Final Communication With Forsyth County Commission Regarding Appointment of Joel Natt to Board of Elections

As I first brought it to your atten­tion in my June Sub­stack, Kem­p’s Pri­vate Polit­i­cal Par­ty Makes Its First Move, there appears a con­cert­ed effort across Geor­gia, orches­trat­ed by Geor­gia Gov­er­nor Bri­an Kemp and his cho­sen oper­a­tors, to con­trol strate­gic coun­ty boards of elec­tions seats. Con­trol­ling those seats is how the Geor­gia “uni­par­ty,” head­ed by Bri­an Kemp, out­num­bered many times by true, grass­roots Repub­li­cans, appar­ent­ly hopes to “wag the dog” and hold onto polit­i­cal pow­er with­out the actu­al votes to do so. The idea is this: If one can cen­tral­ize, and thus con­trol the count­ing of votes, which Sec­re­tary of State Bri­an Kemp accom­plished in 2017 (just in time to become elect­ed gov­er­nor), and if you can con­trol local pol­i­cy-mak­ing toward reg­is­tra­tions and vote-count­ing on elec­tion boards in key coun­ties, such as Chero­kee, Ful­ton and now Forsyth and oth­ers, and if you can raise enough pri­vate fund­ing, the unpop­u­lar Kemp “uni­par­ty” believes it can main­tain polit­i­cal con­trol over the state. 

But the Geor­gia “uni­par­ty,” as I call it, head­ed by Bri­an Kemp, is not a “polit­i­cal par­ty,” per se. Think of it as an unof­fi­cial, but well-financed and effec­tive “polit­i­cal POWER asso­ci­a­tion.” Per­haps you have picked up on this, that what Kemp and his cohorts care about most, is polit­i­cal pow­er. They are not con­ser­v­a­tive. They are not lib­er­al. Although they choose a par­ty affil­i­a­tion to get on bal­lots, they are effec­tive­ly nei­ther Repub­li­can nor Demo­c­rat. They are pow­er wield­ers and bro­kers and by using decep­tive prac­tices they are bent on doing all that they can to build and main­tain polit­i­cal pow­er in Geor­gia, and they are very good at it. 

Uni­par­ty oper­a­tors use their knowl­edge to estab­lish an air of suprema­cy over local Repub­li­can Par­ty rules and par­lia­men­tary pro­ce­dures. They become the “knowl­edge author­i­ties” of the local par­ty. The rank and file mem­bers look to them on how the rules and par­lia­men­tary pro­ce­dures are sup­posed to work. Hav­ing estab­lished trust among the par­ty faith­ful, they become the “go to guys” on par­lia­men­tary ques­tions and elec­tion law, mak­ing it easy to manip­u­late out­comes to accom­plish var­i­ous per­son­al objectives. 

One way of estab­lish­ing con­trol over par­ty rules and pro­ce­dures, for exam­ple, is to become the rules com­mit­tee chair­per­son and coun­ty par­ty par­lia­men­tar­i­an. Par­ty rank and file mem­bers have fam­i­lies and jobs, and rarely desire the addi­tion­al respon­si­bil­i­ties those offices require because they do take time and effort, with­out pay, and there are many oth­er press­ing mat­ters to occu­py one’s lim­it­ed time. In short, it is pret­ty easy to be vot­ed into a job no one else wants. Once in posi­tion, how­ev­er, because, appar­ent­ly, no one among the faith­ful knows any bet­ter, an aggres­sive rules chair­man and par­lia­men­tar­i­an can manip­u­late per­cep­tions of par­ty rules and pro­ce­dures in the minds of the par­ty mem­ber­ship to accom­plish prac­ti­cal­ly any­thing he or she wants, includ­ing being per­son­al­ly nom­i­nat­ed and appoint­ed to strate­gic and pow­er­ful local gov­ern­ment boards. And, appar­ent­ly, what I describe is how Joel Natt became a mem­ber of the pow­er­ful Forsyth Coun­ty Reg­is­tra­tions and Elec­tions Board (BRE).

