Heat Is Turned Up on D.A. Higgins

The heat has been turned up on Brunswick Judicial Circuit District Attorney Keith Higgins.
During the summer, the Jeff Davis County Commission joined the commissions in the other four counties of the Brunswick Judicial Circuit — Glynn, Appling, Wayne and Camden — in filing a complaint seeking to remove Higgins from his position,
In March, with the Glynn County Board of Commissioners leading the way, the Judicial Circuit counties requested Baker Tilly, a nationally recognized audit firm from Virginia, to conduct a forensic audit of the District Attorney’s Office to determine the origin of the budget shortfall of the FY2024 budget. According to a press release from Glynn County, the district attorney’s office received funding from all five counties for payroll expenses but failed to fully reimburse Glynn County for payroll processing for their employees.
The final audit report from Baker Tilley was received Oct. 22 and, according to the press release, revealed “a complete failure of management and oversight in the financial and personnel operations of the District Attorney’s Office.”
The release said that, according to the report, accounting and financial records were so disorganized that auditors could not complete the full scope of the audit and auditors were unable to determine the source of nearly $1 million in budget overruns.
Higgins responded to the audit report, saying in a news release that the “financial personnel responsible for the record keeping and expenditures referred to in the Baker Tilley report are no longer employed by the office, and their employment ended at least seven or eight months before the audit began. Before Baker Tilley was asked to conduct an audit, I contracted with an external bookkeeper who reconciled all monthly bank statements back to January 2021, when I first took office.
“During the audit process, the office and I fully cooperated with Baker Tilley. During this process, I became aware of the misappropriation of government funds by the former office manager. I referred the matter to law enforcement for investigation. I recused myself and the office from the matter, and I obtained the appointment of another prosecuting attorney to the case from the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia.”
The press release from Glynn County said, as stated in the report by Baker Tilly: “Our audit of the DAO (District Attorney’s Office) identified multiple critical deficiencies, most notably in the area of internal controls. These weaknesses contributed to questionable cash withdrawals and transactions that raise concerns about potential misappropriation of funds or fraudulent activity. It should be noted that because of the poor record keeping and overall state of the financial records, we were unable to perform many of the activities from the Key Audit Areas outlined earlier in this report. Therefore, the findings and recommendations presented in this report may not fully represent the true state of financial record keeping and documentation issues that exist in the DAO’s office.”
The District Attorney and Glynn County were to begin court-ordered mediation Oct. 28 to attempt to settle a lawsuit filed by the District Attorney against Glynn County.