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PAGE 4A - THE COMMERCE (GA) NEWS. WEDNESDAY. TANUARY 16. 2008
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Editorial Views
Keep An Eye On The
Legislature This Year
"Collectively, we've got to keep our eyes on
the state capital," Jackson County Board of
Commissioners chair Pat Bell told members of
the Jackson County Area Chamber of Commerce
last Wednesday.
Truer words were never spoken.
The General Assembly stands poised to take
local control away from cities, counties and
school systems with a pair of controversial and
far-reaching initiatives.
First, Speaker of the House Glenn Richardson
proposes to strip all funding authority from local
boards of education. The cover story is that he
would relieve Georgia citizens of the hated prop
erty tax for schools, but the process would also
have the effect of more than doubling sales taxes
while removing decisions on how much money
to spend on education from local school boards.
The concerns are myriad. First, though, is the
removal of local control. If taxpayers in Jackson
County want to fund extra programs for their
schools, that should be their option. Once the
money flows entirely from Atlanta, local con
trol is gone. And what happens when there is a
recession and sales tax revenues plummet? "You
tighten your belt," says Richardson, conveniently
forgetting that schools are obligated by contracts
to pay personnel, by accrediting groups to meet
student-teacher ratios and provide course offer
ings and by state law regarding classroom size.
The plan also removes virtually all current sales
tax exemptions — groceries, prescriptions, etc.,
and adds sales taxes to all services, from those
provided by your dentist, doctor, undertaker and
landlord. Most Georgians will pay far more taxes
under Richardson's plan, but major corporations
and property owners stand to get a windfall.
Also at risk under the Gold Dome is the water
local governments have invested in over the past
decade. The current drought is a call to action,
but the temptation for the legislature will be to
overreact and seek state control of all water.
What Georgia needs are state incentives to
build reservoirs and to encourage conservation.
What it's likely to get instead is a bureaucratic
nightmare that moves decision on water policy
out of the local governments and into the hands
of the state legislature.
Jackson and three other counties invested more
than $70 million in the Bear Creek Reservoir and
treatment facility. Over the years, Commerce has
put millions into a reservoir and treatment plant
to meet the city's needs. Now, the long-awaited
state water management plan seeks to vest the
decision making power over water use not in
those who have paid for the infrastructure, not
in those who are responsible for getting drinking
water to the public, but in political appointees
of the all-wise governor, lieutenant governor and
speaker of the House.
There are other issues — and thus other reasons
to keep an eye on the capital — but nowhere do
Georgians stand more to lose from legislators
intent upon making the state bureaucracy more
intrusive. It's long been said that no one's life,
liberty and property are safe whenever the leg
islature is in session, but it's never been more
true than during the 2008 session of the General
Assembly.
Pat Bell is right. We need to keep an eye on
the capital and upon those we elect to represent
us there. We'll find out if the loyalties of Rep.
Tommy Benton and Senator Ralph Hudgens are
with the people who elected them or with those
seeking to consolidate the state's hold on our
lives.
Editorials, unless otherwise noted, are written by Mark
Beardsley. He can be reached by e-mail at mark@main-
streetnews.com.
The Commerce News
ESTABLISHED IN 1875
USPS 125-320
1672 South Broad Street
Commerce, Georgia 30529
MIKE BUFFINGTON Co-Publisher
SCOTT BUFFINGTON Co-Publisher
MARK BEARDSFEY Editor/General Manager
BRANDON REED Sports Editor
TERESA MARSHALL Office Manager
MERRILL BAGWELL Cartoonist
THE COMMERCE NEWS is the legal organ of the city
of Commerce and is published every Wednesday by
MainStreet Newspapers Inc. Periodical postage paid at
Commerce, Georgia 30529.
Subscription Rates Per Year: Jackson, Banks
and Madison counties, $19.75; State of Georgia,
$38.85; out-of-state, $44.50. Most rates dis
counted $2 for senior citizens.