“Say what you want,” recent­ly wrote one for­mer Forsyth Coun­ty Repub­li­can Par­ty Chair­man, “but the way the [Natt] appoint­ment was made is the way it has been done as long as I have been involved with the Forsyth Coun­ty Repub­li­can Par­ty.” Informed that those appoint­ments were not law­ful, when asked to spec­i­fy the nom­i­na­tions he made with­out par­ty approval to the board of com­mis­sion­ers dur­ing his tenure, becom­ing indig­nant, the for­mer GOP chair proud­ly dou­bling down, “I nev­er did any­thing with­out the author­i­ty of the EC (Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee) or CC (Coun­ty Com­mit­tee), as the case may have war­rant­ed. I do not recall a “vote” being tak­en but rather the EC (Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee) had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to object. I con­sid­ered it an approval by accla­ma­tion as is permitted.” 

But the law does not per­mit “approval by accla­ma­tion” of the “Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee” com­prised of 6 office hold­ers. The law requires an affirm­ing vote of the “coun­ty exec­u­tive com­mit­tee” com­prised of approx­i­mate­ly 35 mem­bers, those 6 office hold­ers PLUS as many as 29 precinct chairs, as the par­ty is present­ly con­fig­ured. The indi­vid­ual to whom I attribute those remarks, is the one who appoint­ed Natt to the BRE in 2019, proud­ly admit­ting on social media he took the vote of no one. Assum­ing he is truth­ful in those com­ments, it appears Joel Natt has been unlaw­ful­ly occu­py­ing the same BRE seat he is sched­uled to swear to accept Tues­day, for the last 4 years!

So now we get to see how Forsyth Coun­ty Repub­li­can Rules Com­mit­tee Chair­man and Par­lia­men­tar­i­an, Joel Natt, appar­ent­ly plant­ed him­self on the Forsyth Coun­ty Board of Reg­is­tra­tions and Elec­tions (BRE) in the first place. He knew the rules and legal pro­ce­dures regard­ing that appoint­ment, when evi­dent­ly no one else did. As report­ed to me by Repub­li­can mem­bers dur­ing this time, Natt indoc­tri­nat­ed the minds of local Repub­li­can exec­u­tive office hold­ers with dis­tort­ed per­cep­tions of those rules and pro­ce­dures, twist­ed to favor cer­tain polit­i­cal out­comes, cre­at­ing, for exam­ple, a pre­vail­ing impres­sion that only one per­son, the coun­ty par­ty chair­man, a friend who could be trust­ed, pos­sessed pow­er to uni­lat­er­al­ly nom­i­nate mem­bers to that pow­er­ful board, and that no one else had any say what­so­ev­er in who would sit on it. Boil­ing it down very sim­ply, plant­i­ng ref­er­ences of this dis­tort­ed real­i­ty into the minds of key indi­vid­u­als, well in advance of an impend­ing nom­i­na­tion, and even intim­i­dat­ing, from time to time, those in posi­tion to ques­tion his inter­pre­ta­tions of the rules and pro­ce­dures, in the end, Natt received the uni­lat­er­al nom­i­na­tion from his friends, the par­ty chair­per­sons, at least twice, result­ing in the sub­se­quent, now suc­ces­sive, appoint­ments he desired. 

This is how pol­i­tics works. This is how elec­tions get stolen. This is why good peo­ple must step out of their com­fort zones and get involved. 

And don’t count on your com­mis­sion­ers to fol­low the law any bet­ter than those for­mer par­ty chairs or the nom­i­nee, the good ole boys and girls on the com­mis­sion “rub­ber stamp­ing” what­ev­er a par­ty chair, or even some­one who pur­ports to be a par­ty chair, sends them. It’s just too sim­ple to pull the wool on good peo­ple. Too many times, good peo­ple seem to think every­one one else is “good peo­ple,” too, nev­er imag­in­ing that any­one would have ulte­ri­or motives. 

