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The story about the GM plant site in Saturday’s AJC, “Suitors drop out, but site has allure”, concluded with “[b]ut whatever the ultimate use, it’s critical that the developers get it right. These big things don’t come around very often.”

Transit / transportation is one of the components that must be right.

This is the first of what I hope will be a few posts concerning the transportation component of GM plant site redevelopment. The posts presume high density redevelopment. (This use of high density is relative to metro Atlanta, the reader’s perspective. What is high density in Metro Atlanta is medium density in a general large urban area context.) It provides the “lay of the land” of the GM plant site with respect to public transportation. Future posts will delve into transit detail, and street transportation components.

It’s easy to understand that the plant site’s access to the $100 million Doraville MARTA Station is an important component of the site’s allure. Future transit serving the I-285 corridor linking Windy Hill-Cumberland, Perimeter Center, and the Doraville MARTA station is under development with the Revive 285 initiative. Revive 285 transit looks to consist of bus service with right-of-way acquisition for future transit. I-285 bus service means Doraville will have to be vigilant that it won’t be dumped on—there are the buses themselves to be considered, not just the adverse impact of commuters operating vehicles on local roads between the MARTA Station and freeways.

The Doraville MARTA Station would be located at the south end of new transit to the north being explored by the Gwinnett Village Community Improvement District. Transit to the northeast could be a MARTA heavy rail extension, I-285 transit extension, or light rail.

The state had proposed commuter rail service from Gainesville along the Norfolk Southern (NS) line through Doraville to downtown Atlanta line in the mid-1990’s. (Yes it’s been that long—public transportation, and commuter rail in particular, have been rejected by a state GOP hostile to transit and Atlanta.) Here’s a commuter service map from 2002 when planning was in full swing. (The green Macon and Athens lines on the foregoing map were in the process of implementation in 2002.) The planning is now stale. It didn’t include a Doraville station stop. I have no doubt that Doraville would be a station stop if Doraville is a terminus for I-285 transit.

There has also been some state planning for intercity passenger service along the NS line beyond the current two Amtrak trains. Here’s a map of statewide intercity rail. This I-85 corridor intercity service would be an extension of North Carolina’s progressive development extending improved intercity service to NC from the north, and development of service within the state. Here’s the schedule of service WITHIN NC. Note this schedule doesn’t include two additional trains beyond the two through Georgia operating between Charlotte and NYC.

The only way I-85 corridor intercity service might ever stop in Doraville would be if the city becomes a transit hub in a massive way.

Good riddance, but it’s cost us two years. Plus we’re in much worse shape than five years ago when GM announced it was closing the plant. The plant’s been closed two years now, and the local, state and national economies are in tatters.

The situation is distressing, but the optimistic can take refuge in DeKalb County Commissioners and taxpayers recognizing New Broad Street’s mismanagement and/or greed. This screed vents about New Broad Street, but the handling of the circumstances is also Strike 2 for DeKalb County CEO Ellis. (Strike 1 was the CEO’s early retirement program that paid 800+ employees to leave, yet the County is hiring and training to refill everyone one of 200+ early retirement public safety positions, and hiring to refill 200+ other early retirement vacancies.)

The AJC reported New Broad Street’s purchase agreement cut GM out of negotiations in connection with a last ditch attempt by GM for bond money with New Broad Street out of the picture. GM has been a good corporate citizen and has a stake in responsibly disengaging itself from the property. GM could perhaps have been a positive influence in earlier negotiations—New Broad Street mismanagement and/or greed.

The New Broad Street-County negotiations process was conducted in the dark. New Broad Street privately negotiated a deal with the CEO over the course of many months without ever directly engaging the County Commissioners and City Council that would actually have to sign off on a deal. I pay attention, and I don’t recollect any publicity concerning the negotiations, let alone the amount, until this past Spring. That was a mere two months before the deal was supposed to be sealed in late June, even though $36M in stimulus bonds had been in the picture since last year.

Even with the deal ready to be done, there wasn’t any widely public conceptual site plan or detailed accounting of how the money would be spent. Apparently the plan was to rush stakeholders to accept the deal at the last minute because the clock was ticking. It would have cost, what, $200,000 for minimal public engagement concerning a hundreds of millions of dollars development?—New Broad Street mismanagement and/or greed.

