The Oconee County Board of Elections and Registration on Tuesday turned down the Application Petition of a group of Bishop residents that would have been the first step in initiating a recall election for the mayor and three members of the Bishop Council.
The Elections Board took that action after reviewing the application documents submitted the day earlier and determining that Greg Montgomery, designated as the Petition Chairperson on the four Recall Application Petitions, is not a registered voter in Bishop or in Oconee County and had not actually signed the petitions.
The Elections Board determined that, as required, in each of the four applications a sufficient number of eligible voters–at least 19--had signed the petitions asking for the recall of Mayor Drew Kurtz and Council Members Chuck Hadden, Deborah Lucas, and Hudson Holder.
The forms also had been returned within 15 days of when Jacob Spaulding, one of the petition circulators, had picked up the application forms from the Office of Elections and Registration on Feb. 18.
The Board also determined that the applications submitted with Montgomery listed as chairperson and Spaulding and Alexander Schmidt listed as circulators contained the required statement of the reason for the recall.
The signers of the petition said that Kurtz, Hadden, Lucas, and Holder have “violated his or her oath of office,” are “guilty of a failure to perform duties prescribed by law,” and have “willfully misused, converted, or misappropriated without authority, public property or public funds.”
The statement does not indicate why Council Member Mindy Porterfield was exempted from the recall application, but Porterfield was the only member of the Council in favor of negotiating a new lease with St. Aelred’s Catholic Church for the Bishop Community Center at the Council’s January meeting.
The Elections Board decision on Tuesday should bring to an end the recall initiative, according to Oconee County Director of Elections and Registration Sharon Gregg, since a second application cannot be submitted for 180 days, and recall applications cannot be submitted during the last 180 days of the term of office of the public official subject to recall.
The mayor and all four members of the Bishop Council are up for election on Nov. 4 for new four-year terms.
Recall Procedures
Recall procedures are complex, and Jay Hanley, Chair of the Board of Elections and Registration, said after the deliberations on the petitions on Tuesday (March 4), that this was the first time he had dealt with a recall petition in the more than 20 years he has been on the Board.
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| Stone (Left), Gregg |
The first step in a recall is the issuance of the applications, which took place on Feb. 18 when Spaulding picked up the forms from the county Elections and Registration Office.
The application required signatures of 10 percent of the registered voters in Bishop at the last election for Mayor and Council.
Assistant Director of Elections and Registration Jennifer Stone told the Elections Board on Monday that 185 persons in Bishop were registered at the time of that election, so the minimum number of signatures needed was 19.
Had the Board verified the petitions, that is, found that all of the requirements had been met, the Board would have issued a petition for recall.
The circulators would have had 30 days to collect signatures of 30 percent of the 185 voters, or 56 signatures, on the recall petitions.
If those signatures were collected and verified, the city would have conducted a recall election asking whether those named should be recalled, with the options only yes or no.
If the recall passed, the city would have held qualifying for the offices and conducted a special election to fill the offices of those recalled.
Under an agreement with the county, the county Oconee County Board of Elections and Registration handles elections for Bishop.
Board Review Of Application
Assistant Director of Elections and Registration Stone told the Elections Board on Tuesday (March 4) that the first problem with the materials returned by Spaulding on Monday (March 3) was they were not assembled as specified in the Georgia Code.
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| Board Members Ken Davis, Doug Hammond, Shami Jones (L-R) 3/4/2025 |
Georgia Code specifies that “If a recall petition contains more than one sheet, such recall petition shall, when offered for filing, be bound together and each sheet shall be numbered consecutively at the foot of each page beginning with page one.”
The pages of signatures were numbered for each of the persons sought to be recalled, Stone said, but the individual sheets were not “bound together” and the whole packet was held together with a clip.
In each case, she said, Montgomery is listed as the chairperson of the sponsors. Sponsors is the name for those who signed the petition.
Since Montgomery did not sign the petition, he was not a sponsor, she said.
Stone said 28 people signed the petition asking for the recall of Kurtz, and 22 of those were determined to be qualified voters in Bishop.
For Hadden, 27 persons signed the petition, and 19 were verified.
For Lucas, 28 signed the petition, and 22 were verified.
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| Stone, Demonstrating How Forms Submitted, Gregg (Right) 3/4/2025 |
In the case of Holder, 29 signed the petition, and 23 were verified.
The Board reviewed and voted on each of the cases separately, starting with Kurtz.
Discussion focused most heavily on the problem of Mongtomery’s status.
Stone presented an Individual Voter Report from the Georgia Secretary of State showing a cancelled registration form for Gregory Scott Montgomery at 801 Diamond Hill Colbert Road in Madison County.
On the Affidavit of Circulator and Petition Chairperson Montgomery lists his address as 5470 Price Mill Road in Bishop.
Following individual votes, each of the five members of the Board signed a form stating that the reason for the decision to determine that the petition was not verified was that the “application is not bound together. Chairperson is not an official sponsor or registered voter.”
Additional Wrinkle
Had the Oconee County Elections Board verified the application for the recall, Kurtz, Hadden, Lucas, and Holder could have filed a request with the Oconee County Superior Court for a second opinion on verification.
Georgia Code specifies that “Within four days after the date of submission of the application for a recall petition for verification, excluding Saturdays, Sundays, and legal holidays, the officer sought to be recalled may file a petition in the Superior Court of the county in which such officer is domiciled applying for a review of the sufficiency of the ground or grounds for the recall and the fact or facts upon which such ground or grounds are based as set forth in such recall application.”
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| Hanley 3/4/2025 |
The recall applications submitted by the Bishop sponsors stated that “The Town is obligated by its charter (6.29) to have an annual independent audit conducted by a certified public accountant,” but “The Council member listed on this petition failed to order the audit mandated by law and allocated funds to other projects in lieu of meeting its legal obligations.”
The statement makes no mention of the controversy over the lease of the Bishop Community Center.
Assistant Director of Elections and Registration Stone said in an email on March 5 that “The challenged officials were sent a letter and email letting them know that the application had been returned.”
She said that the letter cited Georgia code “regarding the next steps” in the process.
Earlier Emails
Kurtz and all four members of the Council had received an email from petition circulator Schmidt on Feb. 4 informing them that “The people of Bishop are prepared to exhaust every legal remedy available to ensure their government remains representative and accountable.”
“This includes pursuing a recall election under Title 21 Chapter 4 of the Official Code of Georgia, should the Council continue to disregard the public’s concerns,” the email continued.
Attached with the email was a letter signed by Schmidt, Montgomery, Alison Faircloth, and Matthew Graham stating that “the voices of the community are being largely ignored” regarding the “extension of the lease to St. Aelred Catholic Church.”
When Spaulding picked up the application materials on Feb. 18, it was little more than a month after the Jan. 13 Council meeting at which Porterfield made a motion for negotiation of a lease extension with St. Aelred’s Catholic Church that died for lack of a second.
Feb. 18 was eight days after a Feb. 10 Council meeting at which Spaulding and Schmidt made public comments, according to a draft of minutes of that meeting.
A report of that meeting on the front page of the Feb. 20 issue of The Oconee Enterprise, said discussion of the lease with St. Aelred’s dominated citizen comments that night.
Video
The video below is of the meeting of March 4 meeting of the Board of Elections and Registration.
I left the meeting shortly before it ended to attend the meeting of the Oconee County Board of Commissioners.
I left a second camera with another attendee.
The video below merges the video from the two cameras.
Discussion of the Recall Application Petition begins at 2:57 in the video.
Correction: I had the first name of Spaulding incorrect in the original version of this story. I apologize for the error.
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