About Flagpole. (Athens, Ga.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (June 8, 2011)
•f«M 1*M®RP*W©2011 -...www.thlsmodemwoiid.com...twttter.com/tomtoi DEAL'S PORT PROJECT IS SINKING WHAT’S UP IN NEW DEVELOPMENT ANYWAY, IF YOU'RE IMNOCEMT-- THEN WHAT HAVE YOU GOT TO HIDE? THANKS, BARACK OBAMA.' “--WE WILL BE 6IVING TERRORISTS THE OPPORTUNITY TO PLOT AGAINST our country UNDETECTED!“ "WHEN...THE AMERICAN PEOPLE COME TO UNDERSTAND HOW THE PATRIOT ACT HAS ACTUALLY BEEN INTER PRETED IN SECRET, THEY WILL INSIST ON SlGNtflCANT REfORMSr “(THEY) WOULD BE A8 SQLUTELY STUNNED!* A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE PATRIOT 2001: bosh administration uses threat of terrorism to justify UNCONSTITUTIONAL POWER GRAB. 2005/2006*. DEMOCRATS PROPOSE MAKING UNCONSTITUTIONAL POWER GRAB SOMEWHAT LESS UNCONSTI TUTIONAL. (QUOTATION MARKS - ACTUAL QUOTES) 20M*. SENATORS WTDEN AND UDALL ,80TH MEMBERS oF the SENATE intelligence committee) 5EEM TO BE TRYING TO tell US SOME THING--^ ONLY WE COULD FIGURE OUT WHAT! ion CONT-D*. harry REID USES THREAT of TERRORISM TO JUSTIFY Bipartisan NORMALIZATION of UNCONSTITUTIONAL POWER GRAB — WARNING that If the ACT is allowed to EXPIRE-- SOME UNSPECIfiED POINT IN THE future: democrats are simply SHOCKED to learn of patriot Act ABUSES. Privatization and related notions of how our local urban government might make money were on the agenda last time, but this week, I'd like to go a little further afield and explore how some of those ideas might be considered in the context of more rural resources. One worrying recent news item was the announcement that the U6A ag school would be selling off its 500-acre farm in Oconee County, in part, as reported in the Athens- Banner Herald, to generate funds that will alleviate a maintenance backlog elsewhere. Of course, they'll need to lease that land back for a couple of years from the buyer, in order to complete ongoing experiments. Given that we're somewhere near the bottom of the real estate market, and the university is still using the land, it might make sense to hold onto it for a few more years in order to get a better price. While the BLM isn't immune to criticism, there are certainly aspects of its approach that are worth investigating in light of our current concerns. What if a similar approach were adopted here, with a continuous stream of revenue coming from leasing the property to a sus tainably managed farm or forestry operation, which was also compatible with recreational uses by nearby residents? It wouldn't be the kind of quick cash that the proposed sale would generate, but it does have the poten tial to be perpetual. It's also a model which, if successful, might build capacity not only on this one site, but across the state, for new types of open public space, fulfilling that uni versity's goal of educating the state. Cutbacks in the state park system are another example of how the economic down turn has combined with dwindling support for various public services at the state level. In Gov. Nathan Deal has zoomed in on the project he believes will bring a more prosper ous Georgia: dredging the Savannah River har bor. The state wants to deepen the Savannah port by another six feet so that it can handle the larger ships that will be traversing an expanded Panama Canal. The price tag is S600 million. Deal, hoping that Georgia can get the money for the project from the federal govern ment, went to Washington, D.C. last week with Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed. There had been hopes that Reed's close political ties to Barack Obama might persuade the president to give a hearing to Georgia's request for money. It was no sale. A sitdown with Obama could not be worked out. It's commendable that Deal, a Republican, and Reed, a Democrat, have put aside their partisan preferences to work on a project that could benefit all Georgians. Deal, however, is con fronting some political hurdles he may not be able to overcome. For one thing, there is the fact that a majority of Georgia's congressional delegation has fought and taunted the president at every turn since he took office. Deal himself, while still a member of Congress, delayed his resignation from the U.S. House so that he could make a very public vote against Obama's health care reform program. Deal's House colleagues, Tom Price and Phil Gingrey, have been outspoken critics of Obama's health care reform initiative at every opportunity on the cable talk shows. During the 2008 cam paign, Congressman Lynn Westmoreland used a racially charged word to describe Obama when he remarked that the Democratic nominee was too "uppity" to be running for president. Rep. Paul Broun of Athens has compared Obama's administration to Hitler and Nazi Germany. At a town hall meeting last February, Broun was observed chuckling along with the audience when one of the participants asked, "Who's going to shoot Obama?" The chairman of the Georgia Ports Authority, which would administer the harbor dredging project if funds were allocated for it, is Bainbridge businessman Alec Poitevint. Poitevint