Talking Trash (a microcosm of progressive government)

Here we go again. The Athens-Clarke County Commission is poised to extend its regulatory tentacles into yet another area of my life where it is neither needed nor wanted (see articles in Flagpole and the Banner-Herald).

For those unfamiliar with our fair burg, we have a distinct division into “haves” and “have nots” here in the Classic City. Since city-county consolidation, residents of the former City of Athens live in what is called the “urban services” district, while those of us who reside in the formerly unincorporated area of the county live in what is euphemistically called the “general services” district. And ne’er the twain shall meet as, by and large, residents of the outlying areas continue to lack the basic services expected of a local government (water, sewer, trash pickup, etc.), about which I have commented ad nauseam.

Folks in the urban services district receive trash pickup from the Unified Government (for an additional fee, to be fair), folks in the general services district do not. The latter have to dispose of their trash themselves or pay a private hauler to do so. The Commission is considering a plan under which the general services district would be divided into several zones, with each zone being served by a single private hauler as determined by the Unified Government through the issuance of an “exclusive franchise” based on a bidding process.

Naturally, this proposal has prompted much discussion in the opinion pages of the Banner-Herald and on the Winterville Yahoo newsgroup (for those who do not know, Winterville is a separate municipality lying wholly within Athens-Clarke County – and yes that does entail some confusion from time to time). Even District 5 Commissioner David Lynn chimed in. Lynn is a bright guy with whom I agree on some issues (though our political philosophies differ greatly, we have found common ground on some civil libertarian issues), but I think he completely missed the boat on this one.

Ostensibly, the idea behind the franchise plan is to encourage citizens to recycle, thereby prolonging the life of the local landfill. These are laudable enough goals in and of themselves. To my mind, though, there are several areas of concern with this proposal:

1. “Exclusive franchise” rights would be awarded through a biding process. To whom would those bids be paid? The Unified Government, of course. Why should the Unified Government make a dime off of a service it does not provide?

2. Rates would be “standardized” (i.e. set) and billing administered by the Unified Government, meaning more bureaucracy and more employees (also, see No. 1 above).

3. What happens to those private haulers who do not get a franchise? They go out of business, that’s what. Remember how the Unified Government constantly tells us that it is “business friendly,” while at the same time continuously increasing the regulatory burden it places on business?

If the Unified Government wants to extend trash pickup service to the formerly unincorporated areas of the county, and by that I mean providing the general services district with the same service currently provided to the urban services district, that’s one thing. If, however, it merely wants to control that service in the peripheral areas of the county without actually providing it – thereby limiting my choices as a consumer and driving up the cost to me – I am opposed.

I'm getting real tired of my rights, my freedoms, and my bank account taking hits for what our betters tell me is the greater good, as those schemes invariably involve more government regulation and greater expense. And the problems that prompt these "solutions" never seem to get any better, do they?

Addendum: At a Commission meeting some years ago I commented on the disparity between the services provided to the in-towners compared to those received by we rural folks, specifically citing trash pickup (or rather the lack thereof) among others. My comments prompted someone inside the rail, a staffer as I recall, to note that citizens in the general services district really got a better deal on trash pickup than those in the urban services district. Given my nature, the next opportunity I had to say something I immediately proposed that, if that was really the case, the Unified Government get out of the trash pickup business altogether and let the in-towners fend for themselves just like we out-of-towners. Needless to say, all I got from inside the rail, from elected officials and staffers alike, was blank stares.

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CCBOE - Call Your Office

Now that the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools has finally dropped the hammer on the Clayton County School District, I hope that the Clarke County Board of Education has taken notice. I hear that Clayton County is only the third school district to lose its accreditation in the last 40 years. Given the sorry state of public education across the country, that seems like far too few to me (but that is another issue).

