The Bounty Trace to Magnolia Trace

Friday, September 21, 2012
Evans, GA
By Al Gray

The fury in and surrounding the Columbia County Commission Chambers on December 6, 2011 sizzled and seethed. Citizens packed the room and the overflow could have surrounded the building. An incongruous and unwelcome subsidized housing development, to be known as Magnolia Trace, was coming to their midst. The county commission had invited the intruder in. The Georgia Department of Community Affairs (DCA)was funding it. The only notice had been the real estate closing and starting of the building permit process. Revelations that the project's limited partner, Affordable Equity Partners (AEP) of Columbia, Missouri, had – through subsidiaries, related entities, and PAC’s - liberally provided campaign donations to Georgia’s governor, lieutenant governor, speaker of the house and local state legislators added to the combustible mix. Capping it off later was the discovery that the county attorney also had worn the hat of closing attorney for the developers.

Inside, the commission chairman, three commissioners, and that county attorney were stoic, but their white faces and knuckles spoke fear.  Their position was one of relative comfort juxtaposed to the District Three commissioner, a man inopportunely appointed to the offending Department of Community Affairs board (albeit after DCA had approved the tax credit funding to AEP) and who had voted for the county’s resolution to endorse the project. His business had been picketed, his phone ceaselessly chattered, a local talk radio show with 60,000 listeners was hostile, and real pressure was on. He was beet red and seemed to be near break down.

An epic meeting ensued that concluded an hour and a half later with the commission engaging an outside attorney charged with seeing whether there were avenues to void the deal.  It was a fig leaf and seen that way. The project was too carefully planned and orchestrated for citizens to have a realistic chance of canceling it. After all, Affordable Equity Partners boasts of its long history of doing tax credit projects in multiple states and its role in encouraging states to provide the tax credits.  From the company website: "By forging strong relationships with key government entities, AEP ensures a secure and favorable investment environment for our investor partners."

Who Done It?

The first stage in the development and investment process for a Low Income Housing Tax Credit project is said by AEP to be this: “A developer of an affordable property will admit AEP as its limited partner.." This portrays the circumstance of a group of local property developers gaining control of land, then engaging the AEP companies to structure the deal as a LIHTC financing. Who are the principals behind Magnolia Trace? They are hidden by the LLP structure, so that remains a mystery.

The birth pangs for this project came when an AEP entity named Peach Way Holdings LLC obtained an option on March 24, 2010 to purchase the land. Later the option would be exercised by Magnolia Trace LLP. Immediately the process began to submit an application to DCA for tax credits used to finance the project. Peach Way Holdings was the first entity publicly involved out of an AEP interconnected stable of companies who are very adept at carving out a lucrative niche.

Extraordinarily High Costs Meet a Stunning Reversal

The Magnolia Trace project was so astonishingly lucrative that the DCA staff initially refused to approve the application on December 14, 2010 (click link to view document) based on that fact and a host of other financial criteria. “Total development costs for this project are over $10 million dollars which translates into almost $141.24 (author used round numbers) per square foot. A similar project had total development costs of only $7,561,982. This translates to almost $2.5 million more of total development costs.”, DCA wrote. Despite having slammed the numbers as entirely too high and the applicant being barred from updating or modifying anything upon appeal, DCA  approved the credits for MagnoliaTrace in a letter dated March 14, 2011 (click link to view approval document) .Incredibly the approval notification letter has a DCA documents date stamp of January 7, 2011, 66 days before the document was dated!

A need to call upon AEP's “strong relationships” within government to gain approval before December 31, 2010 lay in the expiration of a key contract with Peach Way Financial Services. The vaunted "genuine advocacy for both developers and investors" worked wonders to speed approval, evidenced by what looks like an obvious post dating episode, over a period interrupted by Christmas and New Years.

Who might Magnolia Trace LLP/Affordable Equity Partners have called upon for help in this time of emergency? Lt. Governor Casey Cagle's campaign got $882.50 from AEP going back to 2008. Sister company Capital Health Management Inc. gave Cagle another $10, 453.50.Capital Health Management in October 2006 had given $40,000 out of the $40,500 total of The Fund for Georgia's Future (Filer # NC2006000414 ) who gave Cagle another $10,000 that same month. Capital Health Management in 2008 gave a whopping $100,000 to The Fund for Georgia's Future, who dispersed it to a raft of legislators. and the Republican Party.  

Capital Health had also given the campaigns of Speaker David Ralston $5,000, Senate Majority Leader Chip Rogers $5,500 and Nathan Deal $6,300. Another PAC that AEP contributes to, albeit not as the dominant contributor, is the Committee for Affordable Workforce Housing (GAHC-PAC – Filer NC2008000070). This PAC gave another $6,100 to the Deal campaign in September 2010, $1000 to Ralston in December 2010, $5,973 for Deal in December 2011,  and $3,000 for Cagle in March, 2012.

