The Fayette County Sheriff’s Department will no longer have to go through the county government for purchasing items or conducting vehicle maintenance, Superior Court Judge William Isom ruled Tuesday afternoon.

The legal victory for Sheriff Randall Johnson was a loss for the Fayette County Board of Commissioners, which had argued Johnson’s department should have to use the county’s purchasing system instead of his own. The county also wanted Johnson to use its fleet management staff to conduct maintenance on the sheriff’s vehicle fleet.

Late Tuesday afternoon, Johnson said he was pleased with the ruling.

“I’m happy it’s over,” Johnson said, noting that he felt his position was right all along because of the power the Georgia constitution provides for constitutional officers.

Both the sheriff and the county commission have spent tens of thousands of dollars on attorneys in the case.

A separate legal dispute between the sheriff and the county commission over the power of the marshals department is still pending. Included in that is the controversy about the sheriff’s department constructing a hangar for a helicopter without first getting county building permits.

Prior to the judge’s ruling, several employees of the Sheriff’s Department told the judge this week that the county’s computerized purchasing system has increased their workload significantly.

Adhering to a temporary court order, sheriff’s officials had been using the purchasing system used by all other county government departments since April 4. The sheriff’s department is also using the county’s fleet maintenance shop for maintenance on all vehicles, another requirement of that order.

This week’s hearing was held so Judge Isom can decide whether or not to make his temporary order permanent.

Monday morning, County Finance Director Mark Pullium testified that “to the best of my knowledge” sheriff’s employees have followed the county’s procedures since the order went into effect.

But sheriff’s employees had few kind words for the system. Capt. Michelle Walker testified Tuesday that using the county system “has stalled the criminal investigations division.”

Walker noted that an unpaid invoice has endangered an investigation being conducted by the sheriff’s drug suppression task force. The invoice is for service to one piece of equipment the task force is using in the investigation, she said.

“It has put their investigation in total jeopardy,” Walker said.

The county’s computerized purchasing system requires a significant amount of detail to be entered based on the type of product needed, according to Lt. Steve Coker, who orders supplies for the Fayette County Jail.

Coker said ordering toilet paper for example requires entering the quantity needed, the amount of ply and the number of sheets on each roll. Under the previous system, the same toilet paper was ordered from the same supplier, and it took far less time, Coker said.

Coker attributed nine extra hours he worked in a two-week period solely to the additional requirements of the new purchasing system.

“It takes significantly much longer to order supplies now,” Coker said.

Captain Charlie Cowart, assistant director of the jail, said it recently took him two hours to fill out six requisition requests using the county’s system, when in the past he would fax an order to a vendor, and sometimes get the equipment “the very next day.”

Capt. Bryan Woodie of the sheriff’s traffic enforcement division said the county’s purchasing system was so complicated that he has held off on ordering himself a new pair of service shoes even though he has holes worn in the bottom of his current pair.

Woodie said he is afraid to use the new purchasing system because he worries he might make a mistake and unintentionally violate the temporary order from Judge Isom.

Woodie said the purchasing system was inadequate to handle a recent need for two decals to be produced for sheriff’s cars in the Tour de Georgia caravan. Instead of filling out the computerized paperwork, Woodie said he called the vendor he had hoped to buy the decals from for about $25.

The vendor decided to donate the decals to the sheriff’s department after deciding not to bid for the job, Woodie said.

“It’s a very cumbersome process for us,” Woodie said.

Pullium and another finance employee testified that historically the finance department has had trouble keeping track of the vehicle inventory for the sheriff’s department. But Walker said she sends paperwork to the county on each vehicle the investigations division purchases — even those for undercover use — so they can be maintained on the county’s inventory.

That issue came to a head Jan. 4 when Pullium and three other county employees went to Don Jackson Lincoln Mercury in Union City to collect three unmarked cars the sheriff’s department had traded in to the dealership.

A number of deputies in marked and unmarked sheriff’s cars responded to the county’s fleet department and took Pullium and the other three into custody temporarily so they could be interrogated about the event.

Pullium and the three employees were later let go and were not arrested, though Pullium testified earlier this month that Sheriff Randall Johnson and Lt. Col. Bruce Jordan both threatened to put him in jail over the matter.

County officials contend that the county — not the sheriff’s department — owned the cars and so the county should dispose of them according to its guidelines. But Walker said when any item that had been purchased with drug seizure money is sold, the proceeds of that sale must go back into the drug seizure account at the sheriff’s department, according to federal guidelines.

