Burke County manager responds to audit of sheriff’s office
AUGUSTA, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) - Our I-TEAM is digging deeper into a financial audit of the Burke County sheriff’s use of grant funds.
We sat down with the county manager to get his response.
Two audit reports the I-TEAM obtained show Burke County Sheriff Alfonzo Williams spending nearly $200,000 in grant money on a credit card.
“There’s nothing... nothing there that is personal. I have not, in any way personally, benefitted from any of this at all,” said Williams.
Auditors tracked $41,000 in credit card charges for travel and accommodations, restaurants, food, and retail stores on a credit card with the sheriff’s name the county claims should have been approved by them first.
“It’s business, it’s working, I’m teaching law enforcement,” he said.
The report says only printouts were kept of activity and not statements. Those receipts were just made public by the sheriff, although not all of the receipts were ed for.
“I want to be very upfront and take full responsibility for not keeping original receipts. I think that we should’ve done that,” he said.
We sat with County Manager Merv Waldrop to understand why the audit was done.
“I don’t think this is a smear campaign at all. Funds were not disclosed to the auditor at the end of last year. The board discovered that in the middle of the year. The board asked for an audit. It wasn’t anything personal,” said Waldrop.
Waldrop says the county commission had no idea Williams had a credit card until the audit was done. He says Williams would have had to file paperwork with commissioners to get the approval.
The Georgia Sheriff’s Association says grant money does not always fall under those requirements.
“None of that was done. The credit card was obtained without the board’s knowledge and without filing the proper paperwork with commissioners,” he said.
Williams said: “We met with lawyers from both sides and representatives from both sides and sat down in the lawyer’s office and came up with an agreement and walked away and said we all have this agreement that the sheriff’s office controls their own money. They were going to give us our money and have full autonomy over it. They backed out of the deal at the last minute without communicating, so we went and set up an .”
Williams spent nearly 200 out of $400,000 in grant money awarded to the sheriff’s office.
“That’s public money. It’s provided through an agreement to a county official to provide public services, so those are public funds belong to the people of Burke County and to not any individual,” said Waldrop.
The sheriff’s association tells us the county commission does not have any authority over sheriffs aside from allocating an annual budget. Any outside money, like a grant, could be handled differently.
The sheriff’s office released receipts to create transparency in this situation. We are digging deeper into those documents and how the money was spent, and we’ll have an update Thursday.
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