Nearly $200,000 in campaign funds wins friends. In this case did it reverse a project rejection and move a date?

Magnolia Trace under construction

A Masked Partner?

The DCA application process requires disclosure of all related and controlled entities. Peach Way Financial Services, LLC , the Development Consultant, seems to fall within this category, as William A. Markel, Executive Vice President of AEP, is listed as Peach Way's Agent for its business registration with the Georgia Secretary of State with the listed mailing address in Missouri coinciding with AEP’s office address. However, in the tax credit application filed with DCA, Peach Way Financial, the project Developer Consultant, was listed with an Atlanta address and was reported to  “not have an identity of interest with any other entity in this chart.”  *(Click here to view Magnolia Trace parties document). It is noted that the “identity of interest” question applied to each and every entity in the chart.

A side note is that Peach Way Financial Services, LLC  is shown to have filed its business registration with the Secretary of State for 2011, when the application process remained in play, but is reported to be in a state of noncompliance for 2012. According to its contract, Peach Way Financial Services gets fee payments in 2012 from Magnolia Trace.

“Inefficient financial structure”

Before Magnolia Trace LLP's sudden change in fortune, DCA had written this about the project: “.... the financial structure is not an effective or efficient use of DCA resources.” What might be the reason that the “financial structure is not an effective use…?” Could it be that multiple layers of AEP affiliated companies produced the $2.5 million more in costs cited by DCA?

Arguably the largest money tree in the AEP stable is that the tax credit financing process allows “AEP’s ability to insert an experienced affiliate into every step of the tax credit process provides added security to AEP’s investors." With Magnolia Trace, Peach Way Holdings secured the land option. Magnolia Trace LLP became the owner.  MACO Development Company, LLC is the Developer. AEP itself is the State and Federal Limited Partner. MACO Properties, LLC is the Managing Partner. Peach Way Financial Services LLC is the Development consultant. Fairway Construction Co. Inc. is the General Contractor. Fairway Management is the management company. All are related and most stood to gain fees, directly or indirectly.

How much  of the $2.5 million excess cost that DCA objected to might be found in having so many AEP companies involved? The land acquisition and construction 'costs' totaled $6,986,826, or a whopping $100 per square foot. The total development  'costs' of $10,152,634 were $145.45 per square foot. Of the roughly $3.2 million difference, fees, overhead, and profit of the AEP stable of companies were about $2.1 million, or 66%.

A Lot More than A Trace of Money

Once a subdivision is complete, the AEP companies begin to draw management fees from leasing operations. Magnolia Trace will join 17 previous AEP company developments in Georgia. Projected management fees to be generated from the Martinez complex are estimated at $1,160,885.

The approved tax credits were $1,065,849. If the DCA's figures and objections ifrom December 2010 are correct, the excess of tax credits over the norms would be about 25% or more than $250,000.

Magical Words to an Auditor's Ears

The application contained the language “Certification of Actual Cost” and the authorizing provisions in Chapter 42 of the tax code preserve the rights and capabilities of audit before the tax credits are issued. This could prove providential in protecting state and federal tax revenues, as there are new homes for sale in similar neighborhoods for sales prices in the low $70's per square foot. Upon audit can the $145 per square foot price supplied by the AEP companies be sustained?

The larger question is whether anyone will ever be allowed to audit this transaction.

Summary

Citizens of suburban, Republican Martinez, Georgia got an unwelcome subsidized housing project courtesy of unknown developers. If there is solace in this story it is that Martinez county commissioner Trey Allen got the Department of Community Affairs to reform its policy so that future locales will be notified beforehand of low income projects. The politicians got nearly $200,000 of campaign donations. The AEP stable of companies look to have secured a backdated approval of a project that DCA deemed excessive on the way to winning more than $1.5 million in development fees, $1.1 million in tax credits, and $1.1 million in management fees. Along the way, one entity looks to have been undisclosed as a related party and has fallen into noncompliance with Georgia's business registration unit.

The identities of the parties who launched this controversial project will be hidden behind opaque partnership structures, while a cash-strapped state government sees its revenues drained, not only by very lucrative tax give-aways, but also by layered on costs that the state agency found to be excessive.

Can this really be government by and for the people?***

--Al Gray

Related Stories

• Wide Open Records at DCA Put Sunshine on Magnolia Trace
• Magnolia Trace: Money Traces to Gold Dome
• Exclusive: County Attorney Worked for Magnolia Trace Developer
• Magnolia Trace: After the Storm

11th Hour for the 12th District

GOP About to be Reformed, One Way or Another

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Augusta, GA

By Al Gray

A perfect storm has struck the ossified, corrupt political power structure in Augusta, the CSRA, and Georgia. The first harbinger of the maelstrom emerged a year ago when Augusta Mayor Deke Copenhaver attempted to bring a publicly funded baseball stadium to the riverfront, prompting the formation of a loose coalition of Augustans, area residents, and former citizens.  This is Augusta Today.

