Press release from the office of Keith Higgins:
(October 23, 2025) The financial personnel who were responsible for the record keeping and expenditures that are 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. The external bookkeeper then continued to monthly reconcile the office’s bank statements, and I required our new office manager to make ledger entries and scan receipts into our computer-based bookkeeping system to document exactly what was purchased for each expenditure. The signature stamp that was misused by former employees was eliminated, and I implemented a policy that all personnel action forms, which are required to hire new employees or increase an employee’s hourly rate of pay or salary, must be personally signed by me.
I also implemented a position control system that is used to ensure that a new employee will only be hired if there is a vacant position and there is sufficient funding for their salary and benefits. Before the audit, leave request forms were already in place that required the approval of an employee’s immediate supervisor, and those forms were being submitted to our office manager, who recorded the leave time and maintained those records. Our hourly employees were required to clock in and clock out of work through a software program that is on their office computers, which generated timekeeping records for payroll.
Any cash withdrawals made by the former office manager were unauthorized as there was a policy in place that prohibited her from using the office debit card for that purpose.
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. Going forward, I am committed to having an annual financial audit conducted at the end of each fiscal year.
I am the District Attorney, and I am not resigning.
