Tag Archives: Law

Video Playlist @ LCC 2012-09-25

Fewer speakers at the Regular Session than at the previous morning’s Work Session of the Lowndes County Commission. The longest item was a citizen wishing to be heard, who only spoke for 3 and a half minutes. Up until then, the meeting took five minutes, as the Chairman noted. And everything was adopted unanimously, with little or no discussion.

Here’s the agenda, annotated below with links to the videos and a few notes, and followed by a video playlist.

  1. Call to Order
  2. Invocation
  3. Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag
  4. Minutes for Approval
    First the Chairman welcomed Leadership Lowndes.
    Then both sets of minutes were unanimously approved with no changes.
    1. Work Session — September 10, 2012
    2. Regular Session — September 11, 2012
  5. For Consideration
    1. Bevel Creek Lift Station Repair —Mike Allen
      The total for the wastewater lift station was still $38,969 with the budget impact being the insurance deductible. Unanimously approved.
    2. Dell Lease Agreement for Sheriff’s Office Laptops —Aaron Kostyu
      Six years ago the Sheriff’s Dept. leased some laptops; plan was always to roll new laptops into the lease; that will be done using drug seizure funds. Unanimously approved.
    3. Contract with Corporate Health Partners
      County Manager Joe Pritchard said they had started looking into wellness plans several years ago, $260,000 in savings in health care expenses so far; partnership with SGMC and YMCA. Commissioner Joyce Evans wanted to know how regularly it would be monitoried. Answer: quarterly. Commissioner Richard Raines moved to approve Corporate Health Partners, except instead of a three year contract, an initial one year with two one-year extensions. Unanimously approved.
    4. Agreement with Basic Life
      Joe Pritchard alluded to yesterday’s presentation from Chris Park(? Clark?) recommending a change to basic life coverage, with an approximate annual savings of slightly over $10,000. Unanimously approved.
  6. Reports-County Manager
    Joe Pritchard had no report.
  7. Citizens Wishing to be Heard Please State Name And Address
    Chairman Ashley Paulk noted it was 5:35, and then Ken Klanicki spoke for 3 and a half minutes, the longest item in the meeting, after which they adjourned.

Video Playlist
Regular Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 25 September 2012.

-jsq

Joint Resolution in Support of Quality Public Education —Lowndes and Valdosta Boards of Education

Yesterday I asked But what does the joint resolution actually say? Karen Noll has supplied the answer, in the form of a PDF of the signed resolution, transcribed below. This thing makes the education paragraph in the Occupy Valdosta Mission Statement sound mild-mannered. We’ve already seen the state’s response. -jsq

LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION
AND
VALDOSTA CITY BOARD OF EDUCATION
JOINT RESOLUTION IN SUPPORT OF
QUALITY PUBLIC EDUCATION
Continue reading →

Georgia Power’s Bowers pushes solar misinformation out the next fifty years

Paul Bowers, CEO of Georgia Power, doubled down on baseload nuclear, coal, and natural gas for the next fifty years. What’s he scared of?

Nick Coltrain wrote for OnlineAthens yesterday, Renewable push not in the cards for Ga. Power,

Georgia Power CEO Paul Bowers in Georgia Trend, November 2011 “Renewable (energy sources are) going to have a sliver,” Bowers said of fuels to create electricity. “Is it going to be 2 or 4 percent? That’s yet to be determined. Economics will drive that. But you always remember (that renewable energy is) an intermittent resource. It’s not one you can depend on 100 percent of the time.”

One time you can depend on it is hot summer days when everybody is air conditioning, which is why Roger Duncan of Austin Energy in 2003 Austin Energy flipped in one year from spouting such nonsense to deploying the most aggressive solar rooftop rebate program in the country. Austin Energy did the math and found those rebates would cost about the same as a coal plant and would generate as much energy. And when it is needed most, unlike the fossilized baseload grid, which left millions without power in the U.S. in June and hundreds of millions without power in India in July.

Bowers knows better than the nonsense he just spouted; as recently as November 2011 he told Georgia Trend,

Continue reading →

GA State attorney general tries to order private citizens not to oppose charter school amendment

Pushers of the charter school amendment must be desperate! Blurring the line between public officials and private citizens, state Attorney General Sam Olens wrote:

Local school boards do not have the legal authority to expend funds or other resources to advocate or oppose the ratification of a constitutional amendment by the voters. They may not do this directly or indirectly through associations to which they may belong….

As Jim Galloway wrote yesterday for the AJC in Sam Olens orders local school boards to stay out of charter school fight,

That means organizations like the Georgia School Boards Association, and perhaps, the Georgia School Superintendents Association, would be barred from speaking out against the proposed constitutional amendment.