POSTMASTER send address changes to THE COMMERCE
NEWS, P.O. Box 908, Jefferson, GA 30549.
Since there's no more college
football on TV, would you like
to do something together?
Sure, let’s watch some
college basketball.
Wonderful
In Commerce
I manage to catch Frank
Capra's movie, "It's a
Wonderful Life," every
December, and one of the
many things I love about it
is its depiction of small-town
life, and its poignant reminder
that this life has, along with its
many blessings, its emotional
risks as well.
I ran into an expression of
these risks the other day, when
I came across something my
friend Nickie had written
last fall. Nickie grew up in
Commerce, but now lives in
Chicago, and he wrote, "Each
time I am in town, I am almost
afraid to look at the familiar
locations because I expect
them to disappear."
The sale of Commerce Drug
was what prompted this writ
ing, along with a flood of
memories, some of which I
quoted here at the time. Nickie
had worked in the drug store
from the time he was in junior
high school, and he recalled
that it was then open, and
very busy, on Sunday morn
ings, serving the before-church
crowd who came in for coffee.
Nickie was in the drug store,
sitting on a stool at the soda
fountain, when Kennedy was
shot, and says, "I still owe for
my chicken salad that I left
behind as I ran out the door. I
A Few
Facts, A
Lot Of
Gossip 2
BY SUSAN HARPER
had heard the news on Clyde
Langford's transistor radio,
which was sitting on the coun
ter." (The reason he ran was
that he also worked at WJJC.
He still has the wire copy that
he read on the air that day.)
He recalls Dr. Claude Hope —
then co-owner and pharmacist
of Commerce Drug — as hav
ing been a pioneer in the field
of medical communications,
and notes that Commerce was
years ahead of other towns in
having a fully integrated two-
way radio system that included
the hospital, ambulances,
doctors, druggists, police, vet
erinarians, radio station, tow
trucks, "and a few others,"
with an antenna tower on the
roof of the drug store that was
a landmark for years.
Nickie himself was one of the
"others," and writes that Dr.
Hope would always respond
to radio calls, even in the
middle of the night, because
he kept a radio under the bed.
"When I would be driving in
from Atlanta," Nickie writes, "I
would sometimes sign on with
a 'Ten-eight and inbound.' Dr.
Hope would call my mother
and say something like, 'Warm
up the cornbread. Nickie will
be home in 30 minutes.'"
Of being a soda jerk, he says
that it was "an education in
itself. Who could ever forget
the lesson learned about prop
erly securing the shake cup to
the machine? How could that
small cup hold enough choco
late syrup to cover customers
halfway across the store?"
For Nickie, as for me, the
drug store has been a fixed
point in a shifting world.
"Most things in life change,"
he writes, "but when I visit my
hometown of Commerce, little
time passes before someone
says, 'Let's drop by the drug
store.' Like me, he wonders
what the advent, soon, of
Walgreens will do. The French
say that the more things
change, the more they stay the
same. Nickie and I would prob
ably say, in this case, "Great. So
don't change 'em!"
Susan Harper is director of the
Commerce Public Library.
Good Luck To UGA’s Adams
UGA President Michael
Adams released his plan for an
NCAA football playoff system
less than 24 hours after LSU
beat overrated Ohio State in the
BCS National Championship
Game Jan. 7. Adams' timing
wasn't well received by LSU
coaches and fans, SEC adminis
trators and most sports report
ers around the country.
It doesn't help prove impar
tiality when your beloved
Bulldogs were in the middle of
a heated discussion concern
ing this year's flawed bowl
schedule. Also, it's one thing
to create a media splash, which
Adams did with considerable
skill, but he needs to remem
ber that his plan is going to
need the support of almost all
major university presidents
before the NCAA changes its
current format.
With all that being said,
Adams may be in the right
position to advance his play
off plan. He chairs the NCAA
Executive Committee. But
as ESPN's Ivan Maisel sees it,
"Here's the problem. As a guy
who has risen to the top of aca
demia, Adams probably knows
something about turf wars and
power battles. He had better.