is the former head of the Georgia Republican Party who is actively supporting GOP efforts to oust Obama when he runs for reelection in 2012. That's politics, of course. Everyone under stands that Republicans are going to oppose Democrats and Democrats are going to do the same thing to Republicans. At the same time, it's probably unrealistic to think that a presi dent is going to fork over $600 million for a harbor project after you've spent two years attacking his policies and making disparaging remarks about his ethnic background. Deal has another problem with the guy who replaced him in the House, Tom Graves. Normally, if a president will not come across with the money for a local proj ect, congressmen can put an "earmark" in the budget that bypasses the president and frees up the money. That process is even easier for a member of the House Appropriations Committee, which writes the budget bill. Graves, who is an Appropriations Committee member, refuses to do any ear marking out of deference to his tea party sup porters. He's not going to earmark money in the budget for the Savannah project, no mat ter how badly Deal wants it. "We don't think that it's over," Deal said after last week's Washington trip. "We think if we had $70 million, that's the figure we'd probably need to go forward on a timely * schedule." Deal is doing what all governors try to do, that is persuade the feds to help pay for a public project he considers important to his state. This one, however, may be a bridge too far. Tom Crawford tcrawford@gareport.com Academic farms and forests help to alleviate a deficit of public open space in Georgia. Can those facilities con tribute to the budgets of the agencies that manage them in positive ways? That's assuming that the land's sale is actually the right course of action, and I'm not so sure that it is. It certainly doesn't bode well for public higher education when the nation's first land-grant college is selling its defining asset. There's also the question of how the ag school properties' next main tenance backlog will be addressed. If aging facilities can't be kept up, selling hard assets like research farms seems only to be treating the symptom, rather than the root cause: a model that isn't self-sufficient. Will another large tract of land be sold off 10 years from now as more needed repairs accumulate? So, why keep this farm? The tract is one of the last major pieces of undeveloped property in that part of foreclosure-saturated Oconee County, providing much needed open space, even if it is only utilized by neighbors in a scenic capacity at present, rather than as a park. Especially in comparison to the western portion of the country, there is a serious defi cit of undeveloped and public lands, and so every acre counts here. Out west, we might find inspiration for how to keep public lands public, while actually generating revenue. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management is an agency managing millions of acres in the western United States, much of it leased to various natural resources- driven industries like forestry or energy. The agency actually makes money for the federal government, and also makes many grants to support local communities, while support ing a diverse economic ecosystem around it. the scaling-down of that "system, many parks were downgraded to unstaffed recreation sites, and facilities shuttered or moved to remaining parks with the goal of becoming an organiza tion self-sufficient from user fees. Perhaps these properties could be inves tigated in a similar way, with a more fine grained look at how sustainable management and full-fledged preservation strategies are applied to public lands, and where opportu nities might exist for compatible revenue generating uses in a manner similar to the BLM's leases. If a slightly less intensive level of preservation of some state lands yielded benefits that allowed public lands not just to operate in the black, but also potentially to grow, it is definitely worth exploring. Open space does many things for us, from providing recreational amenities to more intangible ecosystem services like controlling stormwater and filtering pollutants in the air. Currently, we don't have a way to really account for the value of those intangible services, or generate revenue from them. However, they're still necessary. If sustainable management of those natural resources could result in a revenue stream that preserves or even grows the land base providing those ecosystem services, then we should consider them. Hybrid models that combine public goals with private financing models could be a solution that results in long-term unsubsi dized operations. Kevan Williams aJhensrising@flagpole.com by TOM TOMORROW "MEMBERS ...NEED ID TAKE A CARE FUL LOOK AT PRESIDENT BUSH'S USE OF WARRANTLESS WIRETAPS— AND DETERMINE THE RIGHT BALANCE BETWEEN PROTECTING OUR SECUR- tn AND SAFEGUARDING ouR CIVIL LIBERTIES! THIS MSIIII WSILB X'VE GOT THE SECRET. UNACCOUNT ABLE POWER TO DO RHATV.J WOOO- Hooooi JUNE 8, 2011 FLAGPOLE.COM 5 KEVAN WILLIAMS