One such recent sale, of an unmarked vehicle, netted a $7,000 check back in December, but county finance officials have not yet moved those funds into the drug seizure account, Walker said.

Walker also said the county commission previously voted to have $13,755 in insurance proceeds from automobile damage moved into the sheriff’s department’s general fund even though the vehicle had been purchased with drug forfeiture funds, which requires the money to go back into the sheriff’s drug forfeiture account.

Several sheriff’s employees testified that until recently, the county had not required a visual inspection of every new vehicle before filling out title paperwork on a state form called the MV-1. Pullium testified the new requirement was put in place because the form states that the person signing it affirms the odometer reading on the vehicle and several other details which must be verified in person.

Another dispute between the county and the sheriff centers on the documentation presented with invoices for deputies’ department-issued cell phones. Three sheriff’s employees testified that they typically sent the first two or three summary pages of each bill to the finance department to justify payment to the company.

The remainder of the bill is combed through to insure no inappropriate calls were made, and the field operations division forces deputies to pay up if their phone usage goes over the monthly amount, said Capt. Laurie Littlejohn.

In the traffic enforcement division, Woodie said the Nextel cell phone plan allows a virtually unlimited amount of calls so he checks the detailed bills to make sure no “inappropriate” numbers are dialed, such as 1-900 numbers.

Recently, Pullium sent a memo to the sheriff’s department saying the Nextel bills were being paid “under protest” because the department did not receive all the pages for the bills including all the numbers that were dialed, Woodie said.

Releasing that data would require a significant amount of time to be spent blacking out the numbers which are confidential, which include the numbers of other Nextel units issued to department members, Littlejohn said. Walker said it would take her two days or more to redact the information from the cell phone bills, which can add up to 200 pages or more, with about 50 phone numbers on each page.

The itemized bill lists phone numbers of suspects, juveniles, witnesses and others that need to be kept confidential or it could jeopardize an investigation, Walker said.

Pullium testified Monday that the additional pages of the bills were necessary “so we’ll be able to justify the expenditure ... to the citizens.”

Littlejohn said the recent requirement to use the county’s fleet maintenance division for vehicle maintenance has caused difficulty for deputies who work between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m. as the fleet shop was closed during those hours. Previously, the department had arrangements with several vendors in town to perform routine maintenance such as oil changes and tire rotation, Littlejohn said.

That worked well because the deputies could drop in and get their car serviced quickly while on duty, keeping them off patrol for very short periods, Littlejohn added.

Walker said she has safety concerns about sending the undercover vehicles to the county fleet maintenance shop because county inmates also work in the area. In the past, CID employees would use their county purchasing card to get basic auto maintenance from several vendors who were selected in part because they don’t employ questionable employees, Walker added.

The county’s vehicle replacement committee has denied the replacement of two field operations vehicles that are more than 10 years old, Littlejohn said, adding that she worried about the cars’ parts failing when responding to a “hot call,” she said.

“For them to drive that car at a high rate of speed, it would worry me,” Littlejohn said.

The county had planned to call a forensic auditor it had hired to review financial records of the sheriff’s department as a witness in the hearing. Sheriff’s attorney Rick Lindsey successfully argued that he had not been notified of the potential testimony from an expert witness, and Johnson didn’t have the chance to seek a deposition of the auditor beforehand and possibly hire his own expert witness to rebut her findings.

Judge Isom ruled in Lindsey’s favor, barring the witness from testifying Monday afternoon.

The forensic audit in question is the same one that county officials have refused to release at The Citizen’s request under the Georgia open records act. The county claims the document is protected as attorney-client work product and attorney-client privilege and thus can’t be made public while the trial is ongoing.

Assistant County Attorney Dennis Davenport said Laurie Dyke of Investigative Accounting Group in Marietta would have testified about the purchasing procedures used by the sheriff’s department and how they differ from the county’s purchasing process.

Walker testified that the county’s auditing firm audits the individual invoices, checkbook and other documents for the sheriff’s departments federal and state drug seizure funds. She also noted that Pullium twice has been provided with such records for auditing purposes.

Walker said the county also hasn’t paid a $45,000 check to the town of Tyrone for its share of seized drug funds that were transferred to the sheriff’s department. Tyrone participates on the drug task force and gets a portion of the seized funds which are transferred to the sheriff’s department, she said.

“We’re not sure what to do,” Walker said of the county’s purchasing system and the order from Judge Isom forcing the sheriff’s department to use the system. “We don’t want to get the sheriff in trouble.”

The county also has declined to transfer state funds seized from drug dealers to pay for pistols that were purchased for five employees as 20-year service awards, Pullium testified.