The opening pitch for that stadium by Mayor Deke was in the dirt.

Then came the Laney Walker Overlay debacle, where the Mayor was eager to run all over city ordinances and the constitutional property rights of the poorest people to get on the cover of Southern Living.

After that has been a blizzard of revelations, sourced in the city’s own documents, that shows a pattern of deception, mismanagement, incompetence, and probably rampant fraud centered in Augusta’s contracts.

Then along came TSPLOST, supposedly a regional collaboration, which instead has blown the CSRA apart and separated it from the 75% of the state that rejected the tax.

Augusta is a renegade government that endangers its citizens. In the parlance of former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, this is a known known. Things will never be the same again in Augusta and beyond.

The Republican Party in the 12^th Congressional District of Georgia is in the midst of reform, too.

This spring the Liberty Movement seized control of the Richmond County GOP convention. They nearly did it at the district convention.

The Columbia County GOP is in pure turmoil from years of shenanigans, deposed chairmen, party establishment ruin, and is totally irrelevant.

A core cadre of GOP legislators named Barbara Sims, Ben Harbin, Lee Anderson, Bill Jackson, and Tom McCall joined together behind beleaguered Nathan Deal to foist TSPLOST, the largest tax increase in Georgia history, on the voters.  The GOP havens Columbia County and Lincoln County rejected them and it.

This same cadre of GOP legislators is wrapped all up in the ASU name change to GRU fiasco. Deal’s Board of Regents Chairman Ben Tarbutton has contributed to Lee Anderson’s congressional campaign and Sims has been supportive of the detested Georgia Regents University name.

John Barrow, the last blue dog Democrat in the South, looms with a war chest that will probably exceed $2 million. Barrow has shown a streak of independence from the Obama Administration and his voting record in terms of fiscal conservatism is on a par with GOP Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan. His office has rock solid constituent service.

Reform is about to be visited upon the GOP.  The party establishment hates it, but now knows it stands before an avalanche of public revulsion, anger, and determination.  TSPLOST is about to be stopped cold. CSRA politicos will find themselves in a totally untenable position if they don’t reverse course and join this action.

With respect to the 12^th district race, the path to reform is either going to be aboard a bullet train or it is going to occur on an even greater scale over 2 years. The former will come with a Rick Allen victory. The later will come with a Lee Anderson victory.

Some might see Allen’s alliances with the mavens of Morris Communications, the Augusta blueblood elites, the Copenhaver-Russell administration, and his own ties to the party establishment all the way to Washington, DC as diametrically opposed to reform. It won’t work that way. Precisely because of those alliances and the many contracts that his business has had with government, Rick Allen will have absolutely no choice but to embrace openness and reform. There simply will be no way to dodge questions. Instead of reform activists having to laboriously go through open records requests, questions will have to be quickly answered and issues resolved. The key to taking Augusta from worst to first lies in its contracting. Rick Allen knows this. Rick Allen will bring the reformers to the table because John Barrow will force him to.

Beyond the things that will force the issue, there is the knowledge that Rick Allen has the intelligence, openness, curiosity, financial background and moral code to bring back the rule of law, the Constitution, and fiscal responsibility to government. He knows the score with far better acumen than most. He knows that the people who send him to Washington won’t be those connected folks.

It was said that only Nixon could have gone to China. Maybe only Allen can visit reform on Augusta.

Reform will come in slower, broader, plainer, and yet more spectacular style if Lee Anderson is the GOP nominee. Then the party will be pinned hopelessly to a candidate with a record hostile to the hurting, threatened, middle class. Barrow will pounce all over it. Anderson went along to get along in the most unethical state government in America. He has pushed sales taxes on groceries, both with the ridiculous GREAT “tax reform” of the disgraced Georgia Speaker Glenn Richardson and with TSPLOST. Anderson’s TSPLOST did away with home rule, subverting Columbia Countians votes to those of welfare statists in neighboring Augusta.. His subservience to Nathan Deal brings its own baggage. Then, there is the matter of his willingness to read and comprehend legislation.  It just isn’t there. Neither is there substantial debating skill.

Lee is relying on four things to sweep him into office after Tuesday, while he disappears into a cocoon of silence.

One is Obamaphobia.

Two is the promise of $950,000 of Republican Congressional Campaign Committee funds to unseat John Barrow.

Three is that voters uninformed of his record are drawn to vote for “the nice man with the tractor.”

Four is that folks don’t notice that the discredited Georgia establishment is behind him.

It might happen. Obamaphobia very well may mean an Anderson seat in Congress. That would be the sum of all fears for the GOP. It would mean that the party openly supported a known-to-be flawed candidate into the US House of Representatives, one who might deliver more embarrassment and bad policy than a John Deere tractor can haul.

Reform now, GOP. You can pay a nominal price now or a capitol one later.