And would that include organizations like PAGE, which produced the slides that a local middle school teacher used last week? What about that teacher, or Dr. Troy Davis, speaking a few weeks earlier, both on their own time?

Olens’ letter would apply to what the VDT said was in the VBOE and LCBOE joint resolution, at least the part about “The resolution explicitly states that the boards are asking voters to not support the Constitutional Amendment relative to state charter schools.”

But what does Olens mean, duly elected local school boards don’t have authority to express opinions about educational matters that would directly affect the people who elected them?

Why has Sam Olens suddenly gotten religion about this now, after he was silent last year when both VBOE and LCBOE adopted resolutions against the school “unification” referendum? Where was he when both boards of education hosted numerous forums opposing consolidation?

Will he next be telling the Valdosta City Council it can’t pass a resolution opposing a referendum? What exactly is the difference between that elected body and an elected school board as far as expressing such an opinion? And all of those resolutions were non-binding opinions.

Will Sam Olens next be telling the VDT it can’t editorialize against the charter school amendment?

How desperate are the pushers of the charter school amendment?

Continue reading →

Local school systems jointly oppose charter school amendment

The Valdosta Board of Education, followed by the Lowndes County Board of Education, adopted a “Charter School Amendment Resolution” or a “Joint Resolution in Support of Quality Public Education”, depending on which ones minutes you go by. What does the resolution actually say?

Brittany D. McClure wrote for the VDT 11 September 2012, School boards to adopt resolution against charter school amendment.

“The Lowndes County and Valdosta City Boards of Education request that the Governor and State Legislators commit their support to adequately fund a first-class K-12 public education for students in Lowndes County and Valdosta City and across the state of Georgia,” the resolution states.

The resolution explicitly states that the boards are asking voters to not support the Constitutional Amendment relative to state charter schools.

Valdosta Board of Education did that at their 10 September 2012 meeting:

Continue reading →

VDT against charter school amendment

Even the VDT opposes the charter school amendment.

“Staff Writer” editorialized in the VDT 12 September 2012, Will charter schools hurt public education?

So the state has consistently run down the public education system in Georgia over the course of the last decade by drastically cutting funding from programs, but are now complaining because student test scores and graduation rates have decreased.

The state solution? Allow for basically anyone who has a building to apply to run a “charter school” that would siphon money away from public education. Students would be able to choose where they would go, the parents or community officials would “run” the schools, and they would not have to meet the same standards as the current public schools, but taxpayers would still be forced to pay for them.

State officials are fond of saying that charter schools aren’t private schools, but when a school gets to pick and choose who they let in and who they don’t, that’s the definition of a private school. Only the elite whose parents want to run the schools will have a chance, and the poor and disenfranchised will have no choice, will not be accepted, and will suffer even more because the money will no longer be there to educate them.

Here’s an idea: Restore all those drastic austerity cuts from education to pre-Gov. “Sonny” Perdue levels, invest in the public education system which is already in place and doing quite well in spite of the state’s best efforts to shut it down, and restore the true value of a public education to the taxpayers of the state who are footing the bill and seeing fewer results.

I like that idea. Let’s vote No on the charter school amendment in November so we can get back to funding public education.

-jsq

Southern Company’s three-legged nuclear regulatory-capture stool

The failed EDF nuke project at Calvert Cliffs in Maryland makes it clearer why Southern Company (SO) was the first company to get a nuclear permit in 30 years: it was the only one big enough and monopolistic enough to pull it off. Even then it’s such a bet-the-farm risk that even “great, big company” SO only dared to deploy its “great big huge scale“ equipment with the regulatory capture triple-whammy of a stealth tax on Georgia Power bills, PSC approval of cost overruns, and an $8.33 billion federal loan guarantee:

  1. a legislated stealth tax in the form of a rate hike on Georgia Power customers for power they won’t get for years if ever. If you’re a Georgia Power customer, look on your bill for Nuclear Construct Cost Recovery Rider. You’ll find it adds about 5% on top of your Current Service Subtotal. Georgia is one of only a handful of states where such a Construction Work in Progress (CWIP) charge is legal thanks to our regulatory-captured legislature. Doubling down on bad energy bets, Southern Company is also trying to use CWIP to build a coal plant in Mississippi.
  2. A captive Public Service Commission that rubber-stamps costs for Plant Vogtle. In case there was any doubt as to the PSC’s role in legitimizing those new nukes, the very next day Fitch reaffirmed Southern Company’s bond ratings.

    Southern Company’s regulated utility subsidiaries derive predictable cash flows from low-risk utility businesses, enjoy relatively favorable regulatory framework in their service territories, and exhibit limited commodity price risks due to the ability to recover fuel and purchased power through separate cost trackers.