For the record, I support tens of millions of public investment in redeveloping the GM site. An order of magnitude estimate in providing direct access to the MARTA station from the plant site, and groundwork accommodating possible I-285 transit and passenger rail service operating on the Norfolk Southern (NS) track or right of way, would start at a few million. Providing road access between New Peachtree Street and the site (under MARTA and NS) would start at an order of magnitude $10M. (Not saying this is required, only offering it as an example where public investment would be warranted.) Millions more would be required to spruce up Motors Industrial Parkway, establish access between the site and Peachtree Road, and for various other road and utility changes and improvements around the periphery of the site. The above approaches $20M without really directly investing in site redevelopment.

I was opposed however, to the manner in which the public funding was being handled. Decision makers not directly engaged, public in the dark, and seemingly a $36M check to a private for-profit entity to engage in speculative building as it saw fit.

There may not be much in this post for you if you subscribe to and read the AJC. If you don’t, it contains links to two Sunday AJC columns.

This link explains in more detail than what follows why I supported Tim Echols over John Douglas in the GOP runoff for Public Service Commissioner. Echols opposed SB31, a measure that charges current Georgia Power residential customers in order to subsidize electricity for big business and reduce Georgia Power shareholders’ risk. He declared he would avoid any financial connections with industries the PSC regulates or their employees. Echols is an advocate for solar power though he doesn’t campaign as a green candidate, green unfortunately being anathema to the GOP. (I can’t say that solar is the way to go, but Georgia has to prepare to do something about its reliance on current technology coal-fueled electricity generation.)

This other link is an opinion column by Alan Essig of the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute suggesting the following reforms to the state’s Special Council of Tax Reform:

Cut the state sales tax and impose sales tax on some services
Modernize income tax brackets, rates, deductions and low income credits
Eliminate tax breaks that shift taxes to fewer taxpayers
Close corporate loopholes and update the net worth tax to eliminate a tax advantage to big multi-state corporations. (Here’s a link to a detailed information about corporate taxes in Georgia.)

I fully support these suggestions with perhaps the exception of presumably increasing the low income tax credit. I generally oppose tax credits, whether they be low income, consumer-oriented, or big business as a government handout / welfare.

Fayette School Superintendent John Decotis announced on February 11 that he would retire effective July 1. The Fayette School Board announced today, 194 days after DeCotis announcement, that Jeffrey Bearden will become superintendent effective January 3, 2011.

Crawford Lewis placed himself on administrative leave on February 25 under circumstances where it was quite conceivable he would not ever return. On April 16 he was paid $85,000 severance, so you gotta figure the School Board knew that Lewis was likely history the first week of April, if not earlier.

It’s been 131 days since Lewis was terminated, 140 days or more since the Board knew he would likely be gone, and 180 days since Lewis went on administrative leave.

Where is DeKalb’s School Board in its search for a new Superintendent now? They haven’t officially even started. It took the School Board until early August, about four month from Lewis’ official separation, to simply request proposals for from firms in order to hire them to assist the Board in beginning a search for a Superintendent.

Fayette County: Six month and two weeks to hire a new Superintendent.
DeKalb County: Four months, arguably five, and a search isn’t even officially yet underway.

Fayette County Schools and DeKalb County Schools: Day and Night.

Remember the General Assembly patting themselves on the back at the close of the last legislative session for enacting transportation legislation that would enable regions to impose a one cent sales tax for transportation?

I wrote that it was unlikely that I would support the sales tax transportation referendum even though I was a strong supporter of increased transportation funding. I objected to the legislation singling out only Fulton and DeKalb of Georgia’s 159 counties for special restrictions. GOP local government politicians have come to the same conclusion: they oppose the legislation because it would tax Fulton and DeKalb at twice the rate of other metro Atlanta counties.

Alpharetta, Milton and Johns Creek city councils are considering joining the city of Mountain Park with resolutions that formally oppose the transportation sales tax. The mayor of Sandy Springs has expressed reservations. GOP Senate District 40 candidate Fran Millar disapproves.

The GOP General Assembly’s long-awaited transportation legislation is so crappy that even GOP local politicians oppose it. It was so difficult for the General Assembly to allow you tax yourself and have the General Assembly control the money that it took ‘em six years to pass this steaming pile of poop. Keep that history in mind when GOP candidates tell you that education and water are priorities.

Meanwhile contrast the transportation legislation experience with the less than 24 hours it took the General Assembly to grant a state income tax exemption on retirement income benefitting only rich seniors to the tune of $100,000,000 annually, a cut that was offset by increasing taxes on medical care. Keep that in mind (and if you’re middle class, your hand tightly on your pocketbook) when the Georgia GOP says tax reform is needed pronto.

