If Fulton County Sheriff Patrick Labat wins reelection in November, as expected, the feuding between him and some county commissioners will continue into another four-year term.
That is the prediction of Fulton County Commission Chairman Robb Pitts, one of several commissioners who is frustrated with Labat for entering into spending contracts unilaterally and then asking commissioners to pay the bills.
“This issue of him being a constitutional officer and thereby being able to run that department as he sees fit, without any checks and balances, that problem will still be an issue over the next four years unless a judge steps in, or the state legislature, to clarify that issue,” Pitts said in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution last week.
In July, the commission passed an ordinance clarifying that Labat and the county’s other constitutional officers should use the county purchasing department’s procurement process, which includes competitive bidding, when entering into new contracts.
The first-term sheriff, who easily won the Democratic primary in May and faces a write-in challenger in next month’s election, has informed the county he plans to file a lawsuit against the Board of Commissioners. In a letter to Pitts dated Oct. 2, Labat wrote that the board “has repeatedly attempted to control and dictate how my allocated budget is utilized and spent. Georgia law makes these efforts patently improper.”
“We know it’s not legal,” Labat said last week in an interview with the AJC, adding that the commission has “fundamentally overreached” and calling the county’s procurement process “convoluted.”
The sheriff said his supporters want him to “keep fighting” and providing resources in the community that could help keep people out of jail.
“Hopefully most of this will die down after the election and we can get back to the business of servicing people,” he said of the clashes with commissioners. “Believe it or not, there are more things that we agree on than disagree on.”
Just last week, dissension among commissioners flared as they discussed whether the county should pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to private jail contractors who accuse Labat of not paying his bills. After much debate, the commission voted to pay one outstanding invoice of about $643,000 to software company Leo Technologies which had provided phone-monitoring service at the jail. The board also decided to send a letter to Labat asking him to figure a way to pay the remaining invoices.
Credit: Steve Schaefer /
Credit: Steve Schaefer /
County officials say Labat’s office owes $1.4 million to Strategic Security Corp., which had contracted out guards to the Fulton Sheriff’s Office.
The unpaid bills have drawn criticism from some county officials, who question how the sheriff is spending the $146 million allocated to his office this year. Pitts notes that the sheriff’s budget has grown 66% since he came into office in January 2021.
Labat said that figure is misleading because the county used to pay for health care at the Rice Street jail and for a jail renovation program, but that both of those are now line items in the sheriff’s budget. County spokeswoman Jessica Corbitt said the 66% increase includes all costs related to the Sheriff’s Office and all jail operations, including costs of medical care.
Michael Shoates, the sheriff’s chief of staff, said the office’s operating budget decreased by about $3 million from 2023 to 2024.
The Fulton Sheriff’s Office’s duties include providing courthouse and jail security, serving warrants and maintaining the sex offender registry. Over the past year, the commission has taken several steps to rein in Labat’s spending.
Last November, it abolished the sheriff’s inmate welfare fund after commissioners discovered the money had been used for consultants and promotional events. Sheriff’s officials say they had been using that fund to pay some of the bills that the office now must pay out of its operating budget, because the board decided they didn’t want to pay all of them.
Earlier this year, the commission rejected a request by Labat to continue paying jail deputies twice their hourly rate for overtime.
In October 2023, the board rescinded $2.1 million in emergency funding to the sheriff after it discovered a jail software company, Talitrix, had underdelivered on a contract it signed with Labat earlier that year. Talitrix has sued the sheriff’s office, alleging it owed the company $865,000 on the contract.
In last week’s interview, Labat pushed back against criticism that his spending process is opaque.
“No sheriff in the history of Fulton County has been before that board more than me and we’ve been very transparent,” he said.
“I’m not going to sacrifice the well-being of our residents and those small contractors that provide such a much-needed response because the board wants to play politics,” added Labat, referring to jail inmates as “residents.”
Meanwhile, some advocates are concerned about Labat leading the office for another term, saying he has presided over dangerous conditions at the Rice Street jail. In July 2023, the U.S. Department of Justice opened a civil rights investigation into the facility, citing the death of Lashawn Thompson.
Credit: Natrice Miller / Natrice.Miller@ajc.com
Credit: Natrice Miller / Natrice.Miller@ajc.com
Thompson died in the jail’s mental health unit covered in lice and bedbugs in September 2022, according to his family and lawyers, resulting in a $4 million settlement with the county.
During a hearing late last year, the sheriff’s general counsel told a panel of state lawmakers investigating the jail that overcrowding strains the physical limits of the aging facility and contributes to the violence. In the first 10 months of 2023, the jail had recorded 293 stabbings, 337 fights, 922 assaults and more than 1,186 confiscated shanks, she said.
At least four inmates have died in the custody of the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office this year, and at least 24 died in custody over a two-year period through the end of 2023, according to sheriff’s office data.
“People died on his watch,” said Michael Collins, a Labat critic and a senior director of Color of Change, an organization that promotes racial justice.
“Labat could do a lot more in terms of transparency and understanding what is going on inside the jail,” said Mark Spencer, an Atlanta-based physician who is a member of Community Over Cages, a coalition that opposes building a new jail.
Labat said his office has addressed overcrowding, reducing the number of people in his custody by about 1,000 since he took office in 2021. At that time, he said the Sheriff’s Office had 3,700 people in custody, 600 of whom were sleeping on the floor at the Rice Street jail.
The sheriff has supported a new jail to replace the one on Rice Street at a cost of $1.7 billion. Instead, the Board of Commissioners has approved a plan to renovate the existing jail for about $300 million. Labat said the county’s refurbishment plan is “putting Band-Aids on open-heart surgery” and that $300 million “will help us limp and kick the can down the road.”
Labat’s write-in challenger, Charles Rambo, said that if he is elected, he would improve the relationship between the Sheriff’s Office and the Board of Commissioners.
“People are looking for a person who can come in and get this job done within a very short time because our public safety’s at risk,” Rambo said in an interview.
Generally speaking, it’s rare for a write-in candidate to win an election, whether it’s a national contest or a local one, said Jeffrey Lazarus, a professor of political science at Georgia State University.
For his part, Labat said he’s excited to serve another four years. As for his relationship with the commission, he said he’s “grateful for the things that we continue to be in lock step about.”
“But ultimately,” he added, “we’re going to do what’s best for our community at large.”
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