Milledgeville City Councilman Asked To Step Down

A Milledgeville City Councilman has been asked to resign tonight.

It’s a decision that comes months after a citizen accused the official of breaking the ethics code.

The City of Milledgeville’s ethics board ruled in late August that city councilman Phillip Joiner broke the rules.

The board said Joiner didn’t go to commitments the city paid for.

Now, the board is asking Joiner to step down.

Milledgeville City Councilman Phillip Joiner made his point very clear.

“I can’t stress enough to say this: there was never, ever a conference that the city of Milledgeville paid me for that I did not attend. Never.”

I spoke to the councilman on the phone tonight after the Milledgeville City Council approved a resolution asking for Joiner’s resignation.

They say Joiner failed to attend city-paid conferences and seminars during Joiner’s time in office–which included travel and registration fees.

And while his time in office is nearly complete, Joiner says he won’t be resigning.

“No I’m not going to resign. First of all, there’s not a whole lot of point in it being that we have less than three weeks and our final official meeting is actually next Tuesday in which I have already been scheduled to address council as is tradition. Any exiting elected officials get to address council in their last formal meeting, which is Tuesday so I still plan to do that.”

On the other side was Danielle Fields–a citizen who wanted to hold Joiner accountable for the mistakes she believes he made.

“I wanted to hold our elected officials accountable and I had a way to do that for the first time. So now we’re through the process and it’s got some bumps in the road, but we’re gonna tweak those, and I’m really excited for Milledgeville.”

And for Milledgeville Mayor Richard Bentley, he hopes this situation will set a precedent for future elected officials.

“I think it goes without saying that we expect future elected officials to behave in an ethical manner and we certainly hope in doing what we did tonight that that sets that in place for future councils.”

Joiner went on to tell me he wanted more time to look at the resolution to be sure what his next move would be.

For his future, he plans to focus on his family and let the council move forward.