Icebergs you may recall are 90% submerged. It turns out the $10,000 plus spent by DeKalb County Schools employees on books written by a DeKalb County Schools administrator mentioned in the previous post was only the tip of an iceberg. Further investigation determined DeKalb Schools spent another $90,000 plus on books written by various DeKalb administrators.

One Author-Principal racked up over $63,000 in DeKalb Schools sales, including over $11,000 in purchases she made herself as a DeKalb School Principal. Over $14,000 in purchases were made by her sister, also a Principal. Both have been fired. Two other administrators have been demoted in connection with book purchases, including the author-administrator referred to in the previous post. Read all about it here in the AJC.

The primary purpose of this post: To encourage readers to subscribe to and read local newspapers. The breadth, depth, and standards of good investigative journalism and coverage of local news in newspapers are superior to TV news. You’ll be a much better informed citizen spending 25 minutes a day actively reading a newspaper instead of passively watching the apartment fire of the day on TV news. The web and related technological developments are undermining the advertising revenue that supports local newspaper investigative journalism and news, and your support will help sustain this critical coverage.

The DeKalb author-administrators would likely have continued to collect royalty checks had the AJC not investigated and publicized results. The DeKalb interim Superintendent (who was did the firings and made the demotions) credited the AJC with bringing the purchases to light.

The two fired Principals say the district knew about the purchases for years and did not consider them inappropriate until reported recently asked questions. If that’s true, the AJC investigation and publicity did double duty—publicizing unethical behavior and nepotism, and then contributing to punitive action.

Part III on redistricting is still in the works. Next up may be a post on the lobbyist legislation passed in response to former House Speaker Glenn Richardson sleeping with a lobbyist for Atlanta Gas Light (AGL) while sponsoring legislation sought by AGL. General Assembly leadership says there’s no problem with gifts to legislators because lobbyists’ gifts are reported. The problem of course is that gifts are not being reported.

Read about unreported $1,000 gifts to legislators in today’s AJC. (There’s no link as I couldn’t locate the story on-line—reason for you to purchase the AJC.)

Part III yet remains on hold – The DeKalb Schools debacle of the month (six months without a Supt before even beginning to look for one) has my blood pressure up. It’s getting harder and harder to advocate for public education.

I welcomed Crawford Lewis as Superintendent after the rancorous unsatisfactory administration of Johnny Brown. Crawford Lewis proved himself to be a chiseler, purchasing a $15,000 surplus vehicle from the district for $5,000, then likely stole gasoline on the district’s credit card. How many times in your life have you purchased three tanks of gas in one day without leaving the state? Crawford Lewis did it three times on a DeKalb Schools credit card within a two and a half year period. Lewis’ commonly purchased two tanks per day, often on weekends, when it would be more convenient to gas up family members cars on the District’s credit card.

It remains to be seen if Lewis will serve time for allegedly accepting gratuities from school district vendors. It doesn’t say much for an Education Doctorate when a holder earning about a quarter million per year chisels, steals, and accepts unethical gifts for a mere few thousand dollars more.

A DeKalb administrator wrote a book for young people. Over $10,000 in book purchases are made by various DeKalb elementary, middle and high schools. It’s a wonder an administrator so gifted that he can write a single book worthy of purchase across the gamut of elementary, middle and high schools isn’t a full time author. Two book purchases totaling $4,800 each, just under a $5,000 limit that requires additional scrutiny of purchase orders, were authorized by one individual. It’s not rocket science that there’s a high probability the purchase amounts were selected to willfully evade school system purchase controls.

DeKalb Schools have purchased over $20,000 of pizza from pizza parlors owned by board member Jay Cunningham. Cunningham has distanced himself from the pizza sales after they were publicized by changing corporate registration to indicate pizza parlor ownership by a Cunningham relative. How many other no-bid purchases have been and are being made from businesses associated with DeKalb Schools employees that have paper ownership concealing any connection between the employees and purchases?

Hundreds if not over a thousand teachers have been laid off in the metro Atlanta area, but the board voted 7-1 to hire a firm that in turn will hire four dozen teachers from oversees. Board member Zepora Roberts was the lone vote against. She has two daughters that are DeKalb School District employees, one recently having been newly promoted to Assistant Principal. Roberts says she shouldn’t be singled out for scrutiny concerning her daughter’s employment because School Board members Eugene Walker, Pamela Speaks and Sarah Copelin-Wood have children that work for the District.