Tractor pulls are dangerous.***

Al Gray

Anderson Attack Ads: Pot Calling the Kettle Black

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Augusta, GA

From CityStink.net Reports

**Editor's note: click orange text to links referenced material**

Reports are filtering in about an attack piece on 12^th Congressional District candidate Rick W. Allen from the Lee Anderson Campaign. Allen faces Anderson in the August 21 run-off election for the 12^th District seat.

The flier slams Allen for a contribution that he made to Democrat Champ Walker way back in 2006.

Lee Anderson is no stranger when it comes to giving money to shady Georgia politicians, especially now Governor Nathan Deal, who was number 5 on the list of the 15 Most Corrupt Members of Congress, when Anderson started supporting the Deal campaign in 2009. This is the same Deal who hid $millions in debt from personal disclosure reports in 2010,obfuscated the payment of $90,000 to his daughter-in-law for campaign fund raising, admitted "technical defects" in multiple campaign finance disclosure reports,and finally, sold a heavily indebted commercial building to a porn shop operator. Yeah, you read that right... a porn shop operator.

Deal is a notorious party-switcher, having been a life-long Democrat until 1995.

Here is the Lee Anderson record of funding Nathan Deal's 2010 campaign.

On 12/30/2009 Lee Anderson transferred $1,000 of funds to Nathan Deal for Governor.

On 6/24/2010 Lee Anderson transferred $1000 to Nathan Deal for Governor.

On his 9/30/2010 campaign report Lee Anderson showed another $1500 contributed to Nathan Deal For Governor.

On 10/14/2010 Lee Anderson transferred yet another $1500 to the Deal campaign.

Aren't the criticisms of candidate Anderson – a former Democrat himself - toward Rick Allen a huge case of the pot calling the kettle black?***

CS

Furor Over University Name a Gift for Lee Anderson?

Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Augusta, GA
By The Outsider

With the local outrage over the new name for the new merged university dominating the front page of the daily paper, the evening news, and the talk radio shows, you'd almost have forgotten that there is a run-off in a week for the Georgia 12th congressional district GOP race.

Lee Anderson, who is now in a runoff with Augusta construction contractor Rick Allen for the 12th district GOP nomination,  ought to send Dr. Ricardo Azziz and the Georgia Board of Regents bouquets of flowers.

The furor over the university name change has successfully diverted local attention away from Anderson's voting record in the state legislature and most importantly his support of T-SPLOST. There was a noticeable backlash against Anderson in his home base of Columbia County in the immediate aftermath of the T-SPLOST vote on July 31st. Despite failing in 75% of the regions throughout Georgia and being soundly rejected by more than 58% of voters in Columbia County, the tax still passed in the CSRA region, largely because of the voters in neighboring Richmond County. That means that Columbia County residents will still be forced into this new tax region despite voting against it.

We heard reports in the days following the T-SPLOST vote that some Lee Anderson signs were being taken down from yards across  Columbia County in protest of his support for the tax and  voting for it in the Georgia General Assembly. But T-SPLOST was not the only tax Anderson supported in the legislature that is disproportionately hitting middle and lower income residents. He also voted in favor of a $500 million hospital bed tax and Georgia Power's advance billing of $1 billion in profits, hidden as "construction costs," which lead to double digit rate increases for the average  customer. Voters in Columbia County were finally starting to pay attention to Anderson's anti middle class voting record, and this presented an opening for Rick Allen in the run-off.

And then came the announcement from the Georgia Board of Regents last week that the name for the new consolidated university in Augusta would be named Georgia Regents University. All Hell broke loose. It's been dominating the headlines for the entire week and there is no sign that the outrage will die down any time soon. William S Morris III even had a self-penned letter on Sunday's front page of his Augusta Chronicle newspaper where he announced his resignation from the  board of GHSU over the name flap. Articles on the name controversy on The  Chronicle website have been getting by far the most comments, and callers to local radio talk shows have also been fixated on the name change.  More protests are planned for this week. We've noticed here that web searches for the congressional race and T-SPLOST have fallen off considerably in the last week. All of the interest seems to be on the name for the new university.

The timing could not be worse for Rick Allen. A recount request by Wright McLeod last week that yielded one vote had  delayed the inevitable show-down between Anderson and Allen. And during the uncertainty of the recount,  the announcement of the new name of the university came out, and got everyone talking.. Any momentum that Allen could have capitalized on over T-SPLOST seemed to be slipping away with the clock counting down to August 21.

To win the run-off next week, Allen will have to win Columbia County. The furor over T-SPLOST and tying Lee Anderson to it looked like it would be the winning strategy that could deliver victory to Allen. But now the furor has shifted to something else... the name of the new university. Will there still be enough outrage over T-SPLOST in Columbia County next Tuesday to sway the run-off election in Allen's favor? That remains to be seen.