And it almost worked with­out a hitch. The Geor­gia uni­par­ty in the per­son of Mr. Natt almost took the seat open­ing Sep­tem­ber 1 on the Forsyth Coun­ty BRE with­out a fight. But then some­body actu­al­ly looked up the law. The law does not say what the coun­ty Repub­li­can par­lia­men­tar­i­an led every­one to believe at all. Accord­ing to the Forsyth Coun­ty Code, Arti­cle III, Sec­tion 2, which mir­rors state law, an entire coun­ty­wide com­mit­tee of Repub­li­cans must vote to rat­i­fy a nom­i­nee before the chair­per­son can ten­der it to the board of com­mis­sion­ers for appoint­ment. And impor­tant­ly, accord­ing to Arti­cle III, Sec­tion 4, the com­mis­sion can­not sim­ply “rub­ber stamp” a par­ty nom­i­na­tion “like they’ve always done.” Instead, the law requires the com­mis­sion to CERTIFY the nom­i­nee is “duly appoint­ed as pro­vid­ed in the Act,” mean­ing he or she was appoint­ed exact­ly as accord­ing to the pro­ce­dures of Arti­cle III, Sec­tion 2, a require­ment the com­mis­sion­ers keep play­ing play­ing too dumb to under­stand. In my let­ter below, I explain it such that a 3rd grad­er can comprehend. 

In the present case of Mr. Natt’s appar­ent unlaw­ful appoint­ment, the coun­ty com­mis­sion did what it usu­al­ly does, “rub­ber stamp­ing” it a full six months pri­or to the end of the present term of Mr. Natt, pre­vi­ous­ly appoint­ed unlaw­ful­ly 4 years ago accord­ing to his friend. But when the new coun­ty Repub­li­can chair point­ed out that the Natt “uni­par­ty” nom­i­na­tion did not fol­low the law, and was there­fore unlaw­ful and void, the com­mis­sion mem­bers effec­tive­ly said, “not our prob­lem” nev­er mov­ing an inch to cor­rect the error since learn­ing about it in May, nev­er mov­ing to restore the rule of law, and appoint a tru­ly law­ful nominee. 

This Tues­day, despite the best efforts of many local patri­ots, two-time Manchuri­an can­di­date Joel Natt is sched­uled to swear in to suc­ceed him­self as the next Forsyth Coun­ty BRE mem­ber, hav­ing nev­er been nom­i­nat­ed accord­ing to the law in two terms, hav­ing instead effec­tive­ly fun­neled his nom­i­na­tion to the Forsyth Coun­ty Board of Com­mis­sion­ers via two now for­mer Repub­li­can chair­men, friends who would soon to be out the door of par­ty pol­i­tics, leav­ing the residue of taint­ed, unlaw­ful appoint­ments to haunt the peo­ple of Forsyth Coun­ty for four more years. 

Because we are near­ing the end of this phase of the strug­gle for law­ful rep­re­sen­ta­tion on the Forsyth Coun­ty Board of Reg­is­tra­tions and Elec­tions, yes­ter­day morn­ing, Sep­tem­ber 3, I sent the fol­low­ing let­ter to each mem­ber of the Forsyth Coun­ty Com­mis­sion via email : 

Dear Com­mis­sion­ers,

When we last com­mu­ni­cat­ed, it was August 3rd, one month ago. At that time I asked you to pro­vide a response to my legit­i­mate con­cerns regard­ing the appar­ent unlaw­ful appoint­ment of Mr. Joel Natt to Forsyth Coun­ty Board of Reg­is­tra­tions and Elec­tions (BRE). To date I have received no response, and you have also failed to respond to the ques­tions offered by the Forsyth Coun­ty News. So, in case you sim­ply for­got, to refresh your mem­o­ries, I and many oth­ers con­tend the Joel Natt BRE appoint­ment was unlaw­ful because nei­ther the pre­vi­ous Chair­man of the Forsyth Coun­ty Repub­li­can Par­ty, nor the mem­bers of the Forsyth Coun­ty Com­mis­sion, ful­filled their law­ful­ly-pre­scribed duties under Forsyth Coun­ty Code Arti­cle III, Sec­tions 2 and 4, which as you know is state law. It was the Repub­li­can Par­ty Chairman’s respon­si­bil­i­ty to take the appro­pri­ate vote as the law requires (I will offer more on that below), and it was YOUR respon­si­bil­i­ty to CERTIFY that the law was fol­lowed, mean­ing the entire law regard­ing the appoint­ment of BRE mem­bers. There is no get­ting around that. 

