Residents may voice their concerns for the extreme levels of racial division being used as a political tool by city officers to achieve unjust racial political ends by emailing Mayor Skip Henderson directly at SkipHenderson@columbusga.org, while cc’ing their respective city council members on the email.

COLUMBUS, Ga. — City manager Isaiah Hugley has extremely close ties to the organization of a political protest to be held this Tuesday over the controversy surrounding police chief Freddie Blackmon. 

Those ties are in fact so close that the local organization’s listed address is at Isaiah Hugley’s home. Seriously. 

While the organization uses a P.O. box as its fronted mailing address, a little digging revealed that the organization has a listed business address of 4019 Steam Mill Road.

That’s Isaiah Hugley’s house. 

According to our city’s code of ordinances, appointed city officers like Hugley are forbidden from engaging in activities that are “incompatible with the proper discharge of their official duties or would tend to impair their independence of judgment or action in the performance of their official duties.”

We’re pretty certain that having the organization you run out of your house organize political protests against the actions of city council is “incompatible with the proper discharge” of Hugley’s official duties. 

Read on for the details. 

THE PROTEST APPLICATION

On March 21, 2023, a permit was applied for through the Columbus Police Department to hold a public demonstration at the city council meeting on Tuesday, March 28. Since the form explicitly states the event is a rally held to “show support of police chief Freddie Blackmon,” the demonstration is clearly within the city’s legal definition of political activity as dictated by Sec. 16B-16-2.

The permit was also ironically signed-off on by none other than Chief Blackmon himself, which presents its own questions of conflict of interest — though that is a separate issue entirely. 

OMEGA PSI PHI

The application form shows that the rally is being held by Omega Psi Phi: a nation-wide fraternity and 501(c)(7) organization with a local chapter in Columbus, Ga.

We’ll be using the short-hand “OPP” to refer to the national organization of Omega Psi Phi throughout the rest of this article so as to not confuse the nation-wide parent organization with any of its many local subsidiaries that operate in a shell-company-like manner. 

RESTRICTED POLITICAL ACTIVITY

By their very nature, 501(c)(7) organizations like OPP are restricted by law from conducting political activities that do not meet what is called their “exempt purpose,” which means they may only conduct political activity that clearly supports their legally-defined reason for having tax exempt status. 

Conducting a political rally to “show support” for a police chief who is on the verge of being fired for incompetence — in a blatant effort to intimidate elected officials outside of their chambers while they are conducting official business — does not meet the organization’s “exempt purpose.” 

From the get-go, the parent organization of OPP proper does not have the legal authority to organize and conduct the political rally it is listed as having applied for. 

If the national OPP did indeed sanction such a protest, it could lose its tax-exempt status for having done so.

If the individual applicant did so on his own accord without it being officially sanctioned by the parent-organization, we’d be willing to bet OPP isn’t happy about the legal liability that rogue actor just placed upon them. 

LOCAL COLUMBUS CHAPTER

The local chapter of OPP, known as “Lambda Iota,” is headquartered at 3824 Steam Mill Road. This address is also listed on the protest’s application form.

The property at Steam Mill Road was purchased in 2010 and converted to the local chapter’s fraternity house, thus providing definitive proof of the subsidiary organization who is actually conducting the protest: The Lambda Iota chapter of OPP. 

A search on the Georgia Secretary of State website reveals the chapter’s registration as “Lambda Iota Chapter of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity Inc.” with a state control number of 09064015.

The organization’s filing history shows an administrative dissolution in 2015 for failing to file its annual registration. 

The organization was then formally reinstated by the State of Georgia in 2020, but does not have any publicly-listed Form 990 filings since.

A basic search on Guidestar revealed that Lambda Iota had its tax-exempt status revoked by the IRS for failing to file its required Form 990 for three consecutive years. 

Technically, the local Lambda Iota chapter of OPP does not appear to legally exist as an organization in its own right as far as the IRS is concerned. If the organization has not filed its required Form 990s for three consecutive years, it will likely face dissolution again by the State of Georgia. 

However, an even deeper search revealed that the local chapter also has another shell-company-esque subsidiary titled as “Omega Lambda Iota” that coincidentally uses the same address at 3824 Steam Mill Road — publicly, anyway.

Here’s where it started to get interesting. 

OMEGA LAMBDA IOTA

A simple google search revealed that the organization titled “Omega Lambda Iota Social Action and Scholarship Foundation, Inc.” also uses the same public-facing address of 3824 Steam Mill Road — though there is more to the story. Keep reading.

Unlike the affiliated local chapter of the OPP of a ‘coincidentally’ similar name, this organization is a 501(c)(3) organization instead of a 501(c)(7). These standard 501(c)(3) organizations are prohibited from all political activity unless it is directly required for the survival of the organization. In short: This organization would also be expressly prohibited from holding the rally. 

Like the other affiliated 501(c)(7)  of a similar name, the “c3” organization of Omega Lambda Iota also had its tax exempt status revoked by the IRS for failing to file its required Form 990 for three consecutive years. 

Do you notice how shell-companied this organization’s affiliates are  yet? Seems a bit odd, doesn’t it? Almost as if it's purposefully convoluted?

Well, the founders may have had a rather misleading reason for that.

A deeper search into the tax filings of Omega Lambda Iota revealed the organization’s 2016 key officers and chairman.

That chairman was none other than city manager Isaiah Hugley. 

THE MONEYSHOT

Digging even deeper into the extremely disturbing connections between city manager Isaiah Hugley and the OPP’s application for a political protest, we found a public record that specifically listed the business address for Omega Lambda Iota at 4019 Steam Mill Road.

The homeowner is listed as city manager Isaiah Hugley.

The “renter” is listed as his wife, Georgia state representative Carolyn Hugley. 

CONCLUSION

If you’re going to make the decision to be the city manager of a city, and your wife is going to make the decision to be a state representative, perhaps you ought to not run race-based political organizations out of a house you own that in turn decide to hold political rallies that expose you for violating the Code of Ethics dictated by the City Charter of Columbus, Georgia. 

Nonetheless, Hugley appears to have done exactly that. 

Perhaps a formal investigation, or —dare we say — subpoena, could shed some light on Hugley’s recent digital communications concerning his connection to the organization of a political rally that challenges the sanctity of our city’s government while he sits as an appointed city officer. 

Perhaps Hugley should stop trying to make this a “thing” and instead remember that he serves at the leisure of city council.

Residents may voice their concerns for the extreme levels of racial division being used as a political tool by city officers to achieve unjust racial political ends by emailing Mayor Skip Henderson directly at SkipHenderson@columbusga.org, while cc’ing their respective city council members on the email.

Facts are stubborn things — and we’ll keep publishing them, whether city officials like them or not.

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