Allen is already handicapped by a depressed GOP voter turnout in Richmond County because of the Sheriff's race. All of those republican cross-overs who took a democratic ballot in order to vote for Scott Peebles are not allowed to cross back over to vote in the congressional run-off on August 21st. Anderson did rather poorly in Richmond County in the July 31st general primary, in fact it was his worst showing in all of the counties in the 12th district. Allen could have been able to win Richmond County by a big margin and run up the vote tally and offset Anderson's advantage in the rural southern counties next Tuesday, but because of the depressed turnout, Allen's advantage in Richmond County will be negated and thus the largest county in the district will end up having a negligible impact on the race. That means Columbia County will decide this.

If Rick Allen can win Columbia County by the same margin as it rejected T-SPLOST, he will be the candidate facing John Barrow this fall instead of Lee Anderson. But for this to happen, Allen will have to position himself back to his Columbia County roots and distance himself from the political elites in Augusta-Richmond County, who have for the most part forsaken him anyway for the Sheriff's race and have become more of a political liability. If Allen has any chance for a victory against Anderson, it will be found in Columbia County.

Linking Anderson to the unpopular T-SPLOST appears to be the winning strategy to take Columbia County. The key is to make sure the voters are still as outraged over T-SPLOST next Tuesday as they were a week and a half ago. One way this could be accomplished is to link the red hot outrage over the university name change to the outrage over T-SPLOST. They both have one common denominator: an overbearing state political body out of touch with the wishes of locals.

T-SPLOST failed in Columbia County, but  the Georgia General Assembly engineered the bill in such a way, that their wishes could be outvoted by people in other counties.. and that is exactly what happened. The legislature also sought fit to penalize regions that voted against the tax by withholding a large portion of state transportation matching funds. The voters were not really being given a real choice by the politicians under the Gold Dome in Atlanta. T-SPLOST was more like an act of extortion: vote for it --- or else.

Lee Anderson was one of the state legislators who voted in favor of this flawed bill that took local control away from individual counties and gave it to a new regional government. Similarly, the wishes of many local residents and leaders were outvoted by another state body known as the Georgia Board of Regents when it came to naming the new consolidated university in Augusta. The case could be made that an overbearing state government  gave us the hideously flawed T-SPLOST and the extremely unpopular name for the new university abbreviated as GRU. Some can say that  T-SPLOST and the new university name are GRUesome, and Rick Allen would be wise to make that argument and continue to link Lee Anderson to the overbearing and out of touch state government  that gave us both.***
OS

Farmer Lee Anderson Grows Taxes

The Lee Tax Shift

Friday, August 3, 2012

Columbia County, GA

By Kurt Huttar

Last Tuesday, July 31, 2012, saw the completion of the biggest tax shift in CSRA and Georgia history with the passage of the 1% sales tax for transportation called T-Splost. Less than two months after Columbia County Representatives Lee Anderson and Ben Harbin voted for $tens of millions in new sales tax exemptions for Delta Airlines,  Delta, Georgia's  domineering airline, contributed $225,000 used to convince easily-swayed voters to vote themselves a 33% sales tax increase on food.

Perhaps Delta, once notorious for sending passengers on the last leg back to Augusta on buses, wants safer roads on which to transport shafted customers upon whom it foisted an $8 billion tax increase.

Anderson, now a candidate for the 12^th Congressional District seat now held by Democrat John Barrow, voted to cut Delta's sales taxes but voted for these sales tax increases on us in the middle class. Here we find Lee dining with George Bowen, the lobbyist who greased through the fuel tax exemption for Delta and Georgia Power.

Worse is the behavior of Georgia Power Company, who gave $395,000 to deluge us with pro T-Splost propaganda after the same legislation saved them $hundreds of millions. It is noted that said cost savings supposedly are given back to consumers via fuel adjustments to their rates, but how many citizens trust those calculations? This also came after Lee Anderson voted in 2009 for Georgia Power's advance billing of $1 billion in profits, hidden as "construction costs." We got double digit rate increases from that, too.

Yes, we voters are now going to have to pay Lee's 14% T-Splost sales tax increase on those double-digit, advance-profit charges on our power bills.

Here, the Georgia Gang, including former Augusta Chronicle opinion editor, Phil Kent, questioned the rush by Lee Anderson and others to pass the bill.

Lee could not be dissuaded by pleas of "Read the BILL, Lee!"

Anderson, a hay farmer, also voted for a $500 million a year hospital bed tax. How did he make a “No Tax Increase” Pledge with Grover Norguist's Amercans for Tax Reform and vote for these tax increases? Can we believe his promises?

It was most frustrating for us in Columbia County to only be able to put up a few score “VOTE NO” signs, then go home to find pro-T-Splost mailers in the mailbox.

I had to  drive by scads of “Vote Yes” signs illegally placed in medians and rights of way, like this one: 

I had to listen to broadcast appeals funded by these corporations who just got sales tax cuts. 

Finally, I got a batch of signs from Augusta County Commissioner Joe Bowles, who courageously fought adoption of this terrible tax. 