Readers should remember that, just a couple of weeks ago, the Board summarily rejected a package of ethics policy reforms strongly recommended by SACS. The recommendations came after the local superintendent threatened to resign if the Board did not cease interfering in the day to day operations of the District, primarily regarding personnel matters.

Be that as it may, I will take the opportunity to again note that, despite the administrative and accreditation messes in which it finds itself, the Clayton County School District does just as good a job of educating its students as does its Classic City counterpart -- and at considerably less expense -- though I acknowledge that such a comparison may be damning by faint praise . As an aside, back in February I argued that public school accreditation, at least insofar as academic achievement is concerned, may be a meaningless concept.

As evidence that Clayton County compares favorably with Clarke County, for far less money, consider the following:

Per Pupil Expenditures FY 2007
Clayton County $7453.37
Clarke County $10,746.94

AYP 2007-2008
Clayton County 50.8%
Clarke County 15.8%

National Test Scores and Graduation Rates 2006-2007

ACT Composite
Clayton County 17.2
Clarke County 18.2

SAT (verbal and math)
Clayton County 866
Clarke County 961

Graduation Rate
Clayton County 71.8%
Clarke County 58.4%

Like I said, I hope that the folks over on Mitchell Bridge Road are paying attention.

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Some Thoughts On Bob Barr

I just watched Glenn Beck’s interview of Bob Barr. The candidate impressed me with his comments and his answers to Beck’s questions. Of particular note was his admission that he is trying to transform the Libertarian Party from a debating society into a real political party.

Barr and I have traversed the same ground, but in opposite directions. He went from conservative Republican to Libertarian, whereas I went from Libertarian to libertarian Republican. I left for the very reason that Barr cited as being characteristic of the “old” LP; I found it fixated on abstract political theory and ideological purity rather than the practical realities of electoral politics (granted, this was circa 1990s). If you can’t get your candidates elected your policies are irrelevant, even if you are right - as the Libertarians frequently are.

For what it is worth, Barr and I met several times at various Georgia GOP functions in years past. He sometimes came across as a bit of a flake (unlike me, of course - not that he should have any recollection whatsoever of me). Even so, I saw no indications of any “flakiness” on the Beck program.

If Georgia were a slam dunk for either Barack Obama or John McCain, I would consider voting for Barr as an act of protest. If, as I keep hearing, the state’s 15 electoral votes are up for grabs (with the caveat that the claim may just be wishful thinking on the part of the Dems), that won’t happen. If the race is that close, any vote for Barr would mean one fewer vote needed for Obama to win – therefore I must vote for McCain.

Even so, I think that Barr should be included in the upcoming presidential debates.

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Turn Out The Lights (the party’s over?)

Those who do not live in Athens-Clarke County may be unaware that the Commission is debating a plan to eliminate 1216 of the Unified Government’s 6094 streetlights (just under 20%) in what is touted as a cost savings move.

As is my wont, I have some observations on the matter:

1) Doesn’t such a plan undercut the primary functions expected of a local government, namely the provision of basic services (police, fire, sewer, etc.)? According to my math, the proposed savings to the county comes out to approximately 1/10 of 1% of the FY ’09 budget. Given the public safety implications in terms of both nighttime driving (remember all of those sparkly new - and expensive - street signs that were sprinkled around the county a while back?) and crime prevention, does eliminating streetlights to save a single penny on every $10 make objective sense?

2) The specific streetlights to be eliminated originally were to be selected through a set of criteria developed by Transportation and Public Works staff and approved by the Commission earlier this month. So far, so good. Once the actual locations of streetlights slated to fall under the budget ax came out, however, the inevitable grumbling about how the proposed deletions were distributed ensued (see the locations by either map or list). Of course, this means that the debate will in all likelihood degenerate into yet another juvenile political squabble leading up to the Commission’s vote next month.

