Council censures Loganville councilwoman for public disclosure of documents

Councilwoman posted info to social media

In a 4-1 Thursday vote, the Loganville City Council approved a resolution censuring Councilwoman Patti Wolfe.

The vote was a serious, if largely symbolic, reprimand for Wolfe’s social media revelations of the contents of a closed-door city council “executive session” last month covering potential legal action by the city.

Wolfe, though, is taking the censure seriously enough that she has consulted an attorney. As a result, Wolfe, who did not attend Thursday evening’s council meeting, did not comment on the censure, except to say in a Thursday afternoon text message to a Walton Tribune reporter, “Based on the direction this case is taking, per my attorney, I have been advised to remain silent.”

Patti Wolfe

The censure resolution calls Wolfe out “for disclosing confidential executive session information and for publishing inaccurate statements concerning such proceedings.”

In terms of consequences for that action, which Loganville City Attorney Paul Rosenthal described as “a public demerit,” the resolution notes that Wolfe is “strongly admonished to refrain from further breaches of confidentiality or dissemination of inaccurate information and is urged to conduct themself in a manner that preserves public confidence in the City Council of Loganville.”

Under the state open meetings law, governing bodies can go behind closed doors to discuss personnel, real estate and legal matters, the public disclosure of which could compromise those discussions. However, any vote on issues raised in an executive session must be conducted in an open meeting. There were no decisions reached in the executive session that is the subject of Wolfe’s censure, according to Loganville Mayor Skip Baliles.

Councilwoman Melanie Long was the only councilmember to oppose the censure resolution. Voting in favor of the resolution were Councilmembers Anne Huntsinger, who brought the resolution to the full council for consideration, and Councilmembers Bill DuVall, Branden Whitfield, and Lisa Newberry.

Huntsinger said she didn’t believe Wolfe’s action was purposeful, but regardless of that, it was still a breach of the closed-door discussion.

At issue in the censure is a social media posting from Wolfe that outlines the closed-door discussion of potential legal action then being contemplated by the council, along with other city councils in Walton County, to challenge property valuations across the county.

That discussion was the result of a survey conducted recently by the city of Monroe concluding thatlarge commercial properties, along with multi-family residential properties and residential rental properties, are undervalued. That inequity, the survey concluded, unfairly shifts the local property tax burden to single-family homeowners and small-business owners across the county.

Tommy Knight, the county’s chief tax appraiser, has countered the survey by pointing out that a state audit has found the county’s valuations are in line with accepted standards. Nonetheless, Knight has met with local officials on the issue, and Monroe Mayor John Howard said in a recent interview that Knight has been receptive to concerns about local valuations.

The social media post from Wolfe at the center of the censure resolution, as revealed at Thursday’s council meeting, reads, in its entirety, “For those of you asking what Loganville council is doing about the events in Walton County … we have approved the potential pursuit/investigation of litigation regarding the property valuation issue. Because of the current potential legal issue at hand, I will be making no further comments to anyone … thank you”

According to Baliles, Wolfe’s disclosure of the closed-door discussion raised the ire of officials in the county’s other cities.

“They were furious with us, and they wanted to know what the hell we were doing,” Baliles said at Thursday’s council meeting.

DuVall, in comments before the council vote to censure Wolfe, noted that her social media post was “directly related” to the executive session discussion, and was also “not exactly correct,” circumstances that “caused harm to the Walton County Tax Assessors Board, our city and our city partners.”

Prior to casting the lone dissenting vote against censuring Wolfe, Long contended that there is “not an even playing field on this council when it comes to disciplinary action.”

“I was going to spill all the tea tonight, but I decided not to do that,” Long said. Instead, she brought up only one incident, from 2023, in which Baliles was found urinating outside his car at the Loganville Post Office, and for which he subsequently issued a public apology, suggesting that he was dealing with a medical issue.

Long went on to criticize Huntsinger for having a friend — someone outside of the city’s counsel or other staff — write the censure resolution. Huntsinger responded that she had been ill, and had simply sought help in drafting the resolution. Beyond that, in a discussion during which Huntsinger raised her voice loudly at Long, Long suggested that the council was “setting a very dangerous precedent” with what in her view was slipshod handling of the censure resolution.

“If that is the road we’re going to start taking, then I think everybody up here deserves a censure,” Long said. Huntsinger subsequently asked Rosenthal if she had abandoned any required protocol in bringing the censure resolution to the council, to which Rosenthal responded that, in his opinion, she had not im-
properly brought the resolution to the council.

“I would not knowingly let y’all do anything that’s outside of the law,” Rosenthal told Huntsinger and the council