Taxpayers will foot the bill for governor’s
favored projects long after he’s gone. 12/12/15, by
James
Salzer and Greg Bluestein - The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Gainesville —
When Gov. Nathan Deal handed in his list of last-minute additions to the state
budget earlier this year, it included $10 million to buy land in Gainesville
for a new technical college campus in his hometown.
The money was a
down payment on the legacy Deal is building as he heads into the second year of
his final term as governor. That legacy includes his nationally acclaimed
criminal justice reform and, he hopes, a new school funding system.
Gov. Joe Frank
Harris, 1983-1991, steered a $300 million Anheuser-Busch brewery to his
hometown of Cartersville.
Gov. Joe Frank Harris, 1983-1991, steered a $300 million Anheuser-Busch
brewery to his hometown of Cartersville.
It will also
include a big tab for pet projects that will continue costing taxpayers long
after he’s gone. Besides the new technical college campus, which could
eventually cost $100 million or more, the former attorney, prosecutor and judge
is expected to push for a new state courts building — probably the most
expensive building in state history. Both will likely be done on borrowed money
that won’t be paid off until the 2030s.
He’s also
expanded the Court of Appeals, and is pushing to enlarge the Supreme Court,
both of which have long-term costs. There are also plans for new ports
infrastructure and possibly increasing the $75 million that Georgia has already invested in
restoring state-owned Jekyll Island’s lost luster. And there are plans for
reservoir in his home Hall County that could cost tens of millions of dollars
more.
Deal is
following in the footsteps of predecessors who pushed for parochial projects in
office. Gov. Zell Miller championed a taxpayer-financed mountain retreat in his
hometown of Young Harris. Gov. Roy Barnes backed a state-funded amphitheater
project in his hometown of Mableton, and money to study a revamp of the Cobb
hamlet.
Gov. Zell
Miller, 1991-1999, brought a state-funded resort and golf course to his beloved
North Georgia mountains.
Sonny Perdue,
the state’s first Republican governor since Reconstruction, retired from office
with a last-minute, costly purchase of woods adjacent to his Houston County
property and the Go
Fish Center down the road from his home. The state still owes $13 million in debt payments on Go Fish, and will be
paying it off until December 2027.
Some of Deal’s
building projects could be among the costliest in state history, with the
technical school move from South Hall County to North Hall County alone costing
more than the state typically spends on building projects for the entire
technical school system in a year.
But such local
projects have long been part of the system that rewards both supporters and the
hometowns of the politicians that rise to power.
Gov. Roy
Barnes, 1999-2003, won passage of funding to restore his hometown’s antebellum
Mable House and build an amphitheater.
“Wallflowers
don’t get elected to anything, people with big egos do,” said Tom Bordeaux, a
Savannah city alderman who was a floor leader for Miller in the state House.
“Big egos like to read their names on something.”
Tom Lewis, who
served as Gov. Joe Frank Harris’ chief of staff, said, “It is rare in modern
times that a governor does not build something in their hometowns.”
But lawmakers
say Deal has so far not pushed for anything like Perdue’s Go Fish Center, an
education and tourism facility that has attracted much public derision and relatively few visitors. Months after it opened in October 2010,
the New York Times dubbed it a “symbol of waste” at a time when lawmakers were
slashing education and social services in reaction to the Great Recession.
Gov. Sonny
Perdue, 2003-2011, brought Georgia Go Fish Education Center to his home county.
While some of
Deal’s projects — past and current — may cost the state for decades, supporters
argue none are frivolous.
A new campus for Lanier Tech - They cite the
relocation of Lanier Technical College as a prime example. The State Properties
Commission, which is chaired by Deal, agreed to spend about $6.4 million to
purchase about 85 acres for the new campus.
The school is
moving from its main location in Oakwood, where its held classes regularly
since the 1960s, to the new property less than 10 miles away. The new campus
will be built from scratch.
Deal casts the
project as a way to help focus on manufacturing jobs, to prepare Georgians to
work at the new plants, such as the Kubota, a leading manufacturer of small
tractors, lawn mowers and recreational vehicles, in the area.
Kubota
announced just before last year’s election that it was expanding into an
industrial park with ties to the governor’s campaign chairman. A state panel
Deal heads decided in 2012 to build a new poultry laboratory in the same
industrial park.
Deal said he
expects the new school to meet the state’s need for a more skilled workforce. “The
opportunity to have a new and redesigned and an expanded building is a great
asset. The new facility will hopefully be a state of the art facility. It’s
ideally situated,” said Deal, who predicted the school funding won’t be a hard
sell to legislators.
As for whether
it will burnish his legacy, Deal is straightforward. “I’m always proud of
anything we do positive in the state of Georgia. Just the fact that it happens
to be in the county where I have lived for many years, I suppose there’s some
satisfaction to that,” he said, before adding: “But it is a growing part of the
state. That’s one of the driving forces.”
Surprise, questions greet campus move - Still, some
Gainesville residents said they were surprised when Deal publicly broached the
idea of the move late in the 2015 legislative session. At this time last year,
it wasn’t on a lot of people’s radars.
“I won’t say I
expected it, but this was something I was very hopeful would happen,” said Ray
Perren, president of the 3,600-student college.
Deal didn’t
include the money for the school in the budget he proposed to lawmakers in
January, the spending plan legislators debated for almost three months before
approving. Instead, he added the money at the last minute.
Governors
frequently do that, limiting time for debate or responding to last-minute requests. A few years ago Deal did the same
thing when the World Congress Center asked late in the session for money to
begin construction of a parking deck to be used by Falcons fans heading to the
new downtown stadium.
