A 53-year-old Georgia grandmother who was led out of a county commission meeting in handcuffs and spent three nights in jail after a five-minute public comment now faces a criminal trespass charge — and the procedural hearing in her case that was expected on Wednesday, October 28, has been canceled, with no new court date set. Tanya Tomanek of Brantley County says the case is an attempt to silence her residents' coalition. County officials say she was removed because she broke the meeting rules that had been posted before the session.
Source: The Current GA
Tomanek lives on 13 acres in rural Brantley County, in southeast Georgia. She moved to that land three years ago, after living in Camden and Brantley counties for close to two decades, and she grew up in Illinois. For most of her life, she told The Current GA, she thought of herself as a businesswoman, a mother and a grandmother who was more concerned with family than with politics — someone who helped care for elderly parents and now helps raise grandchildren on her farm.
How a data-center discussion turned a newcomer into an activist
That changed in January 2026, when Tomanek and a friend attended a local discussion group at Waynesville Baptist Church where the topic was data centers. What she heard about the technology's potential to disrupt the economy and her grandchildren's lives frightened her, she said, and she began spending her free time researching data centers and talking to neighbours. With her partner, Matt McGrath, she put up a digital billboard beside Georgia Highway 82 to raise awareness.
In February she formed a residents' coalition, Citizens United for Brantley County's Future. Its first formal meeting, at Waynesville Primary School, drew around 150 people, she said. A later meeting of the group in Nahunta attracted nearly 100 residents. Later that month, a man who spoke against a proposed zoning change to allow a data center at the monthly county committee meeting was escorted out by police; he was not charged.
Anger in the county then merged with another crisis: wildfires destroyed over a hundred homes and forced families to evacuate. Some members of Tomanek's coalition started a rumour that tech companies or developers had set the fires deliberately to clear land — a claim for which no evidence is reported in the coverage — while county commissioners have denied that a data center was under consideration in Brantley at all. Tomanek's group says residents are worried that developers could bring data centers, a landfill or solar farms to the rural county.
Five minutes at the podium on July 7
On July 7, Tomanek signed up for the five-minute public-comment period at the Brantley County commission meeting in Nahunta, where about 20 neighbours, including Citizens United allies, were in the room. Video of her speech shows her telling the commissioners that local government is like a business and elected officials are employees of the voters — and that the people of Brantley had been, in her words, poor business owners for failing to hold their commissioners accountable. 'They didn't take the power from us; we gave it away. And we're the only ones that can take it back,' she said, to some cheers.
As her emotions rose, she used an expletive to warn that the county was going bankrupt — by which, she later explained, she meant she feared commissioners would change the rural face of Brantley with large-scale development. About two minutes into her speaking time, according to the deputy's arrest report, her tone became 'noticeably more aggressive' toward Board Chairman Skipper Harris, and the report says she began 'verbally berating and cursing loudly for everyone in the room to hear.' The deputy who arrested her wrote that she was using threatening language and refused to comply with demands that she sit down before the end of her allotted five minutes.
Tomanek concedes she used an expletive but denies making any threats, and says the accusations are politically motivated and meant to silence her coalition. County Manager Joey Cason told The Current GA she was 'ejected from the meeting because she broke the rules' posted before the session: 'Chairman Skipper Harris asked her to sit down; she said no. The officer asked her to leave, and she said that he would have to take her out in handcuffs. So the officer handcuffed her and took her out.' Both accounts are reported here as their makers stated them; the charge has not been tried.
Three nights in jail, then a $1,000 cash-only bail
Tomanek was taken to the county lockup that Tuesday afternoon. 'I'm terrified. If I said I wasn't scared, I'd be lying,' she said. Another woman in the holding cell told her the sheriff processed people on a Wednesday; the cellmate was processed the next day, but Tomanek waited until Friday, when she was released on a $1,000 cash-only bail while awaiting a hearing on the criminal trespass charge — three nights in jail in total.
A recused defender, a canceled hearing, and no new date
Her path through the court has already been delayed once. Before her first court hearing, scheduled for September 23, her assigned public defender told her he had to recuse himself from the case because of a conflict of interest — in private practice, she said, he apparently does work for the county. The Current GA originally reported that she was due in court on Wednesday, October 28, and then updated its report after that procedural hearing was canceled. For now, no court date has been set, and Tomanek says she is hoping the judge will throw out the charges.
'I've had a target on my back since jump,' she said. 'Before January, nobody stood up. Nobody was here. They could do what they wanted because we were silent. My voice holds no more weight than the next. They didn't do it to me. They did it to everyone. I just happened to go to jail.'
Why this matters beyond Brantley County
The case has become a local test of a much larger question: how far a local government may go in policing the people who come to its meetings to criticise it. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances, and Georgia's own constitution protects the right to apply by petition or remonstrance to those who hold power. At the same time, meeting chairs everywhere rely on posted rules — time limits, decorum and orders to sit down — to keep public sessions workable. Which side of that line a profane, emotional five-minute comment falls on is exactly what a court would have to decide if the trespass charge proceeds.
For readers in Georgia's growing Punjabi and South Asian communities — including truckers who pass through the state's highway corridors and families who have settled in its smaller counties — the case is a practical reminder that public-comment periods are a real, protected channel for raising concerns about development, taxes and county spending, and that the rules posted for those sessions, and how they are enforced, matter. What happens next is procedural: a new court date must be set, a new defender or lawyer must carry the case, and the county must decide whether to keep pursuing a trespass charge arising from a speech that lasted about two minutes before the handcuffs came out.