Julia Pierce | August 26, 2026

COLUMBUS, GEORGIA — A growing records dispute involving the Columbus Consolidated Government’s Finance Department raises a fundamental question about government transparency:

Is the City Attorney’s Office using excessive or unreasonable Open Records fees to discourage—or effectively prevent—the public from obtaining records concerning serious allegations made by city employees?

A few weeks ago, a citizen from Columbus, who has asked to remain anonymous, made an allegation that the finance department is taking money – at times thousands and tens of thousands of dollars – from employee pension payments per pay period and redirecting them to a pseudo account that makes it appear that money from business license fees and taxes are being received as occupational taxes.

True to form, when an allegation is made, I initiate open records requests to obtain information that would prove or disprove the allegations. So, when I send in an open records request indicating specifically what I am looking for – even down to the type of payment and the account number – and I am met with unreasonable fees for production, I immediately start to question why?

In my experience, because I am an independent citizen that for the most part has only made money for the open records I perform for my clients, those who are responsible to produce those records think they can charge ridiculous costs which are unreasonable to obstruct me from receiving the records they don’t want to produce. I suspect that may be the case with this open records request.

On August 11, 2026, I submitted my open records request to Clifton Fay, the Columbus Consolidated Government’s city attorney requesting all checks written from Columbus Consolidated Government’s Synovus bank account number 053205483 made payable to the order of Columbus Consolidated Government Occupation Tax pertaining to items labeled “GG PENS CONT / GG PENS CONT” and “PS PENS CONT / PS PENS CONT,” whereby as of this morning, August 23, 2026, 379 views of these emails have taken place, which presents the question whether there is a conspiracy in play to cover up what is going on and the proverbial chicken running with his head cut off is taking place.

On August 14, 2026, Allison Browne, one of the city attorneys’ junior paralegals emailed back to indicate that my open records request in the future should be going to cityatty.openrecords@olumbus.org. I was unaware that the city attorney’s office had an open records dedicated email and I was unaware that olumbus.org was a valid domain, but I digress.

Allison informed me that for one hour of search and retrieval, my client would be charged 79.69 per hour; however, after the 15 minutes that were required to be free, I would be charged $59.77 for one hour. Allison also indicated that my client would be required to pay for 3 hours of redaction at $26.35 per hour – I’m not sure what they would be redacting since I have the account number and the itemized detail – but again, I digress. The total would be $79.05. After the $10.00 USB drive, the total for this request was returned by Allison as $148.82.

There are fundamentally and legally some great issues that Allison presented in her cost analysis to me, and they are as follows:

• The Georgia Open Records Act only allows an organization to charge the hourly rate of the lowest paid individual who is qualified to search for the records.
• The Georgia Open Records Act only allows an organization to charge the hourly rate of the lowest paid individual who is qualified to produce the records.
• If the lowest paid individual who is qualified to perform secretarial work is almost $80 an hour and almost $30 an hour, I think we have some overly paid secretaries at the Columbus Consolidated Government

What Allison didn’t know, was that I’m not someone to play with, and those above her knew that, yet they failed to inform her. What Allison also didn’t know is that I don’t play with those who don’t play fair and lose. I’m a winner and this is my client’s hard earned money we are talking about here. What Allison further didn’t know is that I am very aware the the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer puts out a searchable database of all the city employees salaries and I was able to view all those salaries. Yet, I gave her the benefit of the doubt and chose to see her quote as a possible mistake, which would give her the opportunity to change her answer.

Anyone who has had to interact with me knows, I don’t ask a question I don’t usually know the answer to and if you were sent to interact with me, it’s because you’re getting the opportunity to be tested to see whether you’re part of the problem or part of the solution. It appears that Allison has proven that she is part of the problem and here’s why.

Instead of returning a corrected and accurate hourly rate, Allison decided to double-down on her response and indicated that the $79.69 per hour is for a finance employee who has “access to the requested information.” Allison also indicated that the $26.35 was for the employee properly trained to review and apply the necessary redactions in the city attorney’s office. Again, I’m not sure what redactions would need proper training since the account belongs to the city taxpayers, the money belongs to the city employees and taxpayers, and there would be no personally identifying information on what I am requesting. Personally this cost, in my opinion, is a coverup cost, and I don’t find it honorable or having integrity to charge me or my client for you to cover up anything. That is quite ridiculous.