He just picked a fight that the
NCAA has lost every decade or
so for the last 40 years."
Adams, who has long been
a critic of a playoff system
because of the perceived effect
it would have on the athletes'
academics, has changed his
opinion in saying, "... This
year's experience with the BCS
forces me to the conclusion
that the current system has lost
public confidence and simply
doesn't work."
Adams understands the
power that presidents wield
when it comes to athletics.
Remember the battle to force
athletic director Vince Dooley
to retire? But asking the NCAA
to take on the BCS will prove
to be a much tougher fight.
Here's a rundown of recent
attempts to create a playoff sys
tem in NCCA football:
1994: The NCAA appointed a
25-person committee to study
Division I-A football. Five
months later, the committee
sought permission to evaluate
a four-team playoff. University
presidents refused and the
committee disbanded.
1987: A NCCA subcommit
tee surveyed all I-A members
about their interest in a play
off. By an enormous margin of
98-13, with one abstention, the
membership voted to suspend
considering a playoff.
1976: A playoff proposal
developed by an NCAA special
committee never made it to
the NCAA Convention floor
for a vote.
Ivan Maisel got it right in
saying, "The reason (for no
playoff system) is simple. In
Please Turn To Page 5A
It’s Gospel
According
To Mark
BY MARK BEARDSLEY
Rec Bond Issue
Illustrative Of
Gov’t Dilemma
The Feb. 5 referendum on $15 mil
lion in recreation bonds illustrates
the conflict between those who say
taxes are too high and citizens who
complain about the lack of amenities
in Jackson County.
The proposal is to purchase more
land, build a stadium, several fields,
an indoor aquatic center, a facility
for wheelchair sports and an arena/
exposition center for those with hors
es or cattle to show.
The referendum comes about
because county officials are constant
ly asked why Jackson County does
not have sufficient facilities. People
move here to escape the congestion
and taxes of other areas and soon
began to miss the amenities of their
previous residence. It happens not
just with recreation, but with every
other service.
Recreation Director Ricky Sanders
points out that Jackson County is
the fifth fastest growing county in
Georgia and 27th fastest growing in
America. The people who cause those
figures don't show up in Jackson
County without opinions on the
level of taxation and government ser
vices that should be offered.
Some of the people who lament a
lack of aquatic programs or paved
roads or the availability of public
water and sewer lines are also apt to
appear before the board of commis
sioners when a budget is proposed to
complain about high levels of county
spending.
On the one hand, people complain
about programs or services govern
ment should offer. On the other, they
get hysterical about the cost of gov
ernment, and often the same people
are on both sides of the conundrum.
The people in government who
set budgets try to balance what they
perceive as the needs or expectations
of the public against the public's will
ingness to pay, but often they have
no clue.
Only Congress has solved — at least
partially — the problem. Congress
understands that Americans want a
high level of service and a low level
of taxation, so it provides the services
but passes a lot of the costs off to the
next generation. It's termed "fiscal
conservatism."
The state government is learning.
Rep. Glenn Richardson presides
over legislators who routinely fail to
provide school funding at the level
required by law — then complains
bitterly when local school boards
have to raise taxes to provide the
level of service required by the law.
Go figure.
But city and county governments
and school boards have no easy
way out. One group shouts "More
services," while another yells "Less
taxation," sort of a parody of the old
Miller Lite "More Taste/Less Filling"
advertising campaign, but not nearly
as amusing.
We've been handed debt for a
courthouse, a jail and new roads, for
which we were not given a voice. For
more recreation, the county com
missioners are giving taxpayers the
opportunity for an up or down vote.
The reason we're getting to vote
this time is so the commissioners
can tell whichever side loses that "the
voters have spoken." I wonder how
many people will vote against the ref
erendum and then speak out about a
lack of recreation facilities?
Mark Beardsley is editor of The
Commerce News. He can be reached at
mark@mainstreetnews. com.