Dear Editor,
The Board of Commissioners’ Oct. 21 discussion exposed a severe dereliction of duty: the abandonment of Wooten Roads without formally proving ownership. This action alone highlights a disturbing pattern of fiscal mismanagement and administrative negligence.
This administrative failure is gravely compounded by the ethically alarming conduct of Commissioner Jeff Wooten. As a sitting commissioner since November 2020, with duties including selecting roads for paving, Commissioner Wooten should have been aware that his claimed “private” road was on the official county maintenance list and was obligated to seek its removal long before it was publicly exposed via Open Records in 2025.
Commissioner Wooten failed to recuse himself from the road abandonment votes, representing an apparent conflict that compromises the integrity of the process, regardless of the outcome.
We demand to know why Chairman Sharp allowed Commissioner Wooten to vote on an issue that directly impacts him, especially since Commissioner Wooten did not explain his own refusal to recuse.
County Manager Paul Van Haute’s baffling admission that ownership “could not be proven” is a corporate evasion that insults taxpayers, especially given the county’s consistent fiscal irresponsibility.
Open records prove this negligence. We paid an engineering firm over three times the market rate to travel from Atlanta for simple building inspections. We pay our attorney for long-distance travel from Augusta for meetings that achieve no actionable result (e.g., Helms College Town Hall).
The county’s resistance to funding a simple, necessary title search — after demonstrating such an appetite for waste — is indefensible.
This administrative omission is critical because the roads are listed on the GA DOT map as county property and have been used for decades to inflate our state Local Maintenance and Improvement Grant (LMIG) funding. Since LMIG allocation is heavily based on road mileage, a county official must have submitted these roads to the state at some point.
The central issue is one of integrity and competency: Does the county own the roads, or not? The fact that the BOC attempted to finalize abandonment without a conclusive answer demonstrates subpar handling of a critical agenda item.
We respectfully request that the following actions be taken to re-establish public confidence and ensure accountability: 1. Mandatory Title Search: An official title search should be performed immediately by an independent entity to establish clear ownership and uphold the integrity of the process. 2. Corrective Action Plan: The county must detail and implement a plan to formally update GA DOT records, thereby correcting any inaccurate road mileage and preventing improper future LMIG funding allocations. 3. Ethical Review and Procedural Clarity: We recommend a thorough, independent review of the Commissioner’s failure to recuse to ensure complete alignment with established ethical best practices.
Furthermore, we ask the Chairman to clarify the specific procedural rationale for allowing the vote to proceed.
Sincere thanks, Jennifer Ray Co-Founder/Administrator, Putnam County Taxpayer Watchdog Group