North Fulton Today

South Fulton officials are pushing the Fulton County District Attorney's Office to probe Mayor Khalid Kamau's use of his city-issued credit card after an audit found purchases that made city council members suspicious.

This investigation followed news of Anthony Kerr, South Fulton's former procurement officer, being fired and escorted out of his office by police, Fox 5 Atlanta reported. Police Chief Keith Meadows said this sort of response to the termination of a government official is standard operating procedure.

"The transactions were of concern," Helen Willis, South Fulton District 3 councilwoman, told Fox 5 Atlanta. "We thought it was best to just send them over to the Fulton County District Attorney's Fraud Unit to review and render an opinion."

In a statement, Kamau said councilmembers were ignoring pressing matters in the community involving loss of power during record temperatures, drug use and murder in favor of pursuing a partisan political agenda, Fox 5 Atlanta reported.

"Last city council avoided all discussion on these emergency conditions in favor of a smear campaign about credit card charges that were authorized by city staff," Kamau said in the statement. "It's petty, partisan politics—and working class residents and seniors on Old National are suffering for it."

To prevent the investigation from being compromised, Willis has chosen not to provide information on the credit card charges, Fox 5 Atlanta reported.

"We have strict financial protocol on how they're supposed to be used, and they are not to be used for anything that is of personal nature," Willis said. "We want to be fair to the mayor and to the City of South Fulton but most of all to the residents. They elected all of us to be good stewards of tax dollars."

South Fulton city council members will also have their city-issued credit cards audited and are discussing onboarding an internal auditor, Fox 5 Atlanta reported.