On August 21, we have chance to just say 'No!” once again. This time it is a vote against legislators stupidly subordinating our Columbia County votes to those of ignorant and corrupt Augustans. This time it is a vote mindful that this dastardly T-Splost tax begins to be collected January 1.

Just say no to Lee Anderson for Congress.

Lobbyists love him. The middle class groans under the burdens their orgies of money and excess we are left with.

Isn't it time the people won one?***
KH

Related Stories:

• Anderson Off His Wagon in the 12th District
• My Lesson From Lee Anderson: Never Give Money to a Politician

T-SPLOST Passes in CSRA Despite Columbia County Saying No

Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Augusta, GA
By The Outsider


Bucking a statewide trend, it appears that the T-SPLOST tax has passed in the 13 county Central Savannah River Area region. The latest vote totals as of 11pm on July 31 showed a margin of 56% voting in favor and  44% voting against with a more than 6,000 vote spread. This is by far the best showing for the T-SPLOST   in all 12 regions of the state, where latest totals showed that the tax was failing in 9 out of 12 regions.

Perhaps the biggest repudiation of T-SPLOST came in the  metro Atlanta region, where voters are rejecting the tax by a wide margin of 63% against and 37% in favor. This, after millions of dollars were poured into the Atlanta region by pro T-SPLOST groups  for an ad blitz pitching the tax. Its failure in the metro Atlanta region will make things very complicated, since the law states that any region which does not pass the tax will have their state transportation matching funds slashed....and with metro Atlanta comprising nearly 50% of the state's population, that's a lot of money. You can now expect a barrage of lawsuits challenging the efficacy of T-SPLOST now that it seems to have failed in 75% of the regions, including the states's most populous metropolitan area.

The T-SPLOST also failed in Coastal Georgia, which after metro Atlanta accounted for the most spending by Pro T-SPLOST groups. In fact, Chatham County rejected the tax by over 57%  despite the Savannah port deepening being a signature project touted by T-SPLOST backers.

So why did it pass in the CSRA? 
By looking at the most recent vote totals, it appears that T-SPLOST mainly passed here because of Augusta-Richmond County (the most populous county in the region) where it was approved by more than 58% of the vote with a nearly 6,000 vote margin. T-SPLOST did particularly well in predominately African-American voting precincts in Richmond County. The tax found its softest support in West Augusta and South Richmond County precincts with a slight majority of those precincts rejecting T-SPLOST.

The story was completely different in Columbia County where over 58% of voters rejected the T-SPLOST.   The latest totals showed 14,358 voting against and 10,340 voting in favor. But even though Columbia County voters resoundly  rejected T-SPLOST, they will  still be taxed anyway. Lincoln County and Glascock County also rejected the T-SPLOST. The nine other rural counties passed it, presumably because of the promise from politicians that they would be getting over $87 million in additional tax revenue from populous Richmond and Columbia Counties

Since this is a regional tax regime, Columbia County is tied to the other 12 counties in the CSRA region, including Augusta-Richmond County. Under the provisions of the tax district, Columbia County will be a donor county, giving up  over $23 million of its sales tax proceeds to other counties in the region. But under the T-SPLOST regime Augusta/Richmond County will be giving away $63 million of its sales tax proceeds to other counties, which makes the overwhelming support there even more baffling. Columbia County will also now be married to what many political observers consider a corrupt and incompetent Augusta-Richmond County for control of transportation dollars.

Impact on the 12th District Congressional Race
Lee Anderson voted for T-SPLOST in the Georgia General Assembly, and now he appears to be in a run-off for the 12 Georgia Congressional GOP nomination with either Rick Allen or Wright McCleod. Anderson defended his T-SPLOST vote by saying he was only voting to give the people a say in the matter. However, critics charged that the regional vote was unfair and would subject individual counties to the tax even if their voters overwhelmingly opposed it at the polls. That scenario now seems to have been born out in Columbia County. All 3 of Anderson's GOP challengers said they were against T-SPLOST. Now there is speculation of whether there will be a voter backlash against Anderson in his home base of Columbia County because of the T-SPLOST outcome.

Also in the hot seat is Columbia County commission chairman Ron Cross, who heavily promoted T-SPLOST. Seeing as how it failed by such a wide margin there, his critics have yet another example to show  how the commission chairman is out of touch with the average voter in Columbia County. If there is any bright spot for Columbia County over the T-SPLOST outcome is that it may lead to the overwhelming passage of a referendum imposing term limits on county commissioners and the chairman.

Now the CSRA region will have one of the highest sales taxes in the state, making it less competitive for business. However, neighboring South Carolina  retailers are likely to see a jump in business from T-SPLOST. ***
Stay Tuned... more to come
OS

Related Stories:

• Don & Ron's $87.6 Million Pot of Gold
• 15 Reasons to Detest T-SPLOST and Punish its Promoters
• Al Gray Warns Rural County Leaders Over 'Shameful' T-Splost
• Al Gray: Vote No to T-SPLOST (Video)
• Why T-SPLOST Must Be Defeated (Video)

T-SPLOST Report: Don & Ron's $87 Million Tax Give-Away

Just Dandy or Downright Irresponsible?

Monday, July 23, 2012
Augusta, GA

By IndyInjun

A loose coalition of anti-tax and community activists has arisen locally to oppose T-Splost, which is the chosen acronym for a proposed new 1% sales tax dedicated to transportation. This measure is Referendum Item 1 on the July 31 Georgia primary election ballot. If passed, the sales tax rate in most counties in the Central Savannah River Area (CSRA) increase from 7% to 8%, for a whopping 14.3% sales tax increase.

The funds collected from the new 1% T-Splost in all of the 13 counties in the CSRA  region would be dispensed in two pots. 75% of the money goes into a designated, preapproved investment list projects, called the “Constrained Investment List.” Many, if not most, of these projects in the CSRA have long been on the Georgia Department of Transportation’s planned projects list to be built with motor fuel tax funds. For example, the extension of Riverwatch Parkway to Washington Road in Evans has been on the DOT planned list for a decade or more. Columbia and Richmond Counties are MPO’s (Metropolitan Planning Organizations) under the authorizing bill, the Transportation Investment Act of 2010, and will be empowered to use the new T-Splost funds largely without DOT involvement.

The horse trading with the other 11 counties was thorny. As best can be told, the trade-off was to build the large investment list projects in Augusta and Columbia County early in the 10 years of the T-Splost, while the Investment list projects for the rural counties are delayed largely to the last 3 years, carrying the risk that the funds will run out. The bill says that these projects are guaranteed to be built but provides no funds.

Dandy Don Loves Taxes

The other 11 counties are willing to be in this arrangement only by virtue of the 25% “Discretionary” Funds or Cash Pot. This 25% is set based upon a combination of road miles and population which vastly favors the rural counties.

How much money is Augusta and Columbia County giving up into the Cash Pot for the rural counties? An astounding $87.6 million!  Augusta gives up $63 million and Columbia County gives up $23 million in cash! Proof of this is found in the spreadsheet that the CSRA Regional Commission provided, although it required extending some of the data and calculations to divulge the truth of the matter.

Don Grantham, Commissioner of the Georgia Department of Transportation Board for the Augusta Region, and CSRA Regional Transportation Roundtable Chairman Ron Cross were extremely generous with the “cash pot” funds to be doled out from their counties!

Why aren’t these figures being publicized? ***


IJ

CSRA TSplost Revenue Gains and Losses by County

Off His Wagon in the 12th District

No Lee Way

Monday, July 16, 2012

Augusta, GA

By Al Gray

Lee Anderson’s Legislative Rap Sheet - Will the Legislature’s war on Middle Class Georgians Blow Up in His Face?

Lee’s Electric Rate Increase

Look on your Georgia Power Bill. Is it high enough to suit you? Now look on the billing details. On there you will see a little item called “Nuclear Construction Cost Recovery.” This comes to 5.1% of the Current Service amount. On a monthly bill of $300 this special rate increase comes to about $15.  The Bill that created this cost to us that was passed in 2009 was so hideously bad, that consumer advocate Clark Howard spoke out strongly against it, twice. Lee Anderson, now candidate for the 12^th District Congressional seat threw our interests to the wind and voted for it. What is worse is that we got another 1.7% hike this spring and have yet another coming next year! With incomes down-to-flat over the last 5 years Georgians are hurting from energy costs already.

Shocking Households across Georgia

Admittedly, politicians and the public in the Augusta area were all for the jobs that this Plant Vogtle Nuclear Power Plant expansion would bring, but before Lee and the others made that vote, it came out that more than half of the increase was for advance profits for Georgia Power and its parent Southern Company. The excess was over $1 billion! The project will produce 800 permanent jobs, which is great, but the extra rate increase for the advance profits is more than $1.2 million per job! Knowing that Lee was about to make a huge mistake that was going to cost us all required a phone call. Hearing the message left made no doubt about the wise position, but Lee voted for this huge rate increase anyway.

The bill got rammed through despite our calls, Clark Howard’s appeals, and media questions. House member Lee listened to 70 Georgia Power lobbyists instead.  " House members were in such a hurry that they broke with tradition and left hundreds of House bills waiting while they OK’d a Senate bill", it was written.

Lee Loves Rascal Politicians

If you love incumbent, established politicians and like what they have done to this state, by all means vote for Lee Anderson. Anderson actually boasts about having lined up the political establishment throughout the district early and embraces them fully. Lee Anderson is the politicians’ politician and is the only career politician in the 12^th District race. Got that?

