The City of Atlanta handed $35,000 in taxpayer money to the Chicago-based Inner-City Muslim Action Network — an organization that has raised funds for Gaza — and then apparently forgot to check whether they actually spent it on what they were supposed to. No reports. No receipts. No accountability. Your tax dollars at work, folks.
Hey Atlanta, you know that receipt thing they make YOU do at tax time? Maybe try it sometime.
Here's how the scam works, according to an investigation by The Center Square. In 2023, the Atlanta City Council approved $205,000 in donations to four nonprofits for "public safety patrols and other public safety initiatives." The Inner-City Muslim Action Network, known as IMAN, got $35,000. The Buckhead Public Safety Foundation received $100,000. The MLK-Ashby Merchants Association and Cascade Business Association each got $35,000.
All four nonprofits signed contracts requiring them to submit detailed annual spending reports showing exactly how they used the money. Sounds reasonable, right? There's just one small problem: nobody ever collected those reports.
The Center Square searched everywhere — the Mayor's office, Contract Compliance, Finance, Procurement, the Law department, City Council, the Atlanta Police Department. Not a single department had the required spending reports on file. Zero. From any of the four groups.
Lester Tate, an attorney and former president of the State Bar of Georgia, didn't mince words about the city's failure. "The job of enforcing the contract should be the city executives' who entered into the contract," Tate said. "But it appears that they're just not doing their job."
It gets better. Tate added: "I think if the city's got the contract, and they're not requiring that, then they're complicit in just making a donation." And here's where it gets legally interesting — the Georgia Constitution actually prohibits local governments from giving away assets without receiving something of value in return. So this isn't just sloppy. It might be unconstitutional.
Even Debra Wathen, the executive director of the Buckhead Public Safety Foundation — which received the largest chunk at $100,000 — admitted she never filed the required reports. "I don't know if they ever asked for them," Wathen said. They didn't ask. Nobody asked. Nobody cared.
Meanwhile, spending receipts that did surface showed some interesting purchases: landscaping, HVAC repairs, Home Depot runs, restaurant bills, Instacart orders, gasoline, and mileage reimbursements. "Public safety initiatives" indeed.
And IMAN isn't just any nonprofit. The Chicago-based group, led by founding executive director Rami Nashashibi, has also raised funds for a "Benefit Concert for Gaza" — because nothing says Atlanta public safety like funneling money to an organization with ties to Middle Eastern charity events.
But wait — there's more taxpayer cash in the pipeline. IMAN also received $250,000 in federal FEMA grants, part of a whopping $5.7 million in FEMA money distributed to seven nonprofits for migrant services. When reporters tried to get records on how that money was spent, Mayor Andre Dickens' office played hardball. Executive Press Secretary Michael Smith and attorney Amber Robinson wouldn't release records under the Open Records Act unless the reporters paid production fees. Robinson even wrote that "the Department of Law cannot provide legal advice to persons or entities outside of City government" — which wasn't the question, but nice dodge.
So let's recap: Atlanta gave away $205,000 of taxpayer money, required spending reports, never collected them, can't tell you where the money went, and wants to charge you a fee to find out. That's not government. That's a racket.
As reported by The Center Square via America's Voice News.
