Tag Archives: Nathan Deal

Resignation, subpoenas, criminal charges: DeKalb County Commission corruption

Sometimes it doesn’t just look like they have something to hide:
the FBI found some of what the DeKalb County Commmission was hiding,
and one criminally-charged Commissioner promises to sing about the others,
while 62 vendors and all the other sitting Commissioners are being
investigated.
No local elected body around here could have such problems, right?

The DeKalb FBI corruption investigation apparently started with
news stories in the AJC.
Coincidentally, here’s
the board packet for tonight’s Lowndes County Commission meeting
that it took an open records request for LAKE to get so you can see it.

20 February 2013,

Fireworks erupt in court over DeKalb corruption case,
by Jodie Fleischer for WSB-TV,



Only Channel 2’s Jodie Fleischer was there as a judge lashed out at
prosecutors who want the public to see a secret corruption report.

The special grand jury investigating DeKalb County corruption Continue reading →

Nydia Tisdale’s video of being arrested for videoing a public event



The deputy is

on camera refusing to identify himself as he holds her down.
The best he’d do was “You’ll see it on the warrant”.

Background

here, including a candidate laughing as she cries “Help!”

-jsq

Nydia Tisdale’s offense: she sat in the front row



Landowner Johnny Burt’s excuse for having Nydia Tisdale ejected
from an event advertised as a public campaign rally:

“She promptly sat down on the front row on the end where she would
be right in their face and was making everybody uncomfortable.”

Shades of Ashley Paulk’s excuse for wanting that
illegal bill of attainder Continue reading →

Nydia Tisdale forcibly ejected from Republican rally in Dawsonville



State Insurance Commissioner Ralph Hudgens reportedly asked Nydia Tisdale “I don’t know why you’re videotaping” and was recorded moments later laughing as
she yelled for help while a deputy
forcibly ejected her from a political rally
in front of Governor Nathan Deal and U.S. Senate candidate David Perdue.

Jim Galloway and Greg Bluestein wrote for the AJC yesterday,

Videographer ousted from GOP event, and Sam Olens speaks up,
that Attorney General Sam Olens was the only speaker at that rally to mention the incident later: Continue reading →

Corruption in DeKalb meets consequences

Bid rigging and kickbacks?
I’m sure that’s only in Atlanta….
Anyway, it turns out it’s not so much

DeKalb County that’s a slum
as the county government.

Somebody at AJC wrote yesterday,

DeKalb to review government restructuring,



A day after a yearlong investigation into DeKalb contracting was
made public — a report that detailed a culture of corruption
that permeates county government — DeKalb commissioners say
they will review how the county is governed and seek changes.

A special purpose grand jury investigating contracting in DeKalb’s
water department recommended the county get rid of its CEO form of
government. DeKalb is almost singular in the authority it gives its
CEO, a countywide elected official who runs the day-to-day
operations of Georgia’s third-largest county.

That authority, according to the report, was used to steer tens of
millions of dollars in contracts to favored vendors. Suspended
DeKalb CEO Burrell Ellis has been charged with extortion for
allegedly strongarming vendors into donating to his campaign.

Interim DeKalb CEO Lee May said the county will review its governing
structure over the next 30 days and propose some recommendations on
how to improve operations, especially contracting.

WSBTV reported Wednesday,

DeKalb special grand jury recommends 12 for criminal investigation:
Key county officials include former CEO and public safety director.



CBS Atlanta wrote 17 July 2013,

Governor Deal Suspends Dekalb County CEO Burrell Ellis, Continue reading →

VDT links Plant Vogtle nuke cost overruns to Kemper Coal

Even the VDT has caught on to cost overruns for Kemper Coal and the
new nukes at Plant Vogtle.

VDT posted an AP article 29 July 2013,

Miss. deal may figure into Georgia nuclear plant,
and
Charlotte Observer posted it the day before, including

Ray Henry
as the author,



In Mississippi, the Southern Co. utility took financial losses when
the cost of building a new power plant went over budget. In Georgia,
another of the company’s projects is going over budget, but it has
not yet taken a financial hit.

Southern Company subsidiary Mississippi Power promised utility
regulators that it would charge its customers only for $2.4 billion
in costs for building a coal-fired power plant in Kemper Country.
Those customers will also have to pay off another $1 billion in
bonds for the project, though the utility cannot make a profit off
that borrowed money.

The utility’s deal in Mississippi has become a point of debate as
Georgia regulators consider who should pay for the increased cost of
building two more nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle (VOH’-gohl),
southeast of Augusta. Public Service Commissioner Tim Echols said he
wants Southern Co. subsidiary Georgia Power to consider a
Mississippi-style deal here, and Georgia regulators are carefully
tracking financial developments in Mississippi.



Echols said he was interested in the idea of a project spending cap.

“I’m sure when they made that deal they didn’t think they were going
to over the cap, but they did,” Echols said.

Oh, come now,

they went 26 times over budget last time.
Why would anyone believe Continue reading →

Rural hospitals closing

A state that forces hospital closings by refusing Medicare expansion
while spending a billion dollars a year on locking up too many
prisoners has its priorities wrong.

Tom Baxter wrote for SaportaReport yesterday,

Ominous signs for rural Georgia as hospitals shut their doors,



Lewis forecast at the beginning of the year that five to six rural
hospitals might be forced to close in 2013, and already there have
been two.

Calhoun Memorial Hospital in Arlington closed in February,
and

Stewart-Webster Hospital in Richland shut its doors last week.

