The Georgia Legislature opposes any voter control over any government
expenditures.
This includes passing Charters that ensure that city councils and county
commissions can ignore voters and spend whatever they want. It includes the right of these entities to
add whatever they want to the public debt. The voter abuse in Cobb County over
the funding of the Braves Stadium is the most visible example. Everyone
wondered how the Cobb County Commission could make Cobb taxpayers to add
$billions in bond debt and exacerbate Cobb highway gridlock without taking this
to a vote. We still wonder why we subsidize professional sports businesses at
all.
The last Charter for the City of Dunwoody expanded spending and borrowing
with no voter control by authorizing the city to spend and borrow whatever it
wants by creating “taxing districts”. The
only limit to the amount cities can borrow includes using all private property
value on the digest as collateral, not the value of city owned assets.
This is government of the government, by the government and for the
government, not a government of the people, by the people and for the
people. We attempted to send candidates
to challenge this treason, but the “establishment” doubled down to defeat them.
In 2010 Georgia morphed its regional planning commissions into regional
taxing entities to introduce unelected governance, transit villages,
megacities, greenspace and on-street bike lanes required by Agenda 21
implementation. In 2012, these Georgia
Regional Commissions put an $18 billion TSPLOST on the ballot. It failed to be approved by the voters in 9
of the 12 regions. This defeat made national news.
The first problem with the $7 billion TSPLOST in Metro Atlanta was that
none of the projects proposed would even begin to solve the congestion
problem. Metro Atlanta had not expanded
its roads and highways to accommodate its growth. The next problem was that Georgia had adopted
the Agenda 21 view that “transportation” had to be redefined to include public
transit and the $3.5 billion expansion of the unsustainable MARTA system. The next problem was that road construction
costs had instantly and magically doubled in cost. The chamber of communists spent $10 million
on the campaign and my rebel band spent $10 thousand and defeated them.
Despite the fact that UN Agenda 21 is dead, the laws remain on the books.
The Georgia Legislature is still packed with members who are only beholden to
the special interests and the largest special interest group in Georgia is
government. We have a real dilemma in Georgia. We would be crazy to elect
Democrats and our Republican “establishment”: is anti-voter. I would have thought that Trump’s populism
would have converted some of our Republican legislators, but that is not the
case.
The latest offering
is GA HB 820, Revenue and taxation; procedure for counties following a
rejection of a tax digest. It allows counties to create their own versions of
MARTA.
The other special
interest groups pushing this are MARTA, GRTA, the unelected regional
commissions, the developers, who want to continue “economic development” scams,
the construction companies, the bond sellers and the free-spending city and
county officials.
All public transit
should be privatized. It is too
expensive to operate as a government entity. Ridership is abysmal and these
agencies will never be self-supporting.
It’s the last thing we need. We
need to replace GDOT with engineers who will solve the gridlock.
Commuter trains need
to be in densely populated enclaves like Manhattan where ridership is high
allowing it to break even. Atlanta is
the least dense city on the planet.
MARTA is the creature of DeKalb and Fulton and should not expand.
Commuter bus service
needs to be privatized, otherwise we will continue to pay for empty buses to
operate. Politicians should not saddle taxpayers with any service that requires
endless tax subsidies and could be provided by the private sector.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody
GA Tea Party Leader
No comments:
Post a Comment