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.CHRISTINA DOWNS / KATHRYN LOOKOFSKY
ATHENS NEWS AND VIEWS
Keep an Eye Out: Somehow springtime is when
everything happens in Athens, from festivals
and civic events to big rock shows and big
local political issues. After a pretty quiet win
ter, we new'shounds are seeing thing? heat up
already—witness the ACC Commission's moder
ately interesting March agenda—and it looks
as if there's more fun to come. One blinking
light that's out there on the radar and incom
ing quickly is the long-awaited rail-to-trail
project that will connect downtown (via the
new bus station) to the park-and-ride lot to
be built-where Lexington Road crosses the
Loop. There's really good news here and, well,
worrisome news too. The good news is that,
at long last, Athens can now see the possibil
ity on the horizon that the trail will actually
be built after all these years of talking about
it. The tough part comes in with the con
sideration of what to do with the remaining
railroad trestle along the route—saved from
destruction by a feverish worldwide grassroots
effort in the summer of 2000. It's been left
unmaintained to weather the elements since
then, so now that the trail may actually be
built, the engineers have to look and see if
the Murmur trestle is still trail-worthy. That
means that, unthinkable as it is after all that's
happened, there's some possibility that the
trestle's fate is still, no pun intended, up in
the air. The matter is still bottled up in the
SPLOST project process, but it heads to the
Mayor and Commission this spring, apparently.
Keep an eye out. [Ben Emanuel]
Shocked, Shocked: Rep. Paul Broun, Jr. is like
Captain Renault in Casablanca, who could
declare himself shocked at the gambling in
Rick's Place while closing it down, and at the
same time accept the winnings from his own
gambling. Paul has called on President Obama
to stamp out ""earmarks," those pork rinds
inserted into spending bills. At the same time,
Paul has recently mailed out a full-color slick
questionnaire that doubles as campaign liter
ature at the expense of the same federal cof
fers that pay for earmarks. And at the end of
last week he sent out a press release proudly
announcing $3.6 million in HUD grants for
Athens-Clarke County. The HUD grants will
provide housing and economic assistance .0
people with low and moderate incomes. Paul is
right to celebrate the awards even though he
had nothing to do with bringing them here.
Paul introduced an amendment to the stim
ulus bill in the U.S. House of Representatives
that would have required an across-the-board
10 percent cut in all non-defense spending.
His amendment was not even considered in
the House, further proof that our congress
man, who spends most of his time publicizing
himself, is irrelevant in the eyes of his peers
in Congress. [Pete McCommons]
Golden Giveaway: Democratic gubernatorial
candidate David Poythress takes a strong
stand on the insider trading by Governor
Perdue and other top Republicans that
has given Jekyll Island to the Reynolds
Plantation developers Linger Longer Corp.
Poythress' statement follows an article in the
Sunday, Mar. 1 Atlanta Journal-Constitution,
not to mention all the fuss kicked up online
by Leon Gallis' comment on flagpole.com
and the efforts of Susan Murphy and many
others oh behalf of the island that formerly
belonged to the people of Georgia. Poythress
nails it: "Enough! It's time to call the Jekyll
Island land deal what it really is—
politically corrupt plundering of a
treasured asset that belongs to the
people of Georgia. A monumental
sell-out of the taxpayers of Georgia
is unfolding before us, and it seems
no one is able to stop it. But if this
deal goes through, this administra
tion and the Republican Party will be
forever known as the crowd who lost
Jekyll Island and left the taxpayers
holding the bag for $50 million dol
lars in the worst economic times in
modern history." Read the rest of
Poythress' statement at www.poyth-
ressforgovernor.com. [PMc]
A Good Ride While It Lasted: The
newly proposed state budget con
tains a provision for a one-cent sales
tax earmarked for transportation.
That's a gigantic sum of money, and
Athens stands to gain with Hwy 316
finally being turned into a true expressway
instead of a high-speed death trap where cars
wander randomly across it from country roads.
Even better, there's money in there for (gasp!)
rapid rail to Atlanta, as well as all kinds of
road and bridge improvements. But wait: a
conference committee of state legislators has
to sit down and iron out a few differences.
Here's betting that rapid rail and 316 get
shaken out with the wrinkles. Here's betting
that the final product is all about roads. [PMc]
The Ice Cometh: Remember last week's snow
storm? And all the ice storms that have hit
us at least every other year or so? The story's
always the same. Limbs break, power lines go
down, people are without electricity to heat
their homes and cool their food, much misery
and then, through heroic efforts, Georgia
Power and'the EMCs finally restore power and
everybody's happy until the next storm. Did
anybody ever wonder why it hasn't occurred
to Georgia Power 'n them that we'd all be
better off if they just put all the lines under
ground? Some people have underground lines
now, but they're dependent on above-ground
wires, so they go out, too. Why hasn't the
Public Service Commission or somebody made
the electric utilities bury all those lines? Gee,
they could have included a few million dol
lars in the pay-in-advance financing for the
new nuclear plants and put those lines under
ground and let us pay for them along with the
nuke juice. [PMc]
Old and new: Along with the raising of downtown parking fees
and fines will come, at some point, some newfangled “pay-and-
display” meters, something like the one pictured here (specifics
not yet known). Look for ’em in fall, maybe.
