South Fulton mayor barred from city buildings, blocked from mayoral budget

The City Council approved these actions, and others, in a unanimous vote after midnight Wednesday morning. Officials said the temporary measures will remain in place “until all city investigations are complete.”

City Councilwomen Carmalitha Gumbs and Helen Willis said Thursday that the pool table cost roughly $1,800. Willis put the cost of the film studio equipment at about $19,000. She said kamau was trying to have the city pay for the equipment but that he told the city manager that a friend was going to cover the cost with a donation.

Kamau, who does not capitalize his names and is in the process of legally changing his name to Kobi, could not be reached for a phone interview Thursday. The mayor responded to Atlanta Journal-Constitution text messages Thursday but did not address questions about his spending on the pool table and equipment.

In a statement sent by text message, kamau called the vote “a coup by seven people to overrule the votes of thousands who chose me as mayor in 2021 before they get to vote again in a few months.”

“Yet there’s no way to defend my name without attacking other Black people — which is exactly what those carving up South Fulton for trucking routes, warehouses and data centers are counting on,” the statement said. “I am heartbroken to see us more willing to fight each other than our real enemies.”

The council’s action Wednesday, which comes weeks after its members called for a forensic audit of kamau’s spending on a city-issued purchasing card, was first reported by several other news outlets. The council also removed a city staffer as a direct report to the mayor, changed her title and made her a direct report to the city clerk.

Gumbs said Thursday that an investigation will examine not only the mayor’s use of his purchasing card, known as a P-card, but also spending by the city’s 56 other P-card holders.

Gumbs and Willis both said Thursday that the City Council believes kamau spent about $26,000 in the last three months of 2024 using his P-card. In an interview earlier this month, kamau said he was not comfortable confirming that amount.

In that interview, kamau characterized the criticism against him as “political mudslinging” and said he was “a pretty frugal guy.”

He acknowledged that he went on a 21-day trip to Ghana, in West Africa, beginning in December, and that he traveled abroad to Colombia twice last year, including once in October, using city funds for all three trips. But he said he was invited by officials and businesses on those trips and that he was looking for investment opportunities that would benefit South Fulton.

“All of these trips were about promoting South Fulton, which is the Blackest city in America, as a hub of commerce and trade for the African diaspora,” kamau said.

According to U.S. Census figures, more than 90% of the city’s population of about 107,000 is Black.

P-cards have a history of misuse in metro Atlanta, including at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and at Georgia Tech. A probe into P-card use by DeKalb commissioners prompted state lawmakers to make P-card abuse a felony in 2016.

And an investigation by the AJC and Channel 2 Action News revealed in 2018 that former Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed used more than $50,000 from his personal and campaign bank accounts to repay taxpayers for charges he made on his city-issued credit card.