What it means to “CERTIFY”

Because you stub­born­ly refuse to acknowl­edge what it means to “CERTIFY,” appar­ent­ly it falls on me to help you to under­stand. Con­sult­ing Black’s Law Dic­tio­nary, to CERTIFY means is “to author­i­ta­tive­ly con­firm as being gen­uine or true as rep­re­sent­ed, or com­ply or meet spec­i­fied require­ments or stan­dards.” Thus, when the coun­ty com­mis­sion CERTIFIES that Joel Natt has been “appoint­ed as pro­vid­ed by the Act,” the board “author­i­ta­tive­ly con­firms as true” that Mr. Natt’s appoint­ment “com­plies with the spec­i­fied require­ments,” as those spec­i­fied require­ments are described in Forsyth Coun­ty Code Arti­cle III, Sec­tion 2 below. To help under­stand what that means, I will pro­vide an exam­ple. Please study this label:

The man­u­fac­tur­er of this diesel exhaust flu­id CERTIFIES that its prod­uct COMPLIES WITH THE ISO 22241 STANDARD. As Black’s Law Dic­tio­nary tells us, to CERTIFY means “to author­i­ta­tive­ly con­firm as being gen­uine or true as rep­re­sent­ed, or com­ply or meet spec­i­fied require­ments or stan­dards.” Thus, if the flu­id from a manufacturer’s con­tain­er, leav­ing the fac­to­ry bear­ing this label, is a sub­stance OTHER THAN diesel exhaust flu­id ISO 22241, the exhaust sys­tem of any engine in which it is used could suf­fer heavy dam­age. That means the exhaust flu­id man­u­fac­tur­er found neg­li­gent, hav­ing false­ly or mis­tak­en­ly CERTIFIED that the flu­id in the con­tain­er is what the label says it is, could be held liable to pay for those dam­ages. You with me? Because it is CERTIFIED ISO 22241, that cer­ti­fi­ca­tion cre­ates a legal foun­da­tion for diesel engine oper­a­tors or oth­er inter­est­ed par­ties to depend that the flu­id behind the label is suf­fi­cient to its stat­ed pur­pose and safe to use in diesel engines. 

Now, would you ever imag­ine a case in which this man­u­fac­tur­er of diesel exhaust flu­id would bypass a depend­able cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process and sim­ply “rub­ber stamp” that its prod­uct, used in mil­lions of diesel engines world­wide, com­plies with ISO 22241 stan­dards? Know­ing the poten­tial dam­age it could cause oth­er­wise, would you not expect this man­u­fac­tur­er to always exer­cise an appro­pri­ate lev­el of dili­gence to make sure its prod­uct com­plies with those stan­dards? We all know the answer to that ques­tion. Still, the law does not tell the man­u­fac­tur­er how to go about CERTIFYING its prod­uct meets those stan­dards. In fact, the man­u­fac­tur­er does not have to do any­thing at all if it choos­es not to, which would be fine as long as the flu­id in the con­tain­er actu­al­ly is the flu­id as CERTIFIED on the label and caus­es no dam­age to the end users’ prop­er­ty. Sim­i­lar­ly, when the Forsyth Coun­ty Board of Com­mis­sion­ers CERTIFIED that Joel Natt was “duly appoint­ed as pro­vid­ed in the Act,” as long as that law­ful require­ment might be true, no dam­ages might result. And, just as before, no one can require the BOC do any­thing it does not want to do. BUT, as soon as it turns out Mr. Natt was NOT “duly appoint­ed as pro­vid­ed in the Act,” hav­ing been CERTIFIED that he was by the coun­ty com­mis­sion, just like the diesel exhaust flu­id man­u­fac­tur­er who per­forms no due dili­gence to CERTIFY its prod­uct, and the prod­uct turns out faulty and dam­ages engines of its users, both the BOC and the man­u­fac­tur­er could be liable for resul­tant dam­ages. And that is where we stand at this moment. When the statute says the board of com­mis­sion­ers has a respon­si­bil­i­ty to CERTIFY the law was fol­lowed, it means that it is the board’s respon­si­bil­i­ty to take WHATEVER MEASURES ARE SUFFICIENT to sat­is­fy itself that the law was fol­lowed, know­ing that if the com­mis­sion makes a mis­take, mean­ing as things turn out the law was not fol­lowed, the coun­ty and per­haps even the com­mis­sion mem­bers them­selves, shown neg­li­gent, could be liable for dam­ages. The law does not spell out how you CERTIFY, only that you MUST CERTIFY. You have to decide the process to do that for yourselves.

