Sheriff Jeff Johnson

DAWSONVILLE, Ga. – Senior Superior Court Judge Fred A. Bishop has ruled against Dawson County Sheriff Jeff Johnson in his petition for mandamus against the Dawson County Board of Commissioners.

In ruling against the sheriff, Bishop wrote, “(Commissioners) exercised their discretion in a reasonable fashion. They have honored their obligation to do so giving all due consideration to the needs of the sheriff and to the entire fiscal picture of Dawson County and its citizens, of which the sheriff’s duties are a key part – but not the only part. I conclude there has been no abuse of the Board of Commissioners’ discretion and petitioner has not shown good cause for making mandamus absolute in this case.”

Johnson stated, “Obviously, we are disappointed in the ruling and continue to be concerned for the safety of our community. Our primary argument was and continues to be for additional staff to perform the duties and responsibilities required of this office. Very little in the ruling addressed this primary concern. Ultimately, the court found that the BOC properly exercised their discretion in setting the budget. Regardless of this outcome, we will continue to serve the citizens of Dawson County at our highest level.”

Bishop rejected several of Johnson’s claims. For example, the sheriff testified that he sought to have staff paid for accrued leave lost at the end of 2016. However, when asked on cross examination if he had sufficient funds in the budget to do so, he testified that he did. In fact, it was recently disclosed that at the end of the budget year, Johnson had more than $397,000 left in his budget that he did not spend.

Bishop rejected Johnson’s claim that his request for additional funding was justified by the county’s increased population. Bishop found the best indicator of population trends shows the county has grown by less than 1 percent per year.

While Johnson claimed that crime and arrest figures have increased sharply, the judge noted that the sheriff’s own indicators demonstrate that is not the case. Crime, arrest and activity figures are up and down year by year the judge wrote and the Georgia State Patrol has helped lighten the sheriff’s load considerably by its activity.

In ruling for the county, Bishop wrote, “The Board of Commissioners is charged with management, control and use of all county property, funds and assets in such a manner as to balance a budget, which reasonably provides for all county operations within available funding.”

He added, “The board has assigned the highest priority to public safety, which gets roughly 47 percent of the Dawson County General Fund appropriations, and specifically to the Sheriff’s Office, which was allocated about 29 percent of that budget for 2018.”

Bishop likewise rejected Johnson’s claim that his budget had been cut from the previous year. “The 2018 budget allocation to the sheriff from SPLOST (Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax) has increased by $100,000.00, from $500,000 to $600,000.00, and the Capital Fund budget appropriation included $40,000 for an HVAC system upgrade as well as the $260,000 set aside to cover half of what the sheriff requested for a 911 dispatch CAD system,” Bishop wrote.

Finally, the judge found Johnson’s claim that the county refused to meet with him not to be factual.

“The record clearly shows that the Board of Commissioners met with the sheriff on a number of occasions to hear his comments and requests and to hear his attorney speak on his behalf at several meetings,” Bishop explained.

Upon hearing the decision, County Commissioner Chris Gaines said, “I am proud of our team and especially our attorney, Lynn Frey, for his hard work and efforts to properly defend a decision that was made in the best interest of the community. As we have always said, as revenue increases, we look forward to working on meeting the needs of every department.”

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