After years in court, Stephanie Johnson drops her lawsuit against ACC gov

Former ACC Internal Auditor Stephanie Maddox Johnson has settled her lawsuit against the local government after fighting in 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.

Table of Contents

Johnson’s tenure as ACC Internal Auditor
Johnson’s legal claims
Some charges dismissed
A lack of evidence
Settlement

Johnson’s tenure as ACC Internal Auditor

Johnson’s lawsuit stems from her time as ACC Internal Auditor, a position she held from 2015 to 2021. 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, the commission 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 for these reasons on September 24, 2021 in a unanimous vote. 

According to her recollections of these events during her deposition on January 18, Johnson recognized that she had not completed three audits a year on average as the commission expected. She knew that she had not hired for 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 in her work improvement plan.

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’s legal claims

Johnson sued the ACC Unified Government as a whole in addition to Mayor Kelly Girtz and ACC Manager Blaine Williams as individuals. She claimed 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 reports 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 sees it.

Johnson’s complaint also claims that Williams inappropriately took SPLOST funds intended for an economically disadvantaged district and used them for projects in another district.

Some charges dismissed

US 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. These charges were dismissed.

However, Royal did not dismiss the charges against the ACC government as whole. That’s because he was required to interpret Johnson’s complaint in a favorable light with the assumption that evidence would be presented at a later date.

Johnson finally got her chance to present the evidence in this case during her deposition on January 18.

A lack of evidence

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. If she could provide evidence of that, she might have been able to convince the judge that Williams, Girtz and the ACC Commission later acted out of retaliation and not for a legally justifiable reason.

When it came time to present evidence to the court under oath on the essential question of her lawsuit, Johnson balked. Patrick Lail, an attorney representing the ACC government, asked her directly about the allegations regarding the $4.8 million, resulting in the exchange below:

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Patrick Lail: “You allege you had heard innuendos from members of the public and advocacy groups that the contents of the pay study report indicated misappropriation of funds and misuse of allocated funds. Who were these members of the public?”

Stephanie Johnson: “I did not write this.”

Lail: “So you can’t answer that?”

Johnson: “I cannot.”

…

Lail: “You allege that after reviewing the pay study, you discovered that County Manager Blaine Williams had misappropriated more than $4.8 million… What is it you believe Blaine Williams did wrong?”

Johnson: “I can’t tell you. I don’ t — I don’ t know. I never received anything besides the three – four reports that are different. I don’t know any facts. I wanted to know, but I don’t have any information.”

…

Lail: “Your complaint substantially relies on the notion that Blaine Williams had mishandled money, and, in fact, a lot of money, $4.8 million; and I’m just trying to find out the basis of that allegation. And what I’m understanding from you right now is that there is no basis for that allegation. Is my understanding correct?”

Johnson: “I didn’t say that.”

…

Lail: “Then what is the basis? I need to understand that today.”

Johnson: “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.”

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Lail also asked Johnson, who was still 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. Needless to say, mishandling millions of dollars in public funds is a serious charge that requires substantial evidence. Nowhere in her deposition did Johnson detail how she arrived at the specific figure of $4.8 million or why she believed Williams was involved in moving the funds.

Settlement

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.

It’s unclear why the ACC government would have wanted to settle this case after the plaintiff admitted she had no concrete evidence to back up her primary claim. The commission’s insurance provider, the Georgia Interlocal Risk Management Agency, must have thought this was a cost-effective way to finally put an end to this affair after five years of drama both inside and outside the courtroom. 

Regardless, after so much time and money spent on attorney’s fees on both sides, the Stephanie Johnson saga has finally come to an end.

At least for now. 

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 April 29.

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