HENRY COUNTY, Ga. — In an exclusive interview, the county commission chair of Henry County says the government fell months behind paying its bills, and bookkeeping issues caused taxpayers to miss out on more than $2 million in state grants.
Channel 2 Investigative Reporter Mark Winne was live in McDonough, where the longtime county manager is also out.
County Commission Chair Carlotta Harrell tells us one of the changes here is the financial services department now reports to the commission instead of the county manager and there is a new chief financial officer who discovered disarray including stacks of unpaid bills when she moved into the job.
Harrell says when new Chief Financial Officer Joy Robinson took over in January, she found the lack of checks and balances meant lots of Henry County checks hadn’t gone out to pay the county’s bills.
“The county finances were in disarray,” Harrell said.
Harrell confirmed a document shows a long list of vendors -- including some of the county’s biggest -- whose bills to the county were more than 90 days past due as of January.
But the chairwoman suggests the past bookkeeping problems have cost Henry County taxpayers, too, at least a couple million dollars.
She says because the county audit was late, not the auditors’ fault, and due to grant rules for 2024 the county lost a percentage of two types of funding it gets from Georgia Department of Transportation, one loss totaling more than $756,000 and another for more than $937,000.
And for similar reasons the county lost out on more than $435,000 in state grant money for accountability courts, drug court, mental health court and more.
Henry County Superior Court Chief Judge Holly Veal says accountability court participants continued to get recovery services the lost state grant money would have paid for because Henry County Manager Cheri Hobson Matthews and the county commission stepped up and covered the loss with county money.
The chair says there are no deficits, no missing or misappropriated money, and there’s an all-new accounts payable department expanded from one to eight workers.
Financial services now reports to the county commission instead of the county manager.
Harrell says with input from a majority of commissioners, she decided to end the roughly nine-year tenure as county manager of Matthews with whom she had worked closely for years and who she says did some great things for the county.
“That’s the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make,” she said.
Harrell says the new proposed county budget calls for dipping into the county’s reserve fund for $8.1 million, mostly because of economic conditions beyond the county’s control.
“We hadn’t dipped into our fund balance in over eight years,” Robinson said.
Channel 2 Action News tried a number of ways to reach Matthews for her side.
Harrell confirms Matthews had just gotten a raise in March.
Channel 2 Action News found a Henry County Facebook post indicating in November 2024 Matthews was awarded the Georgia City-County Management Association Pillar of Professional Excellence Award. It cited exceptional leadership and dedication.
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