Court filing questions grounds for recall effort against Athens Mayor Kelly Girtz

The judge presiding over Athens-Clarke County Mayor Kelly Girtz’s challenge to a recall effort has ordered the organizer of the effort to be added as a respondent to the mayor’s petition for a legal review of the initiative.

Also in the order, filed earlier this month in Athens-Clarke County Superior Court, Senior Judge J. David Roper is requiring that, while the case is under review “all other recall proceedings shall be suspended.”

Senior judges are retired judges who take cases upon a local judicial circuit's request. Athens-Clarke County Superior Court Clerk Elisa Zarate asked for assignment of a senior judge to the case.

More: Athens Mayor Kelly Girtz petitions Superior Court to suspend recall effort against him

Added as a respondent to Girtz’s petition under Roper’s order is James DePaola of Winterville, who joins the Athens-Clarke County government as a respondent.

DePaola, a street preacher, began agitating for recalling Girtz – along with recalling Clarke County Sheriff John Q. Williams and Western Circuit District Attorney Deborah Gonzalez – following the February death of Laken Riley, a 22-year-old Athens nursing student.

Riley’s body was found off a running trail near the University of Georgia’s intramural fields on Feb. 22. The next day, 26-year-old Jose Ibarra, an undocumented Venezuelan immigrant, was arrested on murder and other charges in connection with Riley’s death by blunt force trauma.

DePaola attended a news conference convened by the mayor some days later, and along with about a dozen other people, began calling loudly for Girtz’s resignation.

Some days after that, at a meeting of Athens-Clarke County’s mayor and commission, DePaola loudly announced his intention to launch recall proceedings against Girtz and the other targeted officials, alleging that under their leadership the community had been operating as a de facto sanctuary city.

Girtz filed his initial court challenge to the recall effort on April 8, and he has since filed two amended petitions in the matter. The mayor’s latest petition was filed on May 10, five days after Roper ordered DePaola added to the case as a respondent. According to Girtz’s May 10 filing, DePaola has acknowledged his status as a new respondent in the recall challenge.

Regarding DePaola, the amended petition contends that he “failed to carry his statutory burden of proof” under terms of state recall laws, which also govern local recall initiatives.

Accordingly, Girtz’s latest petition asks for “dismissal of the Recall Application” (a preliminary step in a recall effort, begun some weeks ago by DePaola), and repeats a call in a previous filing for a court order stopping the county from scheduling a recall election against Girtz.

The filing by Girtz’s counsel is not substantially different from the previously amended petition in the case, filed on April 24. The filing does, however, note specifically that DePaola failed to properly complete the form supplied for the recall application.

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A recall application is a precursor to a recall petition. The application -- which requires the signatures of 100 people in the affected jurisdiction who were registered to vote in the last election for the candidate targeted for recall, or 3% of those voters, whichever is less – sets out grounds for the proposed recall.

A recall petition, the last step before a recall election may be called, requires the signatures of at least 30% of the people who were eligible to vote in the last election involving the targeted official. In the case of the Girtz recall, the petition will require thousands of signatures.

In his latest court filing, Girtz contends that DePaola failed to fill out a required section of the recall application form that requires the applicant to mark the following specific categories as grounds for the recall: that the targeted official “has committed an act or acts of malfeasance while in office,” “has violated his or her oath of office,” “has committed an act of misconduct in office,” “is guilty of a failure to perform duties as described by law,” or “has willfully misused, converted or misappropriated without authority, public funds entrusted to or associated with the elective office to which the official has been elected or appointed.”

The latest petition seeking to halt the recall effort targeting Girtz notes that DePaola did not mark any of the listed categories. Instead, DePaola wrote that Girtz “violated oath & failed to perform duties prescribed by Ga. Law by knowingly operating Athens as a sanctuary city without a voice or vote from citizens of Athens & secretly entering into contract with federal officials and/or NGO (non-governmental organizations) to make Athen (sic) a refugee resettlement area.”

Beyond challenging the fact that the recall application was not properly filled out, the latest petition contends that “the alleged ‘facts’” in DePaola’s recall application “contain legal conclusions and vague allegations that are legally insufficient … and do not support with reasonable and sufficient particularity a ground for recall.”

Elsewhere, with regard to the county government being named as a respondent in the petition, counsel for Girtz contends that elections officials failed to properly notify Girtz with regard to proceedings in the recall effort, and that the county elections board did not properly consider the application for recall before declaring it legally sufficient for the recall effort to move forward.

This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: Athens Mayor Kelly Girtz challenges reasons for recall effort in court