From the corridors of City Hall and the Old Courthouse on Wright Square to a sprawling ballroom at the Savannah Convention Center, the same question reverberated this week: What is Chester Ellis doing?
What has prompted the bewilderment, among both critics and allies of the chairman of the Chatham County Commission, is his Nov. 13 letter to the board of directors of Chatham Area Transit notifying them that the county will withdraw from the system on June 30, 2026, the end of the current fiscal year.
In the ensuing furor, the CAT board described Ellis’ withdrawal plan as “unnecessary, shortsighted, and cruel folly” that would “punish all CAT riders, especially its most vulnerable ones.” Savannah Mayor Van Johnson chimed in, warning that any county reduction of funding to CAT would “weaken the very lifeline that so many rely on to live, work, learn and thrive.”
By week’s end, though, Ellis showed no signs of relenting in his determination to change the CAT board’s “ways.” Indeed, he doubled down on Friday, branding the board “unconstitutional” and asserting darkly that it is being driven by unnamed, unelected officials on the panel who, he said without providing evidence, are illegally “trying to control public funds” and signing contracts that are “unlawful.”
He went on to tell reporters gathered near the well of the commission’s hearing room at the Old Chatham Courthouse that Chatham officials were prepared without “missing a beat” not only to duplicate currently existing services in the county for the physically and mentally disabled — so-called paratransit — but to stand up an entirely separate transit system in the next seven months.
“If that’s what it comes to, that’s what it comes to,” he said.
How the county proposed to duplicate the current transit system, which each year provides some two million rides on buses and vans and 610,000 rides on its ferries, was unclear. How would a parallel be staffed, equipped and most importantly, funded? Ellis did not say.
He assured his listeners, however, that county officials had learned lessons from putting the county-based police and fire departments “back together” and would not “miss a beat” in doing the same thing for a transit system.
Ellis also took pains Friday to say his plan to withdraw from CAT and set up a parallel transit system was not, as Savannah’s mayor has suggested, a negotiating ploy — part of the chairman’s monthslong legal and political effort to wrest back control of CAT after a new state law went into effect July 1 that reduced he and the commission’s appointment power to the board.
“It is not a power struggle,” he insisted to reporters, just the county exercising its responsibility to provide public transportation.
Notable omissions
Since the law overhauling CAT’s board of directors, House Bill 756, was passed by the legislature and signed into law by Gov. Brian Kemp in May with the bipartisan support of local lawmakers, Ellis has repeatedly asserted that the new law’s formula for board appointments is unfair and illegal because it is not proportional to the share of the funding the commission provides to the transit system.
In the Nov. 13 letter, he repeated the refrain, citing it as a reason that despite his wishes to the contrary, “further discussion concerning CAT’s position” is not possible and alternative transit system plans are required.
He does not note, however, that three seats on the current CAT board remain empty because he and the commission have refused to exercise their right under the new law to appoint people to them. One of those seats is designated for a person in Chatham “with a disability.”
That refusal is notable, since in his letter, Ellis derides the CAT board for shortchanging transport services, especially for those Chatham residents with physical or mental disabilities who use CAT’s so-called paratransit services
And in lamenting the lack of what he considers fair and lawful representation on the CAT board, Ellis also has failed to mention that according to two sources close to the deliberations about HB 756 that included House Speaker Jon Burns, he agreed to the formula for allotting appointments prior to the measure’s passage.
On Friday, Ellis denied that account.
“We were not consulted before the legislation passed,” he said in an interview with The Current.
‘We don’t have to vote’
In the Nov. 19 letter under the letterhead “Chairman of County Commissioners,” Ellis states that he is writing in the name of the eight-member Chatham County Commission.
Asked at a news conference on Wednesday whether the commission had voted to withdraw the county from CAT, Ellis said, “We don’t have to vote. We took consensus — in this consensus that I was authorized by the board to send the letter.”
He repeated his assertion that the plan to withdraw the county from the transit system was a collective decision by the commission: “The county commission felt like it was time for us to take action rather than trying to work out a solution.”
These statements, however, appear misleading, if not false, and a possible violation of Georgia’s Open Meetings Act. Under the act, county commissions are required to conduct all business in public with the exception of three items: real estate, personnel, and litigation.
‘None of us knew’
Ellis’ insistence that county commissioners had signed off on the letter produced a unusual display of defiance towards a commission chairman accustomed to acquiescence by its other members.
At a “biscuits and bills” legislative breakfast at the Savannah Convention Center sponsored by the Savannah Area Chamber of Commerce on Thursday, Commissioners Tanya Milton (5th District) and Aaron “Adot” Whitely (6th District) answered an emphatic “No!” when asked by a reporter if they were aware of the Nov. 13 letter or were consulted about it before it was sent.
Chatham County Commissioner Dean Kicklighter, right, contradicts Commission chair Chester Ellis’ version of the timeline for a letter Ellis ssent out telling the Chatham Area Transit Board that it would withdraw from the transit system.
More stunning still were Commissioners Patrick Farrell (4th District) and Dean Kicklighter (7th District) who quietly took up places next to Ellis as he addressed reporters at Friday’s news conference, defending the letter and his plan to cobble together a parallel transit system.
When Ellis finished his comments, the two county commissioners broke ranks with him. Standing alongside the chairman, Kicklighter said many of the commissioners “were not informed” before the Nov. 13 letter was sent.
The consensus among commissioners, Kicklighter said, “is that none of us knew that letter was going out because we were not — I was not prepared.” There was no vote by commissioners giving the chairman the authority to “send out a letter like that,” he added.
Farrell, a candidate for the Republican nomination for the Congressional seat currently held by Earl “Buddy” Carter of St. Simons, was equally scathing.
A public vote should have been taken on something of this magnitude that would shake up the bus system, he said. The proposal in the Nov. 19 letter required “public discussion and a public vote,” he said.
Earlier in the news conference, Ellis had defended his handling of the letter as part of the county attorneys’ “work product,” but he stood silent as the two commissioners scolded his handling of it.
Asked for comment on the apparent contradiction between his statements and those of Kicklighter and Farrell, he replied: “I stand where I stand. The attorneys were the ones prepared the letter, and so I sent it, and I don’t regret sending it.”
Cracked unity
In a speech last year inaugurating his second, four year-term as commission chairman, Ellis had exhorted the audience to embrace his “One Chatham” campaign. “Municipalities and the county must work together to solve the problems that we have,” he said.
But as the week drew to close, his Nov. 13 letter and subsequent efforts to defend it were producing cracks in the unity he has sought, as well as anger from the people whose interests he says he is championing.
In the letter, Ellis derided the CAT board for focusing on the “tourist economy” and the system’s ferry system at the expense of the “true needs of the community” and “local citizens,” singling out those with physical or mental disabilities who use CAT’s paratransit services.
In framing his conflict with the current CAT board and the local bipartisan group of lawmakers who backed legislation calling for a new board as one pitting the “tourist economy” against “local citizens,” he did not point out that according to Savannah’s Tourism Leadership Council, the city’s tourist industry employs 28,000 people and brings in $4 billion annually to the local economy.
And in issuing one unsupported claim and innuendo after another about the current CAT board, he did not acknowledge that most of his claims about alleged malfeasance and mismanagement by the CAT board dated to the previous CAT board, the one he, through his and the commission’s appointments, dominated.
The result was a frazzled community, worried about the fate of the transport system. In a statement addressed to Chatham residents on Saturday, Whitely sought to assure anxious Chatham residents that, “neither my colleagues on the commission nor I ever supported ending public transit in this community.”
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