ROLLING DOWN A BUMPY ROAD
There is less than a month to go before the
legislative session adjourns, and our lawmak
ers don't appear to be any closer than they
were last year at this time to resolving the
state's highway congestion issues.
With time running out on the session, the
Senate and the House of Representatives are
still miles apart on the one factor that matters
more than anything else in fixing our trans
portation mess: How do you raise the billions
of dollars needed to build new roads, bridges
and transit facilities?
The Senate has passed a proposal from last
year that would allow groups of counties to
band together and charge a regional sales tax
to pay for new highways. The House likewise
has passed a measure that would impose
a statewide sales tax to pay for trans
portation infrastructure fixes. There
has been no indication of any
significant movement to bridge
the gap between those two
positions.
Gov. Sonny Perdue thinks
he has the solution to this
problem: do away with the cur
rent structure of the Department
of Transportation and set up a new
transportation authority controlled by
the governor's office.
The supporters of SB 200, Perdue's attempt
to carry out a major overhaul of the state's
transportation bureaucracy, were exQltant late
last week over the bill's passage in the Senate.
"Today, the Senate took a major step
in real transportation relief for Georgians,",
said Senate Majority Leader Chip Rogers
(R-Woodstock), in a typical response.
A more sober analysis of the bill's vote sug
gests that SB 200 could well stall out and die
in the House of Representatives.
SB 200 passed by the razor-thin majority of
30-25 in the Senate, which was just one more
vote than the minimum of 29 it takes to adopt
a bill in that chamber. Even worse for the
bill's prospects, the normally solid Republican
majority split over this issue and four GOP
sehators joined the Democratic minority to
vote against the bill.
Those votes could portend an ominous
future for SB 200 in the House, where it
will run up against the same coalition of
Democrats and rural Republicans from outside
the metro area.
House Minority Leader DuBose Porter
hinted at this when Democrats cut the deal
with Republicans to support House passage
of the statewide sales tax for transportation
infrastructure improvements.
"The fight over governance is very different
from this bill," Porter said as he urged House
members to vote for the statewide tax. "I
oppose the changes in [DOT] governance,
and so should you."
The arguments on this issue are
familiar. Everyone is frustrated
by the DOT'S lack of progress
in building new roads, but
many legislators aren't quite
ready to give up their power
to elect members of the State
Transportation Board and hand
that power over to a transportation
authority that would effectively be
controlled by the governor.
One of the hot rumors making the rounds
at the Capitol has been that House Speaker
Glenn Richardson will eventually cut a deal
with the Transportation Board members; he'll
keep the current DOT structure in place if
board members will elect Rep. Vance Smith
(R-Pine Mountain), Richardson's close ally, as
the new DOT commissioner.
Whoever ends up running DOT, he's got to
get the state back on course to doing some
thing about its wretched transportation sys
tems. Time is getting short.
Tom Crawford
Tom Crawford is the editor of Capitol Impact's Georgia
Report, an Internet news service at www.gareport.com.
THIS MMfcKU WtILI
by TOM TOMORROW
I. BLAME THE VICTIMS.
STRATEGIES
FOR
SUCCESS
H. STAND UP For THE
616- GUYS.
2. DEVELOP INSULAR
MYTHOLOGY INCOMPREHEN
SIBLE TO LAYPEOPLE.
FANNIE MAE! BARNEY
FRANK! HIGH SPEED RAIL!
Acorn! ACoRNU
5. REPETITION--YOUR
KEY TO VICTORY!
6. EMBRACE IGNORANCE.
%
I DO NOT
PRESIDENT
WHOM YOU
KNOW THIS
"BUSH" OF
SP£AK._
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^PERHAPS
&YOU MEAN
i"CLINTON"~
iJoR “CARTER"?
q. 1N5IST THAT FAILED .
Policies Will WORK IF
TRIED AGAIN. • —
I TAX CUTS FOR THE WEALTHY I
HAVE NEVER BEEN PROP-]
\ERLY IMPLEMENTEDl\
HENCE OUR CUR
RENT TURMOIL!
to. remember: nothing
WINS VOTERS OVER LIKE
HYSTERICAL PARANOIA!
IT'S ALL a PLOT! OBAMA
WANTS TO DESTROY
AMERICA!
HE DOESN'T
EVEN HAVE
A BIRTH
CERTIfl-
CATE!
3. HIGHLIGHT REPUBLICAN
FAILURES AS VALIDATION
OF ANTI-GOVERNMENT
IDEOLOGY.
OUR STAGGERINGLY IN
COMPETENT RESPONSE TO
KATRINA—
□
—PROVES
THAT WASH
INGTON
CAN'T DO
ANYTHING
RIGHT!
7. PUT FORTH ABRASIVE,
THRICE-DIVORCED FORMER
DRUG ADDICT AS PUBLIC
FACE OF PARTY.
maroh. \ i i i 5