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6 FLAGPOLE.COM • DECEMBER 22.2010
MH
PERDUE PULLS OFF A SLICK TRICK
As his days in office dwindle, Gov. Sonny
Perdue has pulled off one of the most auda
cious raids on the state treasury I've ever
seen. He sealed the deal last week when the
State Properties Commission voted to approve
the purchase of 10,015 acres in Houston
County that is known as the Oaky Woods wild
life management area. This piece of property
is considered one of the most treasured natu
ral areas in the state and would top just about
anyone's list of properties worth conserving
for future generations.
Back in 2004, Weyerhauser was planning
to sell its Oaky Woods holdings and offered
19,000 acres to the state at a reasonable
price. Officials of the Department of Natural
Resources wanted to buy the property,
and the Nature Conservancy offered to
hold the land until the state could
come up with the money.
Perdue waved off the DNR,
saying the state couldn't afford
the land. A group of Houston
County developers bought the
property instead for $1,600 an
acre, with plans to put a large res
idential development on the site.
During the 2006 governor's race,
the media found out that Perdue had
acquired a 101-acre tract adjacent to the Oaky
Woods property—a piece of land that had
since doubled in value. Perdue caught a lot
of flak over his real estate activities, but the
negative publicity did not prevent him from
easily winning reelection.
The plans to build a residential develop
ment at Oaky Woods were set aside after the
real estate and housing industries crashed in
2008.
In 2010, Perdue and the Legislature slipped
$25 million in bond funds into the DNR budget
for the purpose of "water and sewer construc
tion and land conservation grants and loans."
Late in the year, DNR officials worked up a
proposal to use the bond money, as well as
funds from other abandoned projects, to buy
about half of the Oaky Woods property.
This time, the state would be paying more
than $2,800 an acre for land it could have
acquired for $1,600 an acre back in 2004. The
Department of Natural Resources is not acquir
ing the entire Oaky Woods tract—the develop
ers are keeping the most desirable parts for
themselves and selling DNR the less valuable
p r operty along the Ocmulgee River.
"They're buying floodplain and bottom
land," said Columbus attorney Jim Butler, a
former member of the natural resources board.
In 2004, Perdue killed the Oaky Woods deal
because he claimed the state could not afford
it. In 2010, DNR went ahead with the acqui
sition even though the state is in far worse
financial condition now. Georgia is so hard up
for money it is furloughing teachers, but
somehow the state had $28 million to
buy part of Oaky Woods.
In the middle of the worst eco
nomic downturn since the Great
Depression, the owners of a piece
of speculative real estate are
being paid twice what they paid
for the property six years ago—
courtesy of Georgia's taxpayers.
There was never any real pos
sibility the state Board of Natural
Resources, whose members owe their
appointments to Perdue, was going to vote
down the Oaky Woods deaL But even this
audience found it a little hard to swallow,
with six board members voting against it The
board finally approved the transaction, and
-the State Properties Commission did likewise.
In the end, environmentalists have the
consolation of knowing that at least part
of the Oaky Woods site is now under state
protection. Perdue's interests in that 101-
acre tract will be protected, and the Houston
County developers will have teen able to sell
their property to the state at nearly twice the
price they paid for it originally.
Somewhere, Gene Talmadge is surely look
ing on and smiling.
Tom Crawford tcrawlord@gafeport.com
Tilt M#BIIN W8RLB
2010
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