Because nei­ther the mem­bers of the BOC, nor the coun­ty attor­ney, will seem­ing­ly acknowl­edge under­stand­ing the basic prin­ci­ple above, writ­ten in plain Eng­lish in the law, and acknowl­edge their law­ful respon­si­bil­i­ties in appoint­ing BRE mem­bers, I have tak­en the time now to explain it as I believe it to mean. 

“Manchurian” swearing in Tuesday on the strength of an unsigned, two line letter

Because nei­ther the for­mer Repub­li­can chair, nor the coun­ty com­mis­sion, DID THEIR JOBS accord­ing to the law, the peo­ple of Forsyth Coun­ty now have an appar­ent “ringer,” a “Manchuri­an can­di­date,” about to take office in one of the most impor­tant and pow­er­ful board posi­tions in Forsyth Coun­ty Gov­ern­ment, and per­haps even the state and nation, as we head toward the 2024 elec­tions. And unfor­tu­nate­ly, no one in posi­tion to stop an inter­lop­er from tak­ing office appears inter­est­ed in fol­low­ing the law. Inter­est­ing­ly, last year, pri­or to midterms, the indi­vid­ual now appar­ent­ly FALSELY OR MISTAKENLY CERTIFIED BY THE BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS accord­ing to the rea­sons above, and who is on the verge of tak­ing office on Tues­day, agreed on video that some­where between 29,000 and 34,000 names on Forsyth Coun­ty vot­er rolls “should not be there.” Yet an hour before con­fi­dent­ly mak­ing that state­ment to fel­low Repub­li­cans, he vot­ed NO to a motion to inves­ti­gate near­ly 13,000 of those names, a fact lead­ing many to ques­tion whether there is an agen­da behind every­thing we are wit­ness­ing here.

Since my last cor­re­spon­dence with you, I was at least pleased to dis­cov­er two com­mis­sion­ers among you in favor of direct­ing the coun­ty attor­ney to answer my con­cerns. Per­haps they are inter­est­ed to know his response as well. Either way, of course, that leaves the oth­er three block­ing the way. What puz­zles me is whether the remain­ing three are active­ly cov­er­ing for the coun­ty attor­ney, or the coun­ty attor­ney is cov­er­ing for them, or maybe both. And now, a prac­ti­cal­ly avoid­able trav­es­ty is sched­uled to occur on Tues­day morn­ing at the Forsyth Coun­ty Elec­tions Office, mak­ing an answer to my con­cerns at this point moot. Unless some­thing dras­ti­cal­ly changes, it appears yet anoth­er Manchuri­an can­di­date (this kind of appoint­ment process has been going on for quite some time) will unlaw­ful­ly assume an appoint­ed posi­tion on the Forsyth Coun­ty Board of Elec­tions he is not enti­tled to. He should not enter that office because not one mem­ber on the Forsyth Coun­ty Repub­li­can Par­ty com­mit­tee required to law­ful­ly rat­i­fy his nom­i­na­tion to the board was even giv­en an oppor­tu­ni­ty to vote, one way or the oth­er. Fur­ther­more, the Forsyth Coun­ty Com­mis­sion, charged with the respon­si­bil­i­ty to CERTIFY that the law regard­ing BRE appoint­ments was duly fol­lowed, chose rather to rub­ber-stamp his appoint­ment pure­ly on the strength of an unsigned let­ter, osten­si­bly from the for­mer coun­ty Repub­li­can chair­man, a let­ter so improp­er­ly writ­ten it is not even addressed to the cor­rect board. Astound­ing is the fact that the entire paper trail required to cer­ti­fy an appar­ent Manchuri­an can­di­date, obvi­ous­ly favored by those in high posi­tions of state pow­er, to a board of elec­tions seat in Forsyth Coun­ty, Geor­gia, is that sin­gle cor­re­spon­dence you see below, noth­ing else. 

