Category Archives: Law

The socialized costs and privatized profits of waste disposal

In her response to my post about Commissioners panic about trash at undisclosed location, Barbara Stratton seems unfamiliar (like most people) with economic externalities. Here’s a definition:

A negative externality occurs when an individual or firm making a decision does not have to pay the full cost of the decision. If a good has a negative externality, then the cost to society is greater than the cost consumer is paying for it. Since consumers make a decision based on where their marginal cost equals their marginal benefit, and since they don’t take into account the cost of the negative externality, negative externalities result in market inefficiencies unless proper action is taken.

When a negative externality exists in an unregulated market, producers don’t take responsibility for external costs that exist—these are passed on to society.

Which is socializing the losses. A famous ongoing case of this is BP making record corporate profits while dumping huge amounts of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, continuing to destroy shrimping, wetlands, wildlife, and local people’s health.

And that’s what the County Commission is doing: privatizing the profits of trash pickup and socializing the losses onto landowners (who have to pay for fences and gates), onto the general public (who have to pay for law enforcement to catch dumpers), and onto those who can’t afford to pay for private dump fees (who will get stuck with fines instead). That is indeed, as Barbara says, “redistribution of wealth”: redistribution from the rest of us to the private waste pickup companies.

The Commission is ducking its responsibility to find an equitable solution that everyone can afford. Funny how they can deal with special tax lighting districts for subdivisions but they claim they can’t come up with a way to publicly fund waste collection. Could it be because all the voting Commissioners are town-dwellers who don’t understand that rural people don’t have exactly the same needs or resources as city people?

Barbara advocates,

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Avoid crony capitalism or conflict of interest —Barbara Stratton

Received Monday on Commissioners panic about trash at undisclosed location. My response is in the next post. -jsq

There are many injustices of socialism and redistribution of wealth (or garbage) and I’m glad to see you recognize this in the shifting of illegal dumping costs to landowners. I am also glad to see that at least the county is talking about privatization and not public/private partnerships (so far). When Hahira almost succeeded in placing a regional waste transfer station on city owned property
REZ-2007-32 City of Hahira, 0028 027 6751 Union Road, 2 lots, R-21 to M-2, DRI
I was concerned that the county was complacent in this because the Lowndes Board of Commissioners November 2007 meeting minutes showed they agreed to rezone the property for the purpose of the transfer station against the recommendations of the county planner, Jason Davenport. That rezoning action replaