In 2016, a consultant in Arizona submitted to Atlanta’s planning department the population forecast that is driving Atlanta’s proposal to retool the city to house an additional 700,000 residents by 2050.
Tag: politics
Posted inColumns
Who’ll write a ‘Gone With the Wind’ for this Lost Cause?
At the website sorryantivaxxer.com, you can scroll through page after page of entries about people who scoffed at vaccinations and masks, even the existence of COVID-19, and then were stricken.
Posted inLatest News
Atlanta’s plan to boost density stalls in council; Mayor’s team doesn’t reveal intents
Atlanta will take a month to reconsider a controversial proposal to boost residential density in traditional neighborhoods. In addition, the plan drew significant challenge Tuesday from two ranking members of Atlanta City Council.
Posted inColumns
Of a million maps, it’s the one favoring those who draw it that counts
It’s a testament to the impact of computerization that for their study of this year’s redistricting in Georgia, the Princeton Gerrymandering Project and Fair Districts GA generated a million legislative and congressional maps to assess the possible outcomes. To understand what will be at play in the upcoming special redistricting session, however, only three or four maps matter.
Posted inColumns
Atlanta’s proposal offers false hopes for housing affordability, breaks from ‘Atlanta City Design’
By Guest Columnist MIKE DOBBINS, Georgia Tech professor of practice and former Atlanta planning commissioner
Stop, look and listen. Atlanta’s misguided densification planning and zoning strategy is barreling down the tracks. It has many negatives – it will exacerbate the housing affordability crisis, destabilize neighborhoods and gut the NPUs ability to shape their neighborhood’s future.
Posted inColumns
The “P” in HIPAA doesn’t stand for privacy
By Tom Baxter Exactly why do we need the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, or HIPAA, as we call it today? There are some perfectly reasonable answers to that question. But from time to time that question should be asked concerning any law which has spread its wings as widely as HIPAA […]
Posted inColumns
Remaking Atlanta: Concerns arise to city’s long-range plan for growth
Atlanta’s proposal to change social dynamics and housing prices in neighborhoods with single-family houses faces a rising number of challenges in the final days of debate.
Posted inLatest News
ATL hits pause on legacy for Mayor Bottoms: Office of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion
Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms’ legacy may not include a permanent cabinet-level office to regulate city policies related to LBGTQ+, immigrants, sustainability, youth and more.
Posted inColumns
There goes Herschel, as fans prepare to mask up
This fall, football stadiums could become political hot spots, and not just because of Herschel Walker. You may not see many masks on Saturday night’s broadcast of the Georgia-Clemson game, but that’s because they will be required in the concourses and other covered areas of the stadium.
Posted inColumns
At the county level, the United States isn’t blue or red, but brown
When we consider the essential bulwarks of our great republic, counties seldom come to mind. We say you can’t “fight city hall,” or that something would “take an act of Congress,” but there are no catch phrases for counties.
Posted inColumns
Thinking outside the curb lines
By Guest Columnist SALLY FLOCKS, Founder and former president, PEDS
Nothing encourages walking more than the presence of other people and having places worth walking to.
Posted inColumns
Move on Fulton Elections Board continues rear-view mirror drive
It says a lot about the state of elections in Georgia that Republican legislators haven’t found anyone to chair the state Election Board yet — may not be close, in fact — but they’ve lost no time setting the stage for a taking over the Fulton County Elections Board.
Posted inColumns
As Delta Variant surge worsens, the regular diverge from the unvaccinated
The newest phase in the evolution of the nation’s response to COVID-19 was best articulated last week by an obviously exasperated Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey.“I don’t know. You tell me,” Ivey said when asked what she could do to get more people in the state which has the country’s lowest vaccination rate to get their shots.
Posted inColumns
Who ever heard of an ex-president getting involved in a lieutenant governor’s race? Now we have
Donald Trump just can’t get Georgia off his mind. Now he’s jumped in the middle of the lieutenant governor’s race.
Posted inColumns
Yet another land deal story clouds Perdue’s campaign for educational eminence
At a charity roast several years ago in Louisiana, a former aide to Gov. Edwin Edwards recounted the problems Edwards had satisfying the demands of a Lafayette pol whose appetite for grift surpassed even the generous standards of that state and time. Finally, the aide said, a look of relief came over the legendary kingpin of bayou politics. “I know what we’ll do,” the aide said Edwards told him triumphantly. “Let’s make him an educator!”
Posted inTom Baxter
Justice Department to take a harder look at harassment of election officials
In most stories last week, the news that the U.S. Justice Department is forming a task force to investigate and prosecute violent threats and intimidation of election officials and poll workers was played several paragraphs below the news that the feds were challenging Georgia’s voter law.
Posted inTom Baxter
“Pirates,” “Biden Baptists” battle for control of the Southern Baptist Convention
f the Southern Baptist Convention had decided to follow the “pirates” last week at its annual gathering in Nashville, it would have fit too easily into the standard narrative of deepening fissures pulling one part of America away from the other. America is more complicated than this narrative implies, and so are the Southern Baptists.
Posted inColumns
Plant Vogtle: Georgia’s shame
By Guest Columnist PATTY DURAND, president of Cool Planet Solutions
Georgia Power has the only nuclear plant under construction in the United States, which I call “Georgia’s Shame.” It is shameful that the timeline the utility provided to regulators, investors and the public – those of us paying for this plant – is now six years behind schedule. And it is shameful that the utility’s cost estimates for this plant were off by a shocking 100%: The original cost estimate for the two new units was $14 billion, and 2021 costs are near or at $30 billion.
Posted inTom Baxter
Another Georgian caught in the slow-rolling aftermath of the Capitol riot
According to the criminal complaint filed last week against Kevin Douglas Creek of Alpharetta, when he was asked in an FBI interview if he regretted what he did at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, he replied, “50/50.”
Posted inColumns
Gathering in smaller rooms: Counting the chairs at the counting party’s convention
It wasn’t remarkable that Gov. Brian Kemp and Attorney General Chris Carr got booed at the state Republican convention last weekend. Johnny Isakson, Saxby Chambliss and Nathan Deal are among those who’ve been booed in previous conventions. What was notable was the room they got booed in.