There’s a one cent SPLOST generating hundreds of millions of dollars to build new schools. Discussion of the construction mismanagement that is currently in litigation and the aforementioned corruption are beyond the scope of this too-long post. There have been trailers at 50 year old Cary Reynolds for going on two decades, yet a number of schools have significant excess capacity and have been that way for years. The solution? Convene a 20-member Citizens Planning Task Force to make the tough recommendations in a difficult public spotlight. Then interfere with deliberations as School Board member Copelin-Wood allegedly did. Good luck getting anyone other than hacks to serve on any future Task Forces.

School Board member H. Paul Womack sought to distance himself from the controversy surrounding the Task Force in a column in the AJC. He wrote that schools with less than 450 pupils receive NO state funding. The truth is that schools with less than 450 pupils receive less than maximum state funding. Misinformation doesn’t inspire confidence in other pronouncements that caanot be independently verified.

Board member Eugene Walker was chairman the Development Authority of DeKalb County when that outfit last year proposed a property tax abatement for the Brookhaven development that is in trouble. Can you say conflict of interest? Walker is no longer on the Board of the Authority.

Then there’s the hiring of a law firm headed by an African-American female to represent the District at a cost of about a million dollars more than would have been paid another firm. DeKalb’s $5,800,000 law costs incidentally are greater than those of Fulton, Cobb and Clayton combined. Forgive me for thinking there are better ways to spend a $1,000,000 on diversity.

Crawford Lewis put himself on paid administrative leave in February after he became the subject of a criminal investigation. After a couple of months time off at $20,000 per month, the Board then paid him $85,000 in severance. It took six months from the time Lewis went on leave for the Board to get around to simply issuing a Request For Proposals (RFP) to seek candidate firms that in turn will seek candidates for Superintendent. A primary responsibility of the Board is supervision of the Superintendent. They didn’t do it with Lewis. Apparently they don’t want to do because the mere INITIATION of the process to locate a successor has already taken six months. The RFP should have been on the street within three weeks of Lewis’ severance, there being two months prior to the severance to prepare it.

Who then is making the important decisions during the more than a year it will take to find a Superintendent? Many Superintendent-type decisions will be made by the School Board, making the Board even susceptible to investigation with respect to micromanagement. With all of the foregoing, it’s no wonder the school accreditation organization, SACS, has put DeKalb notice it is prepared to crank up an investigation concerning hiring practices, conflicts of interest, training, nepotism, micromanagement and the Superintendent search, a la Clayton County.

BTW, be prepared for a half million dollar a year new Superintendent. It will be otherwise difficult to hire an exceptionally qualified candidate willing to wade into the morass of senior DeKalb Schools administration.

Any takers that there’s talk in Dunwoody about withdrawing from the DeKalb School System? Can’t say I blame ‘em.

With runoff elections Tuesday, Part III, Redistricting – The Governor’s Race, will have to wait. The links associated with names below are those of the candidate’s websites.

I voted for Gail Buckner (35% of total vote) in the Democratic Secretary of State primary. Georganna Sinkfield (23% of the vote), was my second choice of the five candidates running, as well as the second choice at of Democratic Primary voters. I’m staying with Buckner (League of Women Voters SoS Georgia voter guide) if I don’t sit this one out, it being the only race on the Doraville area Democratic Ballot (DeKalb Democratic Sample Ballot) and Sinkfield also being a good candidate.

The real action is in the GOP runoff (DeKalb GOP Sample ballot). Despite his pandering commercial, I support former Cobb County Chairman Sam Olens for Attorney General. Tim Echols would be my choice for PSC.

The big enchilada is the GOP Governor’s race runoff. Karen Handel broke away from the pack of candidates running behind long-leading John Oxendine in the last couple of weeks prior to the primary and finished first with 34% of the vote. Nathan Deal, another of those in the pack, had generally been running second all along, and finished that way with 23% of the vote. One recent poll (Insider Advantage) has Handel and Deal neck and neck in the runoff at 46% each. Another (Mason-Dixon) has Handel with 47% and Deal 42% (both polls +/-4%).

My nod goes to serial flip-flopper Karen Handel over social conservative extremist Nathan Deal. Deal, the beneficiary of a no-bid state contract for 15 years, used his Congressional Office and his connection with Lt Governor Cagle to attempt to continue the no-bid arrangement after the Georgia Revenue Commissioner indicated the contract would be opened to bidding. Deal resigned from Congress a day or two before Congress was to take action concerning the his use of his Congressional Office for personal gain.

Handel courted the gay vote in her campaign for Fulton County Chair, then flip-flopped to compete with Deal for most anti-gay candidate. Handel supported adding a paper-trail to electronic voting when campaigning for Secretary of State, then flip-flopped, abandoning support for a paper trail after being elected.

