Staff Reports
This week a hard look at City Hall revealed something simple and disturbing: Atlanta paid $35,000 from taxpayer funds to the Inner‑City Muslim Action Network (IMAN) and then, apparently, nobody asked for a receipt. A new investigation by The Center Square found the city has no on‑file record of the required spending reports that were part of the donation agreement. If you like waste, secrecy, and sloppy paperwork, Atlanta is rolling out the welcome mat.
What the investigation found: the $35,000 payment and missing spending reports
The Center Square reports the $35,000 payment to IMAN was one of four donations the Atlanta City Council approved to support “public safety patrols and other public safety initiatives,” a package that totaled about $205,000. Each nonprofit signed a contract that explicitly required annual, detailed reports showing how the money was spent. Yet open‑records requests turned up no such reports in the Mayor’s Office, Contract Compliance, Finance, Procurement, the Law Department, City Council files, or the Atlanta Police Department. IMAN did not respond to requests for comment, and the city has been notably quiet about who picked these recipients and who followed up.
Why this matters: taxpayer funds, transparency, and the Georgia Gratuities Clause
This isn’t just bookkeeping gone bad. City payment records list the transfers as “donations,” which triggers real legal questions under Georgia’s Gratuities Clause — a constitutional limit on giving away public assets without getting something of value in return. The city charter allows some charitable gifts, but state law supersedes local charters. As S. Lester Tate III, a former State Bar of Georgia president, bluntly put it: “The job of enforcing the contract should be the city executives’ who entered into the contract… But it appears that they’re just not doing their job.” In plain English: either the city didn’t do its homework, or it just didn’t care to check the answers.
Who should be accountable — and who’s hiding behind silence?
Mayor Andre Dickens’ office and several city departments were reportedly unable or unwilling to produce the required reports, and the city’s lawyers declined to discuss the Gratuities Clause on the record. Meanwhile, IMAN — which earlier received roughly a quarter‑million dollars in FEMA‑designated funds from Atlanta for migrant services — is not saying whether it filed any reports or how the $35,000 was spent. When neither the giver nor the recipient will show the paperwork, that’s not transparency; it’s a cover‑your‑tracks operation with our tax dollars as collateral.
Conclusion: demand the records and an audit — no more excuses
Atlanta taxpayers deserve to know how public safety money was used and whether city officials followed the law. The City Council should produce the City Council resolution, the donation contracts, and any spending reports IMAN or the other nonprofits submitted. If those records don’t exist, auditors should be called in and those responsible should answer for the lapse. This isn’t partisan theater — it’s basic stewardship of public money. If the city wants more trust, start with some accountability. Otherwise, expect more headlines like this and fewer excuses from a city that apparently thinks “trust but verify” means “trust and forget.”
