(The Center Square) – Cobb County Clerk of Superior Court Connie Taylor is accused of asking an employee to destroy records and is now facing criminal charges, according to an indictment handed down Thursday.
Connie Taylor is charged with two counts of destruction of public records and two counts of violation of oath of office, according to Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr and Cobb County court records.
The indictment said Taylor told an employee to delete a folder entitled “passport” from her computer. Taylor asked the same employee to delete an email with the subject line “Expedited Passport Revenue Analysis 2021-2022,” which contained a report, according to the indictment.
The records were part of an open records request, Carr said.
Taylor was featured in articles by the Atlanta Journal Constitution about a bump in her salary because of the fee collection. Superior Court clerks can keep the $35 passport processing fee under Georgia law. The newspaper said Taylor was also keeping a $24.70 expedited passport charge. Taylor made $450,000 in passport fees in 2021 and 2022 and her annual salary was $170,000, the newspaper said.
She repaid Cobb County nearly $84,000 in expedited passport fees, the newspaper said.
The indictment is the result of an investigation by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
“The intentional destruction of public records is a serious offense that undermines transparency and public trust,” said Chris Hosey, the bureau’s director.
Taylor was first elected in 2020. She staved off a Republican challenge last November and kept her job by garnering more than 54% of the vote, according to election results posted on the Georgia Secretary of State’s website.
Georgia lawmakers passed a bill during the 2024 session that requires clerks to submit a quarterly report of passport fees collected to the county.
But the law allows clerks to continue to collect the $35 processing fee. Fulton County Superior Court Clerk Che Alexander collected $150,010 in passport processing fees, according to a report from Atlanta News First.