I responded to Allison that the lowest paid employee in the finance department was Sophie Stone, who, based on a 52-week breakdown, made approximately $22.64 per hour, and I questioned why this cost wasn’t being used as the lowest hourly rate of a qualified finance department employee.

I additionally questioned why the highest paid employee was Angelica Alexander, a city employee who was arrested in 2025 in connection with the Muscogee County Sheriff’s Investigation into the occupational tax and business license issue that is still under investigation allegedly by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Angelica made approximately $66.76 per hour as the Finance Director, and yet the hourly rate Allison was quoting to me was higher than the highest paid employee in the finance department. I included the link to the salary database and asked which employee and their position she was basing the hourly rates upon.

I additionally emailed Allison after reviewing the city attorney’s employees, in which I questioned that her salary came out to $24.83 per hour, which was less than what she was quoting me. If she was qualified to respond to my open records request and she is a paralegal for the city attorney’s office, I would suspect that she would be properly trained and qualified to use a black sharpie marker to remove whatever information that the city attorney’s office, the finance department, and the Columbus Consolidated Government didn’t want me to know.

Allison responded that the corrected hourly rate they should have used for redaction is actually $26.10. This causes me to question, “Were they just throwing a random number out there?” How did they not know how much their lowest paid employee made?” And what’s also concerning is that Allison has yet to answer my question as to which employees and which position she is basing these hourly rates upon.

Once more, I responded to Allison again indicating that Angelica Alexander, as the Finance Director made approximately $66.76 per hour, and since this was still less than what Allison quoted me for search and retrieval by a finance department employee, and questioned whether Angelica was qualified to search and retrieve these documents. I further asked if she was attempting to charge a fee that is sufficiently high to discourage me from proceeding with the records request, and also asked if the Assistant Finance Director and the six other finance managers were qualified.

It appears that all of the finance departments employees don’t qualify as being competent or trained enough to pull records from the software that produces these records, and if Angelica is the one who signs the checks, I guess she isn’t even qualified to pull these records, yet some ghost employee who makes more than Angelica is qualified. At least that’s how it appears at this moment.

And once more, I have inquired of Allison the positions, employees, and their hourly rate that she is basing her cost analysis upon. Why hasn’t she answered me yet? Does she know that she is in blatant violation of the Open Records Act? Does she know that I set it all up so that I would have all the evidence I need to present my allegations of her violation of the Open Records Act so I can make my complaint to the Attorney General’s office?

On August 21, 2026, Allison emailed back and indicated that the hourly rates that I found in the database produced by Mark Rice with the Ledger-Enquirer were outdated as of July 1, 2026. She further indicated that she relies on each department to make the determination as to which employees have access. Additionally, Allison indicated that the corrected hourly rate for the search and retrieval was now $70.14. Why have the hourly rates changed only after I challenged her? Who from Finance relayed to her who the lowest paid qualified employee was? Why did it now drop almost $18.00, but why is she still using an amount that reflects even higher than what the Finance Director is getting paid?

As of this point, it is clear that Allison Browne has no problem violating the Open Records Act, and she now is no exception for a complaint to be made to the Attorney General’s office. Therefore, I initiated my complaint on August 21, 2026 at 11:33 am.

Questions that Need Answers

• Is the city attorneys’ paralegal violating the Open Records Act?
• Is the city attorneys’ paralegal attempting to obstruct open record production because she doesn’t want me to prove that the allegations from a city employee are true?
• Why have now 379 people viewed this email thread and 70 people have viewed my last message to Allison Browne asking if she was attempting to discourage me from proceeding with my request?
• Does the list of the high amount of views of this email indicate a conspiracy to cover up this information?
• Do they know that by indicating there is a charge associated with what I am asking, they are indirectly admitting there are documents that indicate the allegations I have presented are true?
• Do the employees who are putting money every pay period know that their pension money is being used to pad a pseudo account to make it look like they are collecting business taxes and license fees?
• Why would they need to do this?

What do you think?

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