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Posted inLatest News

State legislators fail to give MARTA the needed flexibility on how it spends local funds

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By Maria Saporta

It gets so bloody depressing.

Once again, MARTA has gotten screwed. This time, it was at the hands of the State Rep. Mike Jacobs, State Rep. Steve Davis and other misguided colleagues who have lost sight of what being a legislator is all about — to act in the best interests of the state.

In the closing minutes of the 2012 legislative session, political motives and missteps failed to remove the noose around MARTA’s neck that forces the transit agency to spend 50 percent of the sales tax it collects on capital improvements and 50 percent on operations.

Posted inTom Baxter

A flash of transparency lights the end of a dismal session

Avatar photo by Tom Baxter

Late in the last night of this year’s legislative session, in that hour when so much mischief famously has been done, there was a brief but illuminating flash of red which revealed the way things work under the Golden Dome and the potential of social media to disrupt the old order.

You can it watch it, starting at the 3 hour 16 minute mark, on this Georgia Public Broadcasting archive video.

Posted inDavid Pendered

Sheriff who broke Brer Rabbit case now a lone voice against criminal sentencing reform

by David Pendered

The Georgia sheriff who cracked the case of the stolen statue of Brer Rabbit has come out with a last ditch effort against a proposal pending in the Legislature that is strongly supported by Gov. Nathan Deal and ranking lawmakers.

Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills says the alternative sentencing bill that’s due for a vote Monday in the state Senate is soft on crime and will shift the cost of lawbreakers from the state to counties. The House unanimously approved the bill.

To fight the bill, Sills has distributed an email filled with the sort of rousing language he deployed in August. At that time, the sheriff vowed to throw the law book at thieves who stole a statue of Brer Rabbit from the front yard of the Uncle Remus Museum, in Eatonton.

Posted inMichelle Hiskey

Andrew Crawford’s metal gates are passages of his own creative risks

by Michelle Hiskey

A garden gate by Andrew T. Crawford is a frame of beauty and a joy of metal.

It’s also a sign of the artist’s mid-career transformation.
Eleven of Andrew T. Crawford’s organically inspired gates frame the daffodils, tulips and hyacinths in the current exhibit, “Atlanta Blooms: 300,000 Watts of Flower Power” at the Atlanta Botanical Garden, through April. “I learned that you can change how you do something without changing what you do,” said the successful blacksmith who switched gears into more sculpture art at age 40. “Because of that freedom, I’ve done more honest work and met with more success.”

Posted inMoments, Moments Season 1

John Pruitt’s first TV Moment went national, sparking award-filled career

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As a longtime news anchor on Atlanta’s top-rated television stations, John Pruitt narrated and often embodied the tumultuous events that punctuated our last half-century. On July 4, 1964, John stood next to a colleague at a segregationist rally when four young African-American men wandered in, inciting a melee in the stands. John’s colleague handed him a video camera, quickly showed him how to press the button to record on film and pushed him in the direction of the battle and into his own Moment of journalistic fate.

Posted inDavid Pendered

Southern Co. unit loses coal plant ruling in Mississippi; says work will proceed

by David Pendered

Environmentalists have won a battle against a coal gasification power plant in Mississippi, but a Southern Co. unit announced plans to continue construction of that plant pending review by the state’s utilities commission.

The Mississippi Supreme Court reversed last week the approval of state permits for a coal gasification plant that’s being built at the headwaters of the Pascagoula River system. The plan is to create a 14,000-acre strip mine to extract lignite, a soft brown coal. The coal would be converted to a synthetic gas used to fuel the power plant being built at the site, according to several reports.

The court ruling in Mississippi follows two recent actions in Georgia on coal-fueled plants. One of them halted construction of a coal-fired plant in Early County. Another proposed plant, this one near Sandersville, may have been hobbled by operational changes being made by one investor.

Posted inATL Business Chronicle, Maria's Metro

Atlanta bids for regional U.S. patent and trademark office

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By Maria Saporta
Friday, March 9, 2012

Leaders in Atlanta and Georgia have launched a high-powered effort to lure a regional office of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to the city.

The federal government has said that it wants to establish several regional offices that could review and issue patents and trademarks as a way of encouraging innovation throughout the country.

Posted inMoments, Moments Season 1

Noel Khalil’s Moment was when Herman Russell offered to hire him at half his salary and he happily agreed

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When Noel Khalil moved to Atlanta in 1983, chasing development deals on the affluent north side of Atlanta seemed as natural to him as it was unusual to the white men who dominated the industry in that part of town.

After closing a few deals in the northern suburban counties of Atlanta, Noel was surprised when the secretary of Atlanta’s most prominent African-American developer called to say her boss, Herman Russell, wanted Noel come to his office for a meeting.

Posted inTom Baxter

Republicans getting mighty like their predecessors

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Southern Republicans are coming to their Pogo moment.

Back when they were a persecuted minority in states across the South, Republicans used to wail about the corruption and arrogance of the Democrats, at their blatant abuses of power and craven self-aggrandizement.

Now the Republicans are riding high, and looking forward to riding higher with the new legislative and congressional maps aimed at cementing their control. Republican presidential candidates swear their affection for grits, and Southern Republican legislators feel secure enough in their seats to quarrel with Southern Republican governors.

Yet all does not rest well within the region’s now solidly majority party. They have met the enemy, and to paraphrase Walt Kelly’s Okefenokee critter, they are them.

