City of Edison financial investigation underway

EDISON, Ga. (WALB) - WALB’s Jim Wallace was joined by Tommy Coleman, attorney for the City of Edison to discuss why the City of Edison is under financial investigation.

Mr. Coleman, we understand that an investigation of the paperwork that you found during the audit of Edison is now under investigation by Sheriff Josh Hilton.

“Well, that’s true. I I wouldn’t call it an audit. We we’re not at that point yet. You can’t audit records that don’t exist or or cannot be found. And so they were the Mayor. Mayor Worthy and Laurie Moore, who’s the finance director, have been finding things in cardboard boxes and that kind of. Thing among the things that they found, and we had a meeting about it some weeks ago. Now where some credit card bills that everybody gets and there were some items on there that were irregular at best. And were unlikely to be charges charged to a city. And so In addition to that, we found some entries for payroll that didn’t look quite right to us. And so the mayor and finance director and I decided that we would call the DA. I did. He got in touch with the GBI. The GBI told him it’s my understanding and that they would. To wait until the OR they would not be involved until the audit was done. That’s Going to be a While. Once again we, the Finance Director and the mayor having to reconstruct everything the city has done and there are no records, if you will, to audit. So having to put all that together, so that’ll be quite a while. We ended up talking to the sheriff. And the sheriff has undertaken an investigation. That Will lead us to some answers that hopefully will be forthcoming for us. And it is important to resolve these things for the benefit of the public and for their expectation that everything will be operated appropriately. But It is, compared to the debt that the city has incurred that we have to make arrangements for, kind of small, miniscule, if you will. So it’s important that the City Council and the community keep their eye on the ball and that is to make sure that we make the city whole. We meet all our obligations and then put the right people in place to manage the city from this point forward and that’s what our real goal is.”

Thank you for the progress report of the City of Edison, Tommy Coleman, the city attorney. Thank you.

“You are welcome.”

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