    Translation: Georgia Power customers subsidize SO’s bonds and SO shareholders’ stock dividends. The PSC also approved cost overruns being passed on to Georgia Power customers, and those nukes are already over $400 or $900 million, depending on who you ask. What do you expect when 4 out of 5 Public Service Commissioners apparently took 70% of their campaign contributions from utilities they regulate or their employees or their law firms, and the fifth commissioner took about 20% from such sources? Hm, there’s an election going on right now!
  3. An $8.33 billion federal loan guarantee. Even that’s not good enough for SO and Georgia Power: SO is asking for less down payment.

And what if even one of that three-legged regulatory capture stool’s legs went away? Continue reading →

Charter school referendum preamble is Parent Trigger jargon

 

A pressure group for privatizing schools is the origin of the jargon in the charter school referendum on the November Georgia ballot. And yes, it’s tied to ALEC.

In Our south Georgia school tax dollars would go to Virginia rich people, Karen Noll asserted “…the wording that is on the preamble comes straight out of ALEC documents….” The preamble to the charter school amendment on the November ballot reads:

Provides for improving student achievement and parental involvement through more public charter school options.

Where else is that wording found? Combinations of the three phrases “student achievement”, “parental involvement”, and “charter school” actually are not very common, according to google. But the Parent Trigger wrote in Empowering Parents,

Policy initiatives that empower parents are likely to increase parental involvement and satisfaction and raise student achievement by inviting parents into the process.

What process?

The designers of the California Parent Trigger made a grave mistake by leaving tepid reform modules in the bill and allowing districts to override the parents’ reform choice.

The Georgia constitutional amendment wouldn’t leave school districts any ability to decide anything.

What would the parents’ reform choice be?

Continue reading →

Streetlights and Georgia Power @ Hahira 2012-10-01

To get a decent deal on streetlights, a small Georgia city may have to help change the Georgia Public Service Commission. Or, an energy concern in Hahira happened to coincide with a visit by PSC candidate Steve Oppenheimer.

Ralph Clendenin, City Council member, is looking into converting Hahira's streetlights to LEDs or maybe solar. He has discussed that with Georgia Power, which will do it for $250,000 up front. At a savings of $1,000 a month, that would take quite a while to pay back: more than 20 years.

Steve Oppenheimer, running for Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC), found the streetlight issue interesting:

Just like you're looking at options the city might do for better choices for lighting in terms of serving the people and meeting your budget, as Georgians we need that, too.

He indicated that there are more solutions than we're being told.

To me what's improtant are homeowners rights, and we get control over the power rates, because our residential rates and small business rates have gone up about 31% in five years.

He brought up Dublin's solar streetlights, and solar for energy and jobs. He indicated energy was a future source of jobs.

What it comes down to is people like you in this room in the small communities figuring out what pieces do we put together to make our community better for tomorrow.

Afterwards in the entranceway, Ralph Clendenin showed Steve Oppenheimer how he'd figured out that Georgia Power was charging about 73% maintenance above the electricity cost of the streetlights. Oppenheimer said there were many options. Clendenin suggested one:

The option I see right now is, the Commission somehow, has got to change the rules on how Georgia Power… structures payments.

Oppenheimer suggested a way to get there:

We need a commission with some new leadership, with some separation from industry, that doesn't have the apparent conflicts of interest.

Ralph summed it up pithily:

Ralph Clendenin: 73% is that forever payment to Georgia Power.

Steve Oppenheimer: It's a great deal, if you're on the right end of it.
[laughter]

What say we change the end of the stick we the taxpayers are getting from the PSC?

Here's a playlist.

Work Session, Hahira City Council, Hahira, Lowndes County, Georgia, 1 October 2012.
Videos by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).

-jsq

Kickoff speeches @ SPLOST 2012-09-28

Apparently WCTV’s “at the South Georgia Medical Center Parking Garage”> meant actually in the nearby parking lot, because that’s where we found some city and county employees and a few volunteers standing in the shade of a Valdosta Police van. An invocation and six speeches from five speakers ensued, all in support of SPLOST VII, the Special Local Option Sales Tax on the November ballot. Several of the speakers were not so positive off the podium about the library and auditorium projects, and nobody from the library board spoke.

Here are videos of all of the speeches.

Also the VDT was there, and Jason Schaefer wrote for the VDT yesterday, Committee kicks off SPLOST campaign,

The major theme of the event was a firm reminder that SPLOST VII is not a new tax, just a continuation of a penny sales tax that has been in place since 1987.

Fair enough. However, Sam Allen’s second talk summed up what’s wrong with SPLOST VII: Continue reading →