Posted inMoments, Moments Season 1

Rolling Stones’ Chuck Leavell’s Moment happened 40 years ago … Could it have been Ladies’ Night?

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By Chris Schroder

Chuck Leavell leads a musical life that most guys would trade everything to have – playing keyboards for the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton the Allman Brothers and later next month with John Mayer – but his Moment was one all the ladies will love.

Now at age 59, looking back on all that rock ‘n’ roll, Chuck really wants to talk about his true loves: his wife, family and his deep abiding care for the environment, support for which he is spending an increasing amount of his time and treasure.

Posted inTom Baxter

Panamax plans run aground on South Carolina politics

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If you’ve seen Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed give a speech over the past couple of years, you’ve probably heard his pitch about how important the deepening of the Savannah River is to Atlanta’s future.

For Reed, deepening the Port of Savannah’s channel to accommodate the larger ships soon to be coming through the Panama Canal is key to the development of the region, and thereby to the future health of our city.

If the mayor is correct, events took a fateful turn last week. Reed and other supporters of the Savannah harbor-deepening project now find themselves hostage to something with which they are ill-prepared to cope, namely, politics in South Carolina.

This is really the story of a sort of three-legged sack race, prompted by the Panama Canal expansion to be completed in 2014, and the lure of the riches to be gained by accommodating the larger container ships coming in its wake.

Posted inMaria's Metro

Atlanta region standing strong on regional transit governance and changes to MARTA Act

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It should be so simple.

Establishing a regional transit governance structure and tweaking the MARTA Act to make the transit system more functional should be no brainers.

But when sound ideas are placed in the hands of some members of the General Assembly they somehow become distorted, convoluted and warped with political baggage.

Then when people and institutions object to proposed bills have been drafted with flawed thinking rather than common sense, those bills often just die on the vine and nothing gets done.

Posted inMoments, Moments Season 1

Bill Nigut’s Moment led him from TV reporting to serving the community

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By Chris Schroder

For more than 20 years, Bill Nigut was a mainstay of Atlanta’s WSB-TV’s political coverage and it looked like he would end his career there – until the day in 2002 when his Leadership Atlanta class walked into a non-profit taking care of international refugees in Clarkston. That was the Moment that changed his life.

“Compared to what those people are doing in Clarkston, all I do is blab on television every day,” he thought. “I really need to make a change. I need to get across the wall that separates reporters who are observers from the leaders who are making a real difference in our community.” Today he’s Southeast director of the Anti-Defamation League.

Posted inGuest Column

The Atlanta region is adrift without an elected captain

by Teresa Johnston

By Guest Columnist JERE WOOD, mayor of the City of Roswell

Metro Atlanta needs more than a one-cent transportation sales tax to recover from the recession and regain its position in a competitive world. We need to work together as a region, not independently, to meet our transportation, water and other regional challenges.

To act as a unified region, we need leaders with the authority to speak for the region.

Who has the authority to speak for metro Atlanta?

Posted inMoments, Moments Season 1

Evelyn Wynn-Dixon’s Moment was a vision others had for a life she’s living

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As I watch Dr. Evelyn Wynn-Dixon glide into her stride, telling her life story, I try to brush away a nagging premonition that we might soon see her firing up a Monday night crowd at a national political convention – but then again, other people’s premonitions is how she ended up in the mayor’s chair of Riverdale, Georgia.

Evelyn was driven to find a way out of her situation for both her and her children and serves now as an inspiration to her seven grandchildren and others who meet her.

Posted inMichelle Hiskey

Jimmy Carter, Jason Carter inspired by matriarchs and family values

by Michelle Hiskey

The two men, connected by a last name and DNA, separated by two generations and different dreams, together reflected on the forces that have driven their family.

Driven Jimmy Carter past national vilification for his presidential failures, driven him into the humanitarian work that has changed the world, and driven his grandson to appreciate the example set by the older generations – especially the women behind the men.

Posted inDavid Pendered

Feds may cut transit funds, several other perils face transportation sales tax vote

by David Pendered

Challenges continue to mount for the proposed 1 percent sales tax for transportation, which is up for a vote in exactly 24 weeks.

In Congress, a new debate is starting over a transportation funding bill described by its Republican sponsors as the most sweeping reform plan since 1956. It could reduce the amount of federal money available to help pay for projects on metro Atlanta’s $6.14 billion list.

At the state Capitol, pending legislation could delay a sales tax referendum for at least two years. Even then, a sales tax vote could be called only if Georgia voters first agree to amend the state Constitution.

At the grassroots level, the campaign that’s to urge voters in metro Atlanta to approve the sales tax is still taking shape. The original campaign budget of $6 million to $8 million evidently has been revised. A spokeswoman said Monday the team is not ready to reveal its fundraising goal or how much money has been raised.

Posted inMoments, Moments Season 1

Steve Nygren’s Moment ignited an old love and a place called Serenbe

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Steve Nygren’s decades-long work amidst the rolling farms and forests of Chattahoochee Hill Country in south Fulton County is akin to a sculptor carefully studying each sliver of stone before slicing it from an eventual masterpiece.

Steve’s Moment occurred in 2000 when he and his daughter were jogging along the property line and their bucolic run was disturbed when they came upon bulldozers tearing down trees in the forest next door. Many in his situation would have shrugged their shoulders and planted a long row of leyland cypress. Others might have bought a different farm, further from Atlanta. Steve decided to stay and fight. His life changed, again, that instant.

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