Who really has standing to sue?

It is reli­ably report­ed by oth­ers in atten­dance that dur­ing a pri­vate con­fer­ence between two com­mis­sion mem­bers and the chair of the coun­ty Repub­li­can “chief exec­u­tive com­mit­tee” and com­mit­tee attor­neys, that one com­mis­sion mem­ber asked the coun­ty attor­ney whether the Natt appoint­ment could be void­ed. His answer was, as report­ed, “yes.” How­ev­er, qual­i­fy­ing his response, he sub­se­quent­ly expressed to the com­mis­sion mem­bers, “but you could be sued.” Now, real­ly, who would sue the coun­ty for void­ing a prov­ably-unlaw­ful BRE appoint­ment? Mr. Natt would not sue the coun­ty over a board seat he knows would be prov­ably-unlaw­ful for him to hold. But, as also report­ed, dur­ing that meet­ing, the coun­ty attor­ney did not express con­cern for suits that could arise for NOT void­ing an unlaw­ful appoint­ment. Why did he offer such a one-sided legal opinion?

I ask that ques­tion because, as it turns out, the Forsyth Coun­ty Repub­li­can Par­ty Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee (“chief exec­u­tive com­mit­tee” as described in OCGA 21–2‑113), com­prised of, at max­i­mum, six mem­bers, IS NOT the com­mit­tee at all empow­ered by law to vote on the rat­i­fi­ca­tion of a BRE nom­i­nee. Instead, accord­ing to OCGA 21–2‑113 it is the entire “coun­ty exec­u­tive com­mit­tee,” which by that statute is the coun­ty com­mit­tee at-large, nor­mal­ly num­ber­ing around 35 mem­bers, who must rat­i­fy a BRE nom­i­nee by major­i­ty vote before he or she could be ten­dered for appoint­ment by the board of com­mis­sion­ers. Not coin­ci­den­tal­ly, it was the offi­cial Forsyth Coun­ty Repub­li­can Par­ty Par­lia­men­tar­i­an, Joel Natt, who there­fore bore a respon­si­bil­i­ty to know the law regard­ing appoint­ments, but who report­ed­ly steered the par­ty “chief exec­u­tive com­mit­tee,” includ­ing the for­mer chair­man, to believe his nom­i­na­tion was con­trolled by one indi­vid­ual, the same now for­mer chair­man who pur­port­ed­ly wrote the let­ter above. That makes approx­i­mate­ly 35 indi­vid­u­als who, as of today, because of coun­ty com­mis­sion neg­li­gence, and/or affir­ma­tive dis­re­gard, were appar­ent­ly sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly denied the law­ful right to vote on Mr. Natt’s nom­i­na­tion before the com­mis­sion rub­ber-stamped the appoint­ment on Feb­ru­ary 2, 2023, hav­ing received not even a signed appli­ca­tion for that appoint­ment. It’s astound­ing that the Forsyth Coun­ty Com­mis­sion would freely hand out pow­er­ful board posi­tions in coun­ty gov­ern­ment with­out even requir­ing an appli­ca­tion, or even a signed let­ter or affi­davit of qualification.

