Saturday, September 1, 2012

Bureaucracies Are No Way To Spur Development


Read the column here.

Readers will note that I did not even broach the matters of whether the Commission will have any voting representation on the Center for Economic Development’s board (as opposed to that of the advisory Economic Development Council), how the initial membership of the Center’s board will be determined, by whom future appointments to that board will be made, or the legal implications of having the Center be created as a “legislative” entity via the General Assembly.

While it is true that the Task Force’s draft recommendations include a provision that the half-mill additional tax be periodically reviewed, I have little confidence that any such body, one it is attached to the public teat, will voluntarily turn its back on taxpayer funding (especially if that funding is written into law by virtue of the Center being created as a “legislative” entity).

None of these strike me as insurmountable political or practical difficulties, but they do give one even further pause.

Final Report of the Oconee Athens-Clarke Regional Economic Development Task Force (May 2008).  Be advised that this is a large file and may take a while to load:

Review of: The Athens-Clarke County Unified Government (January 2011):

Athens-Clarke County Community Assessment (August 2011):

Citizen Economic Development Task Force Charge (January 2012):

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