Residents

working to oust all five members of the Fayette

County Commission are evaluating their options

this week following disqualification of their

recall petition Monday night.

"We'll

have to talk about it and figure out what the

next thing to do is," said Jim Fair, one of

113 "sponsors" who signed applications

for petitions to set up recall elections. Fair's

wife, Denise, has been at the forefront of

efforts to convince commissioners to change the

planned location of a new county jail.

Failing

that, Fair and Jim Regan, another jail opponent,

have formed the driving force behind the recall

campaign.

The

three-member county Board of Elections, meeting

in special called session Monday night,

disqualified all five recall applications against

commissioners Greg Dunn, Linda Wells, Harold

Bost, Glen Gosa and Herb Frady, because the

person who notarized the applications, Carl

Avrit, also signed them as a sponsor of the

recall movement.

The

Georgia Recall Act of 1989 holds that no one may

sign as both notary and sponsor, and directs that

"any and all sheets" of an application

notarized by a person who is also a sponsor must

be disqualified.

By

law, sponsors of the recall application can

re-file at any time and begin the process again.

But time is short to recall three commissioners

who face reelection in November - Bost,

Gosa and Frady. Sponsors would have to go through

a two-week process to put a new recall petition

in motion, obtain 15,000 signatures on that

petition within 45 days, and then get a recall

election on the ballot before June 1.

Public

officials cannot be recalled within 180 days of

the end of their terms. Wells and Dunn were

elected to their four-year terms in November

1998, and have almost three years left to serve.

Carolyn

Combs, head of the county Elections Department,

said workers in the department began the task of

verifying that signatures on the recall

applications were eligible to vote in Fayette

County at the time the commissioners were

elected, as required by law, and discovered that

Avrit had signed both as notary and as sponsor.

Unsure

how board members would interpret the law, she

said, workers threw out only the sponsors' names

that had signed on the same page as Avrit -

10 names in each case. When they had found enough

disqualified names (those who were not electors

during the 1996 or 1998 elections) to bring the

total below the required 100, they stopped

verifying, she added.

Board

members said they believe it's clear the law

calls for disqualifying of "any and all

sheets" notarized by the person who also

signed as sponsor; therefore the applications

should be thrown out for that reason, not because

they lacked the required 100 qualified

signatures.

"It

doesn't just say `the sheet he signed,' it says

`any and all sheets,'" said board member Jim

Biles. The board is composed of two Republicans

- Reid Spearman and Marilyn Watts

- and one Democrat - Biles.

Combs

said recall organizers were offered a copy of the

recall law when they picked up their

applications, but said they already had copies,

or could find the information on the Internet.

One

hundred twelve sponsors had signed applications

to recall Dunn; 113 signed Wells' application;

106 signed Gosa's and Frady's; 107 signed Bost's.

The

applications accused the commissioners of

violating their oath of office, in which they

promised to "work in the best interests of

the entire county." They failed to serve the

best interests of Fayetteville residents by

refusing to evaluate alternative locations for

the planned jail, or to consider forming "a

committee, to include citizens, to discuss the

proposed jail issue, according to the

applications."

Recall

advocates also cite a violation of the open

meetings law last March. When commissioners

learned that they had conducted a closed meeting

in error, they alerted the press and submitted

information about the mistake to local court

authorities. The county solicitor's office

declined to prosecute the commissioners, saying

there was no intent on their part to violate the

law.

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