UPDATE III: The only new piece of info I can find in this morning’s hard-copy iteration of this story is this…

Other DeKalb County commissioners said they were unaware of the warrants and could not comment.

UPDATE II: Weirder still!  The AJC updates the article for a third time and NOW the lawyer’s claim of identity fraud is gone.  Instead we have this statement from Sutton…

Sutton said she paid Costco the outstanding money late Thursday and her attorney had the warrants dropped.

“We paid them all the money that is due,” Sutton said. “This is just very unfortunate and embarrassing. This is a reminder that we all need to pay very close attention to your banking transactions because this could happen to anyone.”

Uh yeah, thanks for the tip.  Still no explanation as to why the Gwinnett judge recalled the warrants.  Hopefully the AJC won’t let this drop.

UPDATE: The story just got a lot weirder.  Sutton’s lawyer is now claiming identity fraud is to blame for 4 bounced checks to CostCo and the charges were cleared by a Gwinnett judge this afternoon.  How Sutton was able to prove identity fraud so quickly, we don’t know.  Also, Sutton has a bit of a history and I’m a bit unclear how she wouldn’t be aware of this issue.

After the warrants were issued last year, the Gwinnett deputies contacted Sutton via mail. They then forwarded the information to DeKalb law enforcement, which is the normal procedure when a warrant is for a suspect outside Gwinnett, Powell said.

Court records show Sutton also had previous problems with bad checks. In 1996, she pleaded no contest in Gwinnett to writing bad checks to West Building Supply in Stone Mountain.

Sutton said the 1996 charges happened after she “accidentally” overdrew her account.

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Agnes Scott College, Little Shop of Stories and Daren Wang all have reason to be yelling “Squeeeee!” this week.

In an extensive article profiling the prolific, counter-culture, superstar author Neil Gaiman, all three Decatur institutions found themselves mentioned in the latest issue of the New Yorker.  After detailing Gaiman’s life-story and his unique fan-base in an elegant journalistic style , the article closes with Gaiman’s December trip to Decatur.

In December, Gaiman flew to Decatur, Georgia, the location of Little Shop of Stories, which he had picked as a winner of the contest. In tribute to “The Graveyard Book,” the store had transformed its basement into a crypt and led the children in a danse macabre, beating out a store in Larchmont, New York, that had brought in a live white pony, in honor of the preferred conveyance of the novel’s death figure.

It was a foggy day, with intermittent rain, and people started lining up before noon outside Agnes Scott College, which was hosting the event. The reading started at six.

Little Shop announced the news yesterday in a post on their blog, while Mr. Wang had a bit of an identity crisis over on Verb.

More great press for the little city of growing book fame!

From the Decatur Minute….

Today at 5:00 P.M. the City will conduct its annual test of the CodeRED notification system. In an effort to kill two birds with one stone, the message will include a brief announcement about the tornado outdoor warning siren installation sounding on Friday, January 22nd. If you do not receive your call, please contact Police Captain Kris Boyett at 404-373-6551 or kris.boyett@decaturga.com.

Budget gaps are no fun.  Once a local government starts implementing hiring freezes and proposing tax hikes, constituents immediately become more sensitive to any and all expenses.

And the AJC knows it.

Splashed across the front page of this morning’s paper, a story about the DeKalb County Commission’s recent approval of up to $101,000 to repaint and wallpaper government buildings.

Commissioner Connie Stokes explained to the paper that the wallpapering is not just a cosmetic expense, but will replace “flood or water-damaged wallpaper.” And though the paper cites real estate agent Mark Ponzer as knowing “that some wallpapering can be put on hold”, no specific examples are provided to refute Stokes claim.

However, the commission did not respond to questions about why any of the county’s 8,000 employees could do the work, instead of contracting the work out.