3) Some are blaming the darkening of our fair city on “mindless tax-slashing.” Would that it were so. I understand that point that the writer tries to make, but he errs in a important regard – the simple fact is that the Commission’s action is not based on anything even remotely resembling a tax cut. Property taxes went up substantially this year by virtue of both increased reassessments and a millage rate increase. While it is true that the eventual amount of the millage rate increase is not as high as originally proposed, to characterize it as a “cut” is absurd. The problem with government, at all levels, is not a lack of revenue, but unrestrained spending. The Unified Government’s budget for FY ’09 is many millions more than that for FY ’08. I assure you that “tax slashing” is not the culprit here.

Yes, I know that I am a broken record on these points – but so be it. And I will once again take the opportunity to note that my family lives in what is euphemistically called the “general services” district (i.e. the formerly unincorporated area of the county), getting precious little in the way of basic services. The only street light near our house is the one for which we pay Georgia Power Company every month out of our own pockets.

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We Don’t Need No Stinking Ethics

I must confess my utter astonishment upon reading that the Clarke County Board of Education voted down all five of the proposed ethics policy revisions stemming from Superintendent James Simms’ threatened resignation of two months ago.

Quite apart from the public and editorial calls for the Board to address these issues, its votes are all the more disturbing because such revisions to the Clarke County School District’s policies are integral to the recommendations made by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools to repair the "rift" between the Board and the District’s administration (and yes, the specter of the Clayton County School District accreditation debacle grows by the day).

The proposed revisions, which strike me as entirely uncontroversial (see section F under Old Business, pages 27-35 of the PDF), concern the specific areas of:

Board Ethics
Board Member Conflict of Interest
Administrative Personnel Positions
Professional Personnel Transfer
Administrative Personnel Transfer

My reading of the proposed revisions is that they would be relatively minor in nature, merely serving to bring local policies more in line with the Standards for Local Boards of Education as developed by the Georgia School Boards Association. By that, I mean drawing a distinction between policy adoption and general oversight, which should be the responsibilities of the Board, and day to day personnel and administrative decisions, which should be the responsibilities of the Superintendent.

Given the consistent academic underachievement of the Clarke County School District’s students, the scandalous amount of money required to purchase that underachievement, and the administrative chaos that continues to reign on Mitchell Bridge Road, I advise voters to carefully consider their choices this coming November.

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Nonpartisan Elections in The OC (and elsewhere)

I thought that I has penned my last concerning nonpartisan local elections years ago. Alas, it was not to be. The reason for dredging the matter up again is that shifting voting patterns and growing frustrations over having to choose one primary ballot over the other have prompted calls for county commissioners to be elected on a nonpartisan basis in some of the “regular” counties in the area.

This is a bandwagon on which I have been for years (in the immortal words of Bruce Willis’ John McClane, “Welcome to the party, pal.”). What follows is a reposting of comments I made over at Jmac’s in response to his take on the issue:

We were able to institute nonpartisan elections for the Athens-Clarke County Commission due to the fact that we have a unified (or "consolidated") city-county government.

I wrote three articles on the issue of nonpartisan elections back in 2003-2004 for Athens Weekly News, in which I detailed the lengthy history of the idea in Clarke County and demolished some of the hysterical arguments against changing from partisan to nonpartisan elections for the Commission (contrary to what some would have had you believe, it was not a recent plot devised by the evil GOP). Also, with all due humility, I wiped up the floor with the Democrat Party and Green Party representatives at a forum concerning nonpartisan elections held at Athens Regional Library prior to the local referendum (I was in favor of nonpartisan elections and the other two were not).

Contrary to what many believe, the Constitution is silent on the matter of partisan versus nonpartisan elections for county commissioners. Instead, the state’s code governs; says O.C.G.A. 21-2-139(a), in part:

"Notwithstanding any other provisions of this chapter to the contrary, the General Assembly may provide by local Act for the election in nonpartisan elections of candidates to fill county judicial offices, offices of local school boards, and offices of consolidated governments which are filled by the vote of the electors of said county or political subdivision."

