An office without an accountant, an inattentive district attorney and overconfident financial revenue projections helped trigger the nearly $1 million debt owed by the Brunswick Judicial Circuit DA’s office to Glynn County, according to court documents filed by the county.
Glynn County’s formal reply last Friday to the legal suit brought by District Attorney Keith Higgins is the latest salvo in the more than year-long battle to balance the DA’s budget and reconcile the books from the largest of the five counties served by Higgins office.
Last October, Higgins accused Glynn officials of conspiring to withhold funding and undermine his critical role in prosecuting criminals. Now, in a 61-page filing full of exhibits, financial spreadsheets and emails, the county has countersued and asked the judge for a directed verdict that would have the district attorney repay debt accrued when Glynn acted as the office payroll processor.
The new court documents paint a picture of a dysfunctional office in which overburdened and underqualified staff struggled after the accountant who handled financial issues suffered from a stress-induced heart attack. According to the documents, Higgins ignored pleas from his former office manager to hire a person qualified in accounting once the mounting debt his office owed to Glynn County came to light last spring. Higgins fired the office accountant, Cathy Browning, after she failed to communicate that his office did not have necessary funds to hire additional staff.
The documents contend that the county made “herculean efforts” to correct the DA’s office’s financial disorder to ensure timely payroll disbursement. The county’s financial manager spent more than a month creating spreadsheets for Higgins’ team and new payroll processor to accurately account for and invoice staff salaries.
Higgins, in his initial accusations against the county, said that Glynn has withheld disbursements since February 2024 and conspired with other counties in the circuit to undermine the functioning of his office.
The county’s reply says Higgins claims were wrong or false.
For example, Higgins contends that the county did not pay staff working on Glynn court matters during fiscal year 2025, which runs from July 2024-June 2025. The county’s court documents say that officials processed seven payroll periods for DA staff between Sept. 25, 2024, and Dec. 20, 2024. Furthermore, Higgins office was late in filing the payroll requests, according to the court documents, and the DA’s office made multiple errors in payroll requests that had to be corrected by county staff.
The payroll reprocessing alone took weeks and required dozens of phone calls that totaled hours to educate the DA’s office manager on how to do payroll, according to the court documents. The documents cited an email from the DA’s current office manager, Jessica Perez, dated Dec 16. 2024, in which she apologized for “the mess.” “I’m sorry for the headache in all of this. I know these sheets are not calculated correctly,” according to the email. “Again, I apologize for the mess, but please let me know if there is anything I can do to make this easier.”
Office culture
For decades Glynn County’s government acted as payroll processor for the DA’s office, which has prosecutors and other staff members covering five counties. As part of the agreement, the DA would reimburse Glynn the budget funds sent to the office from those other counties.
In November 2023, however, Glynn County flagged financial problems to Higgins office, saying the DA’s office owed approximately $847,000.
Nevertheless, the District Attorney’s office hired three employees with county funding in January 2024.
Higgins has said publicly that he was not aware of the deficit until February 2024. He contends that the issue is a matter of reconciling the office financials, rather than a case of misappropriated funds. He tasked then office manager Barbara Baucum to get the problem fixed.
In March 2024, Baucum promised Glynn County CFO Tamara Munson that the office would catch up and pay back the invoices by the end of April, which then changed to the end of the fiscal year, according to the court filing.
In July, Higgins told the Glynn County commissioners that the former accountant and Baucum were to blame for the financial mess.
The county’s court filings included a four-page letter written by Baucum to the county’s chief financial officer that suggested deeper problems than the picture Higgins painted at that time.
The letter alleges that Browning, the accountant, had suffered a stress-induced heart attack brought on in part due to the fact that Higgins had put her in charge of multiple full-time jobs.
When Higgins fired Browning, he told Baucum to take over the payroll and finances despite her concerns that she was unqualified, according to the letter filed as an exhibit in the county’s court documents.
Baucum’s letter alleges that Higgins ignored her concerns, and that he did not understand the office’s financial reports or pay attention to bank accounts.
When reached by The Current, Baucum, who now works for the Prosecuting Attorneys Qualifications Commission, declined to comment, citing the active litigation.
Baucum had a phone conversation with Munson in June, discussing ways the district attorney’s office could cut costs, according to court documents.
Baucum expressed dissatisfaction with how Higgins attempted to shift the blame to her, according to those documents.
Higgins denies the allegations raised in the letter, stating in a phone interview, “Barbara is a disgruntled former employee who tried to burn the house down on her way out the door; she sent a lot of false information to Tamara Munson,” he said.
He added that after the letter was sent, the “entire tenor” of his conversations with the county changed. He provided The Current with the resignation letter Baucum submitted to him.
“This letter is to formally notify you that I’m resigning as Office Manager for the Brunswick Judicial Circuit. My last day will be August 25, 2024,” the letter read.
After Baucum resigned, Perez took over the position as office manager after previously working as a victim’s advocate for five years and as an administrative supervisor for the Glynn County Sheriff’s office.
What is next?
A forensic audit of the district attorney’s office financials is underway by Baker Tilly Advisory Group at the request of Glynn County and other counties in the circuit.
According to the county’s court filings, the district attorney’s finances were in the black as of the last audit conducted in 2020 before Higgins took office.
Higgins owes the county $962,607.96 for unreimbursed payroll expenses. According to the filing, the county has paid $489,453.21 directly to the DA’s office for payroll and benefits throughout FY25. The county also said that it has reimbursed office expenses totaling $14,395.37, as invoiced by the DA’s office.
Eight payrolls remain in FY25, which ends on June 30, 2025.
The county is now demanding a hearing intended to get Higgins’ lawsuit dropped and for the district attorney to repay the budget overage.
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