But on top of those 35 or so com­mit­tee mem­bers denied by the coun­ty com­mis­sion the law­ful­ly-pre­scribed right to vote on Mr. Natt’s nom­i­na­tion pri­or to rub­ber-stamp­ing it in Feb­ru­ary, on July 18 of this year, 23 mem­bers com­pris­ing a quo­rum of the same law­ful­ly-empow­ered com­mit­tee actu­al­ly did offi­cial­ly vote, ful­ly rat­i­fy­ing the nom­i­na­tion of Mr. Ste­fan Bar­tel­s­ki to the con­test­ed board posi­tion. A record of that law-ful­fill­ing vote to rat­i­fy Mr. Bar­tel­s­ki as Repub­li­can nom­i­nee to the BRE, includ­ing the sig­na­tures of the 23 com­mit­tee mem­bers so rat­i­fy­ing, was sent to you by present par­ty chair Mendy Moore, giv­ing you offi­cial notice and proof, CERTIFYING for your pur­pos­es that Mr. Bar­tel­s­ki is the only law­ful nom­i­nee ever pre­sent­ed for the position’s appoint­ment for the term com­menc­ing Sep­tem­ber 1. Stub­born­ly, almost as if some­one out­side the five com­mis­sion mem­bers is orches­trat­ing the board’s deci­sions, you chose nev­er to con­sid­er Mr. Bartelski’s claim on the seat at all. Thus, in refus­ing to con­sid­er Mr. Bar­tel­s­ki, you chose against con­sid­er­ing the only law­ful­ly-nom­i­nat­ed indi­vid­ual for the posi­tion of BRE mem­ber for the com­ing term, appar­ent­ly know­ing that the can­di­date who sailed through your com­mit­tee in Feb­ru­ary, with no scruti­ny what­so­ev­er, was unlawful. 

Now, I am not an attor­ney, but from this layman’s per­spec­tive, it appears that by your actions you have inad­ver­tent­ly cre­at­ed at least three class­es of plain­tiffs with prov­able dam­ages against Forsyth County: 

1. those you denied the law­ful right to vote for or against the Manchuri­an you rub­ber-stamped in February; 

2. those whose law­ful votes rat­i­fy­ing Mr. Bar­tel­s­ki were sum­mar­i­ly dis­en­fran­chised by your deci­sion not to con­sid­er them, and

3. Mr. Bar­tel­s­ki him­self, who remains at this moment the only law­ful nom­i­nee ever pro­posed for the office in ques­tion, the term of which offi­cial­ly began Sep­tem­ber 1, whose law­ful claim you stub­born­ly still ignore. 

And I am not count­ing the hun­dreds of thou­sands of Forsyth Coun­ty cit­i­zens, such as myself, by whose tax dol­lars the coun­ty com­mis­sion would pay to defend itself. I am also not count­ing the pletho­ra of ethics charges each mem­ber of the coun­ty com­mis­sion could con­ceiv­ably face. Great job, com­mis­sion­ers! Because you took such excel­lent advice from your coun­ty attor­ney, who warned only of one suit by an indi­vid­ual who had no case at all against you, you now have up to 35 indi­vid­u­als, each who appear to pos­sess slam dunk cas­es against the coun­ty com­mis­sion, pos­si­bly to include civ­il rights vio­la­tions, which the Forsyth Coun­ty tax­pay­ers would have to pay to defend. As a tax­pay­er with stand­ing in all of this, whose dol­lars would go to defend such malfea­sance, I am dumbfounded. 

