Open records documents obtained by the Albany Herald and published May 27, 2026 reveal that the Dawson Downtown Development Authority was erroneously billed on at least two occasions in 2025 — once for $2,715.18 and another time for $1,778.80. Both charges were later reversed without formal public explanation. Interim City Manager Roxie Powell said she was not serving in the role when the billing problems occurred and was unaware of any documented meter-reading errors.

The Albany Herald's headline: "Support Yourself." The framing captures the situation with precision: a small-city DDA whose operational funding is affected by billing errors that the city's own financial controls did not catch, that required an open records investigation to surface, and that were reversed without documentation.

Two specific amounts do not constitute a financial crisis. They constitute an evidence trail: if a DDA is being erroneously billed without the city noticing, what else is not being noticed? The open records investigation that produced the two billing examples may also be producing additional documentation that has not yet been published.

The structural vulnerability the Dawson case exposes is common to small DDAs in small cities: the organization that processes the DDA's finances is the city's finance department, which is also the organization whose process produced the error. There is no external financial check until someone files an open records request.

Watch: Whether additional billing discrepancies emerge from the open records investigation. Whether the Interim City Manager's stated lack of knowledge produces any institutional accountability.

Source: Albany Herald, May 27, 2026.