Lee Likes Nancy Pelosi’s Style – Pass Bills You Haven’t Read

We can kill two birds with one stone with Lee’s tax reform vote. First, he cannot have known what he voted on, is not inquisitive enough to research issues, and he leans upon lobbyists to ‘inform’ him. When tax reform came up during the 2011 legislative session, this writer called Lee to ask if he knew what was in the bill and was promptly directed to call an agricultural businessman directly interested and involved in getting a whole new section of agricultural exemptions from sales tax written in.  Second, the legislation was rushed through during the closing days of the 2012 session without adequate estimates of the revenue losses, despite clear notice that the electricity exemption would cost Augusta Richmond county with its heavy manufacturing, Burke County with Plants Vogtle and Wilson and Effingham county with the Georgia Pacific complex and Plant McIntosh. Early in the session this costly “tax reform” had been squelched because of the heavy revenue losses to certain counties. In the Savannah Daily News it was reported: "Local governments would also lose money on an energy sales tax moratorium for industry. To replace that revenue the state has promised to return a share of its take each year, guaranteeing at least $1 billion to local governments. " This will be like all of the other of the legislature’s “guarantees” –every one of which have disappeared – won’t it? Where will these counties find another equivalent source of revenue? They won’t.

Clueless about Money

Neither Lee nor anybody else in the House has a clue about where the money will come from or how much was lost! Amy Henderson, of the Georgia Municipal Association said at the time "This is happening so quickly that there's not really time to look at it and say what is the impact going to be?" Did Lee Anderson read the bill that the experts in local government couldn’t?  What do you think?

Vanishing Point – Running from Ethics

Then there is the matter of corruption amongst all of those incumbent politicians who support Lee. Georgia has the most corrupt government out of the 50 states. Where was and Lee on ethics reform in Georgia? Anderson pledged support for ethics legislation but later cut and ran after lobbyists warned that he would lose campaign donations. Cronyism above ethics – there’s your farm boy.

No Lee Way from his T-Splost Vote

Finally, consider that Lee Anderson is proud of his vote for T-Splost, the biggest tax increase in Georgia history, a vote that Americans for Tax Reform’s Grover Norquist says violates the “No Tax Increase Pledge” that Lee signed. Representative Anderson tries to wiggle out of the vote, saying he voted to give the people the choice. The part giving voters a choice is 3 paragraphs out of the 29 page bill  he voted for. The rest is the death of home rule, a 14% tax increase, extortion against the voters, and a whole new unfunded social planning agency. Lee Anderson would like to disavow this vote. He should not be allowed that privilege.

This is a CONSERVATIVE?

The worst thing that could happen to Lee Anderson is to win the 12^th District congressional seat. The worst thing that could happen to those who wish to reform Augusta and bring the region back to a place of honor and respect would be an Anderson win. Alas, such an outcome is hardly improbable. 

Politics is a disease that afflicts some men to the point of their ruin. Lee Anderson is one of those men.

Friends need to do an intervention here and adopt this motto – “Restore a man to his decency and honor – Send Lee Anderson back to farming.”

We will all be better for it.***
A.G.

Signs of Desperation for the Tax Hikers

Money No Object to Ram T-Splost Down the People’s Throats

Saturday, June 23, 2012

Appling, Georgia

By Hwy221

From the $8 million Lobbyist Shill Group ConnectGA2012, birthed to pitch the Transportation ‘Investment’ Act, to the various tax-loving Chambers of Commerce cheerleaders, the “New Jobs!” cries from Helen to Hahira sound like some obsessive mantra. The people of Georgia have never seen a slicker effort to separate them from their money than from these T-Splost salesmen.

With a little effort, salesman-in-thief Nathan Deal almost begins to look like Euctice Haney from Green Acres and after you watch this clip, you will understand why. When old Nathan came back from Congress, pursued by an ethics investigation, yet elected in a landslide over Roy Barnes, he was encouraged to think that Georgians are all rubes like Sam Drucker and Oliver Wendell Douglas.


(click video below to play)

If we buy off on his T-Splost scam, well maybe we are past all hope.

Take a gander at what folks headed west on Washington Road (Highway 104) have been treated to starting this week. Scarcely 100 yards apart, with no visible ROAD WORK between, are two signs like this, one on each side of the road.

(click image to enlarge)

For what purpose are they there?

Based upon the positioning of these signs and the obvious lack of road improvements around, our sales tax dollars are only at work buying loudly colored signs pitching more sales taxes.

These people are shameless in their manipulative hijinks aren’t they?

The sure sign that we see is very clear – COLUMBIA COUNTY HAS MORE SALES TAX MONEY THAN IT NEEDS!

T-Splost? Let’s make that into the bug-on-a-windshield thing it sounds like.


Just say NO! to T-Splost!***

• Join the Anti T-SPLOST movement on Facebook

Related Stories:

• 15 Reasons to Detest T-SPLOST and Punish Its Promoters
• Al Gray Warns Rural County Leaders About "Shameful" T-SPLOST