Again, I am no lawyer. But there appear even more cas­es which could result from your hor­ri­ble and dis­hon­or­able man­age­ment of this sit­u­a­tion. When the coun­ty com­mis­sion mem­bers ulti­mate­ly refused to even inves­ti­gate the appoint­ment of Mr. Natt, after being prop­er­ly noti­fied of the appar­ent fact of his unlaw­ful nom­i­na­tion, refus­ing in the process to take up the law­ful nom­i­na­tion of Mr. Bar­tel­s­ki, each mem­ber there­fore did so with knowl­edge of the appar­ent fact that Mr. Natt’s nom­i­na­tion and sub­se­quent appoint­ment was unlaw­ful. Repub­li­can Chair Mendy Moore informed you of that on May 17. She spoke with sev­er­al of you in the mean­time. She sent you notice of Mr. Bartelski’s nom­i­na­tion, CERTIFYING his law­ful rat­i­fi­ca­tion by includ­ing the “coun­ty exec­u­tive com­mit­tee” sig­na­tures demon­strat­ing such, on July 18. I and num­bers of oth­ers com­mu­ni­cat­ed that same appar­ent fact to you many times and in many ways, both writ­ten and oral­ly dur­ing your meet­ings. Your own ethics rules as well as state ethics rules under §45–10‑3 require that gov­ern­ment board mem­bers “nev­er be a par­ty to the law’s eva­sion,” open­ing the door for count­less ethics charges which would nat­u­ral­ly come against you. Thus, because you did all of that know­ing­ly, nev­er tak­ing any steps to even inves­ti­gate, while own­ing the statu­to­ry respon­si­bil­i­ty to do so, if the courts deter­mine you have been wrong, and the appoint­ment of Mr. Natt was indeed unlaw­ful, I under­stand you could very well have exposed your­selves per­son­al­ly should any of the 35 or more poten­tial plain­tiffs ref­er­enced above, choose to lit­i­gate against you. And as you undoubt­ed­ly under­stand, the coun­ty attor­ney can­not be paid with tax­pay­er funds to defend you for know­ing­ly and unlaw­ful­ly vio­lat­ing your pre­scribed duties and respon­si­bil­i­ties, not to men­tion your eth­i­cal respon­si­bil­i­ties regard­ing law eva­sion. Appar­ent­ly, the only task for any one of those poten­tial plain­tiffs, or all of them for that mat­ter, to pre­vail, would be to demon­strate that what all these par­ties have been telling you since May 17 is indeed true, mean­ing that the Natt nom­i­na­tion, and sub­se­quent rub­ber-stamp­ing of his appoint­ment to the BRE, was in fact unlawful. 

But, like I say, I’m no lawyer. I’m just a coun­ty tax­pay­er who knows what he knows and doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, but one who is very con­cerned about the mis­man­age­ment of Forsyth Coun­ty under this board of com­mis­sion­ers. Your per­son­al attor­neys will have to advise you in all of your poten­tial lia­bil­i­ties here. And that’s a good thing for you to know. I wouldn’t count on the coun­ty attor­ney for much help in this. He appears to have been instru­men­tal in cre­at­ing this dif­fi­cul­ty for you in the first place. And he won’t be able help defend you per­son­al­ly any­way. Tax­pay­ers watch­ing this mis­car­riage of jus­tice will make sure of that.

Board of commissioners still has a chance to repair 

All that said, you still have the small­est chance to make all of this right and avoid big­ger prob­lems. All you have to do is void the appoint­ment of Joel Natt before he takes office, or con­vince him to stand down and relin­quish his appoint­ment. From what I under­stand, any afore­men­tioned dam­ages would incur only upon his swear­ing. But, I under­stand void­ing his appoint­ment would now entail con­ven­ing an emer­gency ses­sion, tak­ing a vote and direct­ing some­one autho­rized to speak for the com­mis­sion to con­tact Gov­er­nor Kemp over Labor Day week­end, and plead with him to can­cel the swear­ing order of Mr. Natt sched­uled for Tues­day. Because of the appar­ent role the gov­er­nor has been play­ing in sup­port of Mr. Natt’s appoint­ment already, and per­haps because of the mood he has recent­ly dis­played, that is not a con­ver­sa­tion I expect any­one would rel­ish to have. 

Per­haps, there­fore, it is time to speak with Mr. Natt.

You were advised of the issue in a time­ly man­ner; you sub­se­quent­ly received a nom­i­na­tion con­duct­ed in accor­dance with the law; you are on record hav­ing been advised that you have the option of chang­ing the nom­i­na­tion and to date have failed to take action to cor­rect the unlaw­ful nom­i­na­tion. You can be assured that allow­ing an unlaw­ful­ly nom­i­nat­ed can­di­date to take office will cre­ate dam­ages to many who hold stand­ing in the mat­ter. You will not be able to use lack of author­i­ty for your fail­ure to stop the dam­age from occurring. 

Hank Sul­li­van