. Trotter. I want to know who directed this Miami
law firm to do this work in January when Weekes & Candler was still the school board’s General Counsel?
I hope that all of my colleagues on this board will wake up and smell the financial
coffee. One thing that you, the Citizens of Clayton County, have expressed to
me in one clarion voice is the fact that you want us to be good stewards of your money.
I have tried to be the Taxpayers’ Guardian. Like you, I grew up
in Clayton County and still have many
family members, including my parents, who live here. My parents have just retired,
and they too need their tax dollars to be wisely spent. This is why I fought
so vigorously against spending millions of dollars of your money on two unpopular and ineffective curriculum programs. I am happy that Dr. Duncan used her wisdom in disbanding both of these dubious programs. I do not think that under the leadership of Dr. Duncan that we will see another eight
million dollars wasted on another “bad land deal.” I pray that all
school board members, including myself, will always be good stewards of your money.
Sincerely,
Norreese L. Haynes