The presumption is that, since county governments generally are not specified in the code section, they must hold partisan elections for their offices by default. Thus, for a regular county government, such as that in Oconee County, to change to nonpartisan elections, the state’s code would have to be changed to allow for county governments generally to pursue the change through local legislation in the General Assembly.

Of particular relevance to the current discussion are the final few paragraphs from the Banner-Herald’s write-up of the forum. Unfortunately, Athens Weekly News is defunct and its web site is no more. After their initial appearance it print, the three articles were posted on the web site of the Committee for Nonpartisan Elections, a local group pushing for the referendum's adoption.

For what it is worth, the ACCG included a plank in its legislative agenda for some years calling for the nonpartisan elections of county commissioners, only dropping it after something approaching unanimity among its members could not be attained. As noted by Scott Berry in the Banner-Herald, the GSA has similarly advocated nonpartisan elections for the office of county sheriff.

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Shafer For Lieutenant Governor?

There has been speculation in the blogosphere of late concerning a possible run for the state’s number two office by State Senator David Shafer (Republican – 48th District, which encompasses parts of Fulton and Gwinnett Counties). See Erick’s post at Peach Pundit and Jmac’s at Safe As Houses.

I’ve chatted with Shafer at various Republican Party of Georgia functions, finding him to be a intelligent and personable fellow. He shares my limited government, fiscally conservative philosophy - traits evidenced by his early and continued involvement in the Georgia chapter of the Republican Liberty Caucus.

As validation of that philosophy, consider that in the most recent legislative term Shafer sponsored SB 12, a measure calling for the “periodic application of zero-based budgeting” to state government agencies and SB 29, which would provide for a dedicated web site designed to make the state’s budget more accessible to the public.

Those (pitiful souls) who keep up with such things will immediately recognize that these ideas are near and dear to my heart. I advocated zero-based budgeting for the United Government as part of my platform for Commission back in 2006 and, as my blog postings will attest, have routinely urged the Clarke County School District to make its budget more available for public scrutiny.

Thus, should the political constellations align as anticipated, I will fully support Shafer for the GOP’s lieutenant governor nomination in 2010.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have been contacted about lending a hand to a potential Shafer campaign - a request to which I readily agreed. Given our ideological affinity, though, I daresay that I would have supported his candidacy in any event.

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This Is Embarrassing

The latest AYP results are out and the numbers for the Clarke County School District are absolutely abysmal. For 2007-2008, only 3 of the District’s 19 schools achieved AYP goals (the Classic City Performance Learning Center is not counted in the statistics because it has too few students). This means that a mere 15.8% of the District’s schools met AYP standards. Continuing a longstanding trend, it is at the elementary level that the news is the least bad, as 3 of 13 elementary schools met AYP; 0 of 4 middle schools and 0 of 2 high schools met AYP.

Compare the local results with those of our neighboring school districts:

Jackson County - 11 of 12 schools met AYP (91.7%)

Oconee County - 9 of 9 schools met AYP (100.0%)

Oglethorpe County - 4 of 4 schools met AYP (100.0%)

Madison County - 4 of 7 schools met AYP (57.1%)

Taken collectively, those other four school districts had 28 of 32 schools meet AYP (87.5%). Statewide, 1481 of 2153 schools met AYP (68.8%).

So what is the problem here?

The usual excuses will be trotted out – that the tests used to measure academic achievement are no good (and the related notion that NCLB measures the wrong things), and that the schools suffer from a lack of funding.

Regarding the former, there may well be problems with the CRCT. However, if the dismal showing of the Clarke County School District is a function of these shortcomings, why do not our neighboring school districts reflect the same results? The fact remains that they are succeeding where we are not, even if the tests are bad.