Deal’s only exception to terminating any pregnancy is a serious threat to the life of the Mother. Handel takes the position that the pregnancy is paramount unless rape or incest is involved. I guess those conceived by rape are second class human beings too, along with gays. Either way, you’re not voting for a winner, unless you view anti-gay and eliminating choice as high priorities.

Metro Atlanta General Assembly representation may be increasing for the 2012 elections, but more of the mediocre does us little good.

Metro Atlanta has long been the piggybank for much of the rest of the state, except that now there’s little concern for the things that keep the coins rolling in. Two cases in point, water and transportation.

I congratulate the General Assembly in taking some good steps concerning water this past year. It’s disconcerting however, that the legislation was precipitated by a 2009 court ruling that set a 2012 deadline, instead of the record-breaking drought of 2003-2008. What other explanation is there for the legislation the very first session after the ruling? The Governor declared a state of emergency in 2007, and legislation is enacted three years later.

The state’s transportation policy from 2004-2009 consisted of running up the bond debt and reshuffling at GDOT as a result of power struggles between the General Assembly, GDOT Board and Governor. There’s been nothing during that period to foster regional cooperation, yet the 2010 General Assembly’s transportation solution after six years is what? Regional transportation funding controlled by a state that is not properly funding the state’s DOT. The leadership lacks the spine to raise state taxes, but apparently has plenty of backbone when it comes to state control of regionally-raised transportation dollars.

Tom Murphy, Speaker of the House of the General Assembly for 29 years until his defeat in 2002, wasn’t a favorite of mine. His balancing of the interests of urban and rural Georgia was head and shoulders above that of the GOP leadership of the past half dozen years. Murphy understood that a prosperous metro Atlanta was good for all Georgians.

You’d think House Speaker pro tem Jan Jones of north Fulton County, second highest ranking House member after Speaker Ralston, would be a voice for metro Atlanta. So where was Jan Jones when regional transportation legislation singled out only Fulton and DeKalb of Georgia’s 159 counties for special penalties? Leading the effort to reconstitute Milton County of course. As if additional fragmentation of local metro Atlanta governments will make it easier to solve regional problems like water and transportation.

I’ll conclude with a pitch that we need better more moderate leadership, and a better balanced less partisan redistricting system is one means to that end. Less partisan redistricting would lead to less of the decidedly ‘safe’ seats that are fertile ground for extremists on both ends of the political spectrum. The present system will allow current ineffective leadership to entrench itself next year. We certainly don’t need to continue on the current course.

I wish I had more time to crunch the numbers, but pros will be doing it for us soon. The following is derived from a very rudimentary analysis of changes in Georgia population as concerns General Assembly redistricting for 2012. The changes below are approximately those that would occur based on Wikipedia 2009 population estimates. Note there could be some small surprises when actual 2010 census results are released.

There should be no surprise that there will be a significant shift in numbers of representatives from rural and south Georgia to metro Atlanta and north Georgia. Georgia’s population has increased over 20% over the past decade from about 8,200,000 to close to 10,000,000. There will be a shift of on the order of seven House and two Senate seats to the broad metro Atlanta region. This shift is based on approximately 60% of the approximately 1,800,000 population increase having occurred in the Atlanta region, and the region in 2000 constituting equal or less than one-half of the state’s population. Seven seats are nearly four percent of the 180 total House seats. Four percent may not sound like much, but it’s a zero sum game, so it is actually an 8% swing.

The population increase of the 10 metro Atlanta core (Atlanta Regional Commission, ARC) counties population over the last decade is a bit above that of the state as a whole. The increase of some of the outlying metro Atlanta counties was greater, but those counties are working from a relatively small base number of seats, i.e. a relatively large percentage change in a small number is small number.

There are currently 10 seats wholly within DeKalb County, and about nine others partially within the County, for say an equivalent 15 whole seats. DeKalb’s population has increased by 12%, significantly less than the state’s 20%, and thus is going to lose at least one House seat. Fulton (27% increase) and Gwinnett (37% increase) will pick up at about two House seats each and at least one Senate seat between them. Population increases in Cobb and Clayton, the other two counties constituting the biggest five Counties in metro Atlanta, are a little less than the state average (18% Cobb, 17% Clayton) so the reduction in number of seats in each county is but fractional.

The remainder of the seats shifting to metro Atlanta will accrue largely in the counties adjacent to the big five. Forsyth, Cherokee and Henry County for example will each pick up a House seat, and Paulding County one-half of a seat.

Part II – General Assembly Leadership and the ATL
Part III – The Governor’s Race