That’s only a foretaste, Lewis says, of what’s going to happen when
the Affordable Care Act next year eliminates the

subsidies which
have been key to the survival of many of these hospitals, and
imposes new standards — for instances, penalizing hospitals
for readmitting patients in less than 30 days — which will
directly impact their bottom line.

“We will probably get hurt worse than any state in the
nation,” Lewis said last week. “It’s not like we will be
friendly faces to the feds, and they’re going to come in and do
major damage to us. ” He’s certainly not an enthusiastic fan
of Obamacare, but thinks the state has no choice but to accept the
Medicaid expansion which was intended as compensation for what the
new law takes away.

“With Obamacare coming down the pike, if we don’t get some
kind of relief in (Medicaid) expansion, we will face certain
death,” Lewis said last week.

Ah, so the problem isn’t ObamaCare: it’s Gov. Deal’s refusal to
accept Medicaid expansion!
The AJC warned us about that back in August:

Continue reading →

Putting conservation into conservatives —John S. Quarterman

My op-ed in the VDT today. -jsq

Gov. Deal
(WABE, 14 Nov 2012)
temporarily forgot that “conservative”
includes conserving something,


like

Theodore Roosevelt and national parks,
or when

Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Okefenokee National Wildlife
Refuge which also

administers Banks Lake, when

Richard Nixon started the EPA,
and when

Jimmy Carter signed the Soil and Water Conservation Act.
If Gov. Deal wants to call conservation “liberal”, I’m happy to
be a liberal working for water for our state!


Georgia Water Coalition’s Dirty Dozen



listed the biggest boondoggle
of all as

#11: the nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle
suck up more water from the Savannah River than all local agriculture and almost
as much as the city of Savannah.

If the new Plant Vogtle nukes

are ever completed, all four will use more water than Savannah. In

2009 the legislature approved and Gov. Deal signed a law
letting Georgia
Power charge its customers in advance for building that boondoggle,
to the tune of

about $1.5 billion so far!

Let’s not forget

Continue reading →

New biomass plant near Dublin, GA: what it’s really about

Not really about jobs, and not about feeding electricity into the grid:
the new biomass plant near Dublin, GA is about saving that company money on electricity: but at what cost to the state and to local residents?



Mike Stucka wrote for Macon.com 6 December 2012,

Deal announces $95 million biomass power plant for Laurens County,

A new biomass power plant announced Thursday is expected to bring
hundreds of related jobs and a direct $95 million investment.

A statement from the office of Gov. Nathan Deal said the plant
itself will bring 35 permanent jobs to Laurens County.

Compare 35 permanent jobs for $95 million to

MAGE SOLAR’s 350 jobs for $30 million.
That’s about $2,700,000 per job for this deal,
vs. $85,714 per job for MAGE SOLAR.
Which would make MAGE SOLAR’s facility more than 30 times more effective
at producing permanent jobs.

OK, but what’s this one supposed to do?

Continue reading →

Houston County has exclusion zones around Warner Robins AFB like the Lowndes County MAZ

Lowndes County is not

“the only community in the country with a MAZ”:
Houston County has very similar zones of encroachment protection around
Warner Robins Air Force Base (RAFB).

As we’ve already seen,

Houston County is buying up houses around RAFB
using $7.5 million from the state of Georgia.
That’s in addition to $6 million from Bibb County and
some unspecified amount from the Defense Department.
Plus Houston County
allocated $7 million from SPLOST funds,

and their SPLOST won by a landslide, apparently partly for that reason.

But what are

Warner Robins Air Force Base encroachment zones

those encroachment zones around Warner Robins AFB
depicted on the buyback map?
I called Houston County to find out.
Their Community Planner, Jacob Cox, said yes, Houston County
has crash zones, and noise attenuation zones in which they can
have businesses but not residences.

He pointed me to

The Robins Air Force Base and Middle Georgia
2004 Joint Land Use Study,
which notes:

The 2004 JLUS examines land issues as they relate to RAFB flying
missions and suggests measures to ensure compatible land use in the
Base environs now and into the future. The 2004 JLUS process
utilizes information provided in the 1998 RAFB Air Installation
Compatibility Use Zone study (AICUZ) to evaluate land use
compatibility and regulatory adequacy in areas subject to air hazard
potential and noise impact. Additional considerations related to air
navigation, including air protection surfaces are examined. Clear
Zones and Accident Potential Zones are all considered compatible
with AICUZ guidelines. Incidences of incompatible development are
predominantly restricted to a limited number of non-noise attenuated
residences built prior to 1994.

The results of the 2004 JLUS demonstrate that previously adopted
land use regulations have been effective in limiting incompatible
development within the Base environs. The 1994 adoption of the Base
Environs Zoning District (BEZD) model by the surrounding communities
has served to check most encroachment-type development. Only a very
low number of sporadic, isolated examples of noise-related
incompatible development was observed to have been built since
implementation of the BEZD land regulation strategy. Consistent
local government implementation of adopted provisions must be
maintained in order to continue to provide the protection necessary
to prevent incompatible development from restraining Base operations
in the future.

So as far back as 1994 the communities around RAFB were using zoning
to limit base encroachment.
The 1998 AICUZ recommended further
Clear Zones and Accident Potential Zones.
Why?
Mission changes at RAFB.
So the 2004 JLUS made recommendations and the local governments, including Houston County,
decided to go ahead and do something about it.

Continue reading →