Wednesday, March 3, 2004

Who’s the real power behind the push for county police force?

I think many people don’t realize the real issue behind the commissioners wanting the marshals to be county police. It’s about politicians with no experience in law enforcement wanting to control the lawmen who police our county.

Although Commissioner Greg Dunn appears to be the front man behind the drive towards county police, he cannot, by logic, be the mastermind behind the plan. That person would have had to be in power in 1983 when the marshals were created and again in 1989 when their powers were enhanced. None of the current county commissioners were in office then.

This plan could not have been hatched by them, but it would have had to be someone in a powerful position in our local government and it was.

The man who is arguably the most powerful unelected public figure in Fayette County’s modern history is Bill McNally of McNally, Fox and Cameron. He has been the county’s attorney for more than 20 years and no one ever voted for him. He affects every major decision the commission makes and the voters have no say in the position he holds.

His involvement in the marshal matter was stealthful but highly significant. In 1989 he was asked to fine-tune a local ordinance which created local marshals to enforce county ordinances. The commissioners wanted the marshals to be armed and in uniform to perform their duties, which is a perfectly legal function of marshals in Georgia.

What happened next is, at the least, suspicious, and at its worst, a conspiracy to deceive Fayette County taxpayers.

When the ordinance to arm the marshals was rewritten in 1989, someone mysteriously failed to use Georgia’s code section for providing powers to marshals. Someone instead used the code section for creating county police. For 15 years the public has been left in the dark about the fact that this was ever done.

That was 1989. In 2004 a county commission consisting of five totally different people are claiming this was done so that they could, today, claim that agency to be a county police department. A department that we as voters today would be allowed to vote on before it was created, but because of what someone did in 1989 the voters are being denied that right today.

None of the sitting commissioners was in office when this was done. The only constant person involved in the situation that had the knowledge and the power to pull this straw from its hat 15 years later is the man that wrote the ordinance, County Attorney Bill McNally. He is the only man in the county government who has been involved long enough to successfully perpetuate this conspiracy.

A new agency is being created using an old county ordinance that can only be traced back to one man. A public official whom none of us ever got to vote for.

Steve Hall

Peachtree City, Ga.