Regarding the latter, I have pointed out ad nauseam how our neighboring school districts have achieved superior results year after year while spending far less money per pupil. Of course, the argument is that the state has shortchanged school districts on QBE funds. That argument does not work, as the state funds the CCSD to the same extent that it does all of the other school districts in the state. If QBE funds were the problem, there would not be such a disparity between the CCSD and our surrounding school districts - a disparity that exists not just in AYP, but in graduation rates and test scores as well (and you do know that the real cuts to QBE funding ended with FY 2004; since then, QBE funding to the Clarke County School District has increased dramatically - even with "austerity reductions," the amount of QBE funding continues to increase).

I do not enjoy beating up on the CCSD. I know that there are dedicated people in our local schools who are doing the best that they can. I also know the students (and parents) who value education can get a perfectly good one here.

At some point, however, we need to admit that the way we’ve been doing things is not working and that simply throwing more money at the schools will not affect positive change.

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Broun Celebrates Victory in CSRA

Sorry for the late notice, but I just got the following from the Broun campaign:

AUGUSTA, GA – U.S. Congressman Paul Broun is inviting friends, family, and the media to join him for a victory celebration as he grills out at the Savannah River Rapids Pavilion. Broun looks forward to thanking his supporters for campaigning, fundraising, and voting for him in the July 15th Republican Primary Election. Broun won reelection in a landslide, earning 71 percent of the vote in Georgia’s Tenth Congressional District race.

WHO:
U.S. Congressman Paul C. Broun, M.D.

WHAT:
Republican Primary Victory Celebration

WHEN:
5:30 p.m. FRIDAY, July 18

WHERE:
Savannah Rapids Pavilion
3300 Evans-to-Locks Road
Martinez, Georgia 30907

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Two Gloats And One Observation

The first gloat concerns Dr. Paul Broun. It was fun attending his primary victory celebration at the Georgia Center last evening (we Republicans in Clarke County usually do not have much to celebrate). My wife and I had the opportunity to chat with Nikki at some length and with Paul briefly (as one would expect, he was in great demand).

Thankfully, the issue was not in doubt until the wee hours of the morning. Elect returns came in slowly at first, but then the dam broke and it was apparent early on that the good doctor was destined to win in a blowout. Barry Fleming called Broun to concede at about 8:30 (or so). Paul then delivered his victory speech to those assembled at about 9:15 (or so).

As I have said before, quite apart from my ideological affinity with Broun’s positions, he has impressed me by going to Washington and governing exactly as he campaigned (an example from which other GOP legislators at the state and federal levels could benefit).

The second gloat concerns Bill Cowsert, who won by a comfortable margin in the Senate District 46 primary. Living on the eastern side of Clarke County, we are in Ralph Hudgens’ District 47 (who had no primary opposition) and could not vote for Bill. Nonetheless, he is a great guy and represents Athens-Clarke County well in the General Assembly.

And now for the observation. Twice in as many years, the Republican establishment’s favored candidate in the 10th congressional district has run a horrible campaign (I use the term "establishment" in a generic sense to mean insiders as opposed to the formal party hierarchy - since I represent the district on the Georgia Republican Party’s State Committee, I am a part of that establishment to a certain extent, though I am hardly a mover or shaker).

Jim Whitehead made innumerable bone-headed comments, went to great lengths to alienate those who did not reside in his part of the district, and committed the unforgivable mistake of opting out of high-profile candidate functions in Athens. He thereby prompted a load of Democrats to vote for Broun in the runoff.

Barry Fleming ran a thoroughly negative campaign from start to finish. When the questionable strategy of painting Broun as a liberal (!) went nowhere, Fleming fell back on deliberately mischaracterizing Broun’s votes and positions and even dredged up personal matters from decades ago. I’ve met Fleming a couple of times; he struck me as an intelligent and likeable enough guy. So why take a "low road" approach guaranteed to turn off lots of the GOP rank and file?

If this is the best they can do, the establishment insiders should do us a favor and not run more candidates for congress, especially against an incumbent Republican who sticks to his principles.

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