Mayor accuses councilman of opposing transparency

Five days before a city council election, Ringgold, Ga., Mayor Nick Millwood criticized several current elected officials, saying they have fought against his efforts to make the local government more open.

“I have taken my job as your voice at city hall seriously,” he wrote on his website Thursday night, “and held nothing back about what is happening in regards to projects, policy decisions, public notices and politics. To say this has rocked the boat would be an understatement.”

On Tuesday, Ringgold voters will fill two city council seats. Incumbents Jake Haynes and Randall Franks are running, as are outsiders Kelly Bomar and Rhonda Swaney. The seats are not tied to districts. Of the four candidates, the two top vote getters will sit on the council.

Millwood’s post specifically criticized Franks, who during a May meeting accused the mayor of sabotaging the city’s ability to attract new business. The fight stemmed from an issue that seemingly had nothing to do with economic development: A tweak to the city charter.

The council asked the local state delegation to approve some minor changes through the Legislature last year, such as clarifying how many council members needed to be present to establish a quorum. But in Atlanta, state Sen. Jeff Mullis, R-Chickamauga, added another change, making it more difficult for the council to fire City Manager Dan Wright.

Before, three council members had to vote to oust the city manager. But with the new change, all five council members have to approve the firing. Millwood said Mullis didn’t tell him about this move, which he discovered while skimming through the charter in October 2016.

Millwood asked Mullis to change it back, but Mullis said he would make new tweaks only if the council outlined them in a motion. When Millwood brought this up on Oct. 10, 2016, the council declined to try to change the rule back. Earlier this year, Millwood announced on Facebook he would start a petition, asking residents to lobby for a return to the old rule. He later change his mind.

On May 22, Wright added an item to the council’s agenda, asking them to discuss the charter again. There, Franks launched into an attack on Millwood.

He said Millwood was isolating a city ally in Mullis, who helps deliver state grant funding for Ringgold’s projects. He also said Millwood could have known about Mullis’ changes to the charter by monitoring the online version of the local act in Atlanta, rather than assuming only the specific changes the council requested would go through.

Franks said Millwood was “creating a false concern or, as is popular to say now, fake news.”

“What’s not being exhibited is good leadership,” he said at the May 22 meeting. “It’s pettiness. It’s sinking a ship for the sake of saving an anchor. This mayoral anchor may drag our residents, our business and all of us under. I think we should throw it overboard; let’s get on with doing business.”

Franks did not return a call or email seeking comment Friday. But Millwood said he wanted to make sure voters understood that he had been attacked for informing the public about an act he felt had been done in secrecy.

He also criticized Terry Crawford, who in July accused Millwood of breaking an open government law when he asked Facebook friends how they would feel about allowing liquor stores in town. Crawford said polling the public on an issue that had not gone before the council is unethical, though a spokeswoman for the Georgia Municipal Association later said Millwood did nothing wrong.

Millwood also criticized Councilman Larry Black, who told the Times Free Press in May that the council doesn’t always keep the mayor in the loop about what’s going on “because of his propensity to use social media.”

Earlier this year, Millwood said, he received an email from an anonymous business owner, telling him that attacking Mullis’ charter change would be the end of his political career.

“The message I got was that you don’t stand up against the political power structure in small-town Ringgold,” Millwood told the Times Free Press on Friday.

The mayor did not criticize Haynes, the other incumbent councilman running for reelection Tuesday.

“I don’t have anything to call out Jake for at all,” he said.