Ft. Gay, W.Va. — Fort Gay Council met at a Town Hall meeting last night to accept the resignations of Mayor Joetta Hatfield and Town Recorder, Sheila Bowen.
Last week Hatfield and Bowen were arrested and charged with embezzlement in an investigation by the West Virginia Auditor’s Office that led to criminal charges because over $200,000 had been taken.
They were both charged with embezzlement, fraudulent schemes, falsifying accounts, laundering through financial transactions, and conspiracy to falsifying accounts, the complaints say.
They were arrested the day before in Wayne County but were not present at last night’s meeting.
The Town Council made a few changes as of last night. From now on all Town Council members are signatories and have the authority to sign checks using the two-signature policy in place.
The next Special meeting is December 9 at 6 p.m. to discuss filling the two vacant positions.
J.B. McCuskey, State Auditor, had this comment, “That is an enormous problem, It is essentially the same reason why you have an auditor and a treasurer in state government. One of them is to determine whether or not you have the money, and the other one is to determine whether or not the money is being spent legally.”
McCuskey says a simple audit could have spotted that issue, but he alleges Fort Gay refused to participate in state audits.
The state has no Fort Gay audit on file since 2016.
“It is a little nerve-racking to have a duty that you can’t enforce,” McCuskey said. “What I know is that a very large majority of the local government officials that we work with do everything in their power to do this the right way. This is legislation that is designed to affect places like Fort Gay, the outliers.”
That legislation would give the auditor power to dissolve towns that do not cooperate.
The proposal has been introduced multiple times, but unable to win passage. McCuskey says the Fort Gay allegations show why it is so important.
“To be fair, if you’re unwilling to be audited, you have no business being a government,” he said. “That is a key baseline duty that every government owes to every single one of the people that funds it — is to open your books.”
Ft. Gay City Council members include Lee Kitts, Greg Cavins, William Thompson, Jamie Frasher, and Ralph Dent.
The Municipal judge is Larry Britt
It has not yet been disclosed which bank or banks were cashing these checks.
