MILTON, Ga. — Questions about standard hiring procedures linger around the City of Milton’s decision to fire its elections consultant and hire another.

Officials had a somewhat tumultuous two or so months with Vernetta Nuriddin, former vice chair of the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections and now, former elections consultant for the city.

According to emails obtained by Appen Media through an Open Records request, Nuriddin appeared to lack the knowledge and comprehension of state code necessary to do the job. She also admitted to regularly deleting text messages related to official city matters.

City Manager Steve Krokoff was solely responsible for hiring a consultant for Milton’s first self-run municipal election, as delineated in the city charter. But Appen Media also reported Councilman Rick Mohrig made several personal requests that Krokoff interview Nuriddin, despite her not meeting the city’s qualification of having experience as an elections superintendent.

Milton’s formal bidding process did not come into play in the hiring of either the city’s former election consultant or the consultant who took her place, Lavania White.

But in an interview, Deputy City Manager Bernadette Harvill said there are specific rules that guide the procurement process from both the city level and the state level. She said there are also federal rules that are “very stringent.”

“There’s no room really to just be able to hand-select somebody you want to select,” Harvill said. “There’s a process that ensures that we are doing due diligence to find qualified vendors at fair price points utilizing our tax dollars.”

Formal procurement

When the City of Milton contracts work, Harvill said it generally receives either three written quotes from vendors, for contracts valued at $5,000 to $50,000, or three verbal quotes from…