Perren said the
move will give the school the chance to support new programs in the heart of
its four-campus service area. The new school could have six buildings and add
or expand several new programs, including ones for commercial truck driving,
hospitality and industrial maintenance.
The current
facilities, he said, are “adequate, but they are dated.” He noted that the
school sits on the backside of the University of North Georgia-Gainesville
campus. “We are looking for something that gives us more of an identity.”
Some locals
questioned the decision. - Jerry Jackson,
a former legislator who lives in Chestnut Mountain, said in a letter to the
Gainesville Times that the idea to move the technical college came out of
nowhere.
He said the
school is currently located in a part of the county near Gwinnett and Forsyth
counties, drawing residents from those two fast-growing areas. Taxpayers
invested more than $80 million on a new interchange and four-lane roads to
connect two I-985 interchanges
with the University of North Georgia and Lanier Tech, he wrote.
“There is no
doubt the buildings (at Lanier Tech) need renovating, updating and possibly
some additions,” he wrote. “But a study needs to be done and a lot of public
input heard before this school is moved.”
One Deal
supporter, Doug Magnus, president of Conditioned Air Systems Inc. in
Gainesville, offered the state land to rebuild in hopes of keeping the school
near its current location.
Instead, the
state paid for land owned by an Atlanta real estate company that Capitol
lobbyist and former Perdue chief of staff John Watson advises. Watson said he
had no financial stake in the land and wasn’t involved in the deal.
State technical
college officials said they will ask for $75 million in borrowing for the
project over the next two budget cycles. Perren said the total cost could run
about $100 million. If it’s all done in 20-year bonds, the state will wind up
making $180 million or so in debt payments. Taxpayers will be making payments
on the bonds into the 2030s.
Sensitive to perceptions - Not far away is
another of the governor’s pet projects, the proposed Glades Reservoir project,
about seven miles north of Lake Lanier — smack in Deal’s Hall County.
It’s a
cornerstone of Deal’s plan to boost Georgia’s water reserves, though critics
say it’s a costly and environmentally damaging construction that’s no longer
justified given that new population projections that show much slower growth
for the region. Estimates put the cost at $130 million, although it’s unclear
how much state funding would be involved.
Building such a
hometown legacy isn’t usual for governors. George Hooks, a
legislative historian who served with Deal in the Georgia Senate, said the
governor is probably getting pressure from hometown leaders to do more for his
county. “People are
going to come calling, they are going to want this, that and the other thing,”
Hooks said. “He’s done some things for Gainesville, but I don’t think he’s done
any more than any other governor would have done.”
Hooks said, for
instance, that Gov. George Busbee, who served from 1975 to 1983, was
responsible for completing a freeway from I-75 to Albany, where he lived.
Decades before, Hooks said, Gov. Marvin Griffin was instrumental in building an
inland port in his hometown of Bainbridge.
Perdue was
heavily criticized once he left office for all the money he steered to his home
county, Houston, in central Georgia. But Watson, his former chief of staff,
said Perdue’s home folks may have lost out on some projects because the administration
didn’t want to appear to be favoring locals too much.
“You’re always
sensitive about the perception that you are giving everything to your home
community,” Watson said.
New court buildings to come - Legislative
leaders have been quick to go along with Deal’s funding proposals in part
because he’s given them some money for projects of their own. He typically sets
aside $100 million in borrowing for lawmakers to pick and choose their own
projects. The strategy not only gives lawmakers buy-in and reason to support
Deal’s proposals, it provides legislators with something to brag about at home
come election time.
Deal sold
legislators on a park-like gathering area called Liberty Plaza across from the
Capitol where an unsightly parking deck had stood since the mid-1950s.
On a much
larger scale, Deal got lawmakers to budget money to begin designing a new building for the
state’s Supreme and Appeals courts he hopes to expand. It would be built on the site of the
former state archives building a block from the Capitol. And it may cost $115
million, or more, to build, the equivalent of about $200 million in bond
payments over the next 20 years.
It could be the
most expensive state-funded building ever and Deal is expected to push to fund
it before he retires in January 2019.
Some lawmakers
dispute the idea that Deal is looking to get his name attached to fancy,
expensive new buildings or reservoirs so he’ll be remembered when he’s gone.
They say the governor is just building what he thinks the state needs.
“I don’t really
sense that Governor Deal is so much focusing on a legacy as focusing on what he
believes is best for the state,” said state Rep. Joe Wilkinson, R-Sandy
Springs. “I work pretty closely with him, and I’ve never once heard him say, ‘I
hope people remember me this way.’ He’s not going to be a Rudy sitting around
bars talking about the glory days.”
Comments
The last
drought convinced me of the need for more reservoirs. They need to serve the Atlanta area, other
metro areas and Georgia farms. They can
be everywhere and should not be stopped by the federal government. The location
7 miles north of Lake Lanier sounds like a good location.
Deal
overpaid $6.4 million for the 85 acres for the new Lanier Tech campus. He paid $75, 294 per acre. That sounds high
for Gainesville. Who would use the current campus ?
Government
Bonds and borrowing is never a good idea. A 30 year Bond at 5% costs double,
like a home mortgage payment. It’s better to set up accrual accounts to pay for
expensive infrastructure projects.
The $27
million Perdue paid for Okey Woods Wildlife Preserve, the Go Fish Center and
other “recreation venues” are perhaps the worst way to spend State tax
revenues. Tourist spots need to be funded by real business people in the
private sector, or they fail.
Slamming
spending Bills to start questionable projects is not a good way to ensure
success. The reservoirs need to happen,
but the rest should be questioned.
Norb
Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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