EDITORIAL: Blowback from firing of McCoy likely

Let us state from the onset that we’ve found Michael McCoy is an honorable man. He’s served Dougherty County in leadership positions for a quarter-century, and people who have served with him and under him agree almost to a person that McCoy is a man whose word is his bond.

Dougherty County Commission Chairman Lorenzo Heard and Commissioner Gloria Gaines, mostly in service to their friendship with ousted Commissioner John Hayes, pulled off an apparently illegal coup Monday in the orchestrated dismissal of McCoy. Heard, a close friend of Hayes, who physically and verbally attacked McCoy in 2018 when the then-assistant county administrator confronted Hayes about visiting a married chaperone at a joint commission/school system event where students were present, used the excuse of McCoy hiring an assistant administrator last week to replace Scott Addison without consulting Heard as a pretext for firing McCoy.

Gaines, whom The Albany Herald overheard in a phone conversation with McCoy telling him he would be “playing into white people’s hands” if he followed through with a lawsuit charging the county with having a hostile work environment because Hayes physically attacked him and threatened to “take his job” (McCoy did sue and agreed to a $50,000-in-taxpayer-money settlement), has been trying since that affair to find enough support to remove McCoy.

So Heard, who also reportedly was miffed that McCoy didn’t provide seating arrangements to his liking on a recent Chamber Fly In event to Washington, D.C., used Commissioner Victor Edwards’ enmity with McCoy — based on McCoy’s failure to “properly punish” Addison, one of the county’s best employees when he stepped down, because of a run-in with Edwards in which the commissioner berated him and Public Information Officer Wendy Howell — and Commissioner Clinton Johnson’s past personal dealings with McCoy, to carry out what can only be termed a vendetta.

It didn’t matter that County Attorney Alex Shalishali reportedly told commissioners that County Code does not allow for the vote that was taken in a meeting that has not been properly advertised, and no one mentioned that, personal vendettas aside, McCoy was only doing his job when he appointed Barry Brooks as assistant county administrator to replace Addison. Individuals familiar with County Code note that the authority to hire county personnel, with the exception of the county administrator himself and the county attorney, lies with the administrator.

As one person close to county government noted: “In the past 40 years, the appointees of the county administrator have never been questioned.”

Selecting Brooks, who also was “fired” by the commission before he’d even settled into an office, may have led to McCoy’s ultimate ouster, as reports of Heard’s disdain for whites are widespread. Heard, a pastor, has made numerous un-pastorlike references to whites in public and private conversations, both in general and specifically

Even before he took office, Heard also referred to Albany City Commissioner Jalen Johnson as a “punk-ass fag—.”

The idea that Monday’s sham of a firing was planned and orchestrated, County Code be damned, became more apparent as several people in the community noted that family and friends of Edwards’ called people over the weekend to inform them that McCoy would be fired. Some of them, including Edwards’ mother, Muarlean Edwards, who is a former commissioner, attended the meeting even though they rarely do so now.

McCoy, rightfully, says now is not the time for him to talk about the circumstances that led to his firing. With the way it was carried out — illegally — he certainly would be well within his rights to file a lawsuit that most likely will make that $50,000 look like chump change.

And while the treatment of McCoy by Heard, Gaines, Edwards and Johnson is despicable and a prime example of individuals taking taxpayer’s money and using it to carry out personal vendettas, there is a larger, more dangerous issue here. Heard, who has already leveraged his position on the board to attract government money for housing programs that bring his church — with him running the show — $5 million, and his followers now think they have the power to do anything they want with the millions of tax dollars that pour into the county’s coffers yearly.

With an apathetic public allowing such abuses of power to go unchecked — although the sentiment countywide has been overwhelming in support of McCoy — there’s nothing to stop them from continuing a reign of terror that threatens to bankrupt a once-proud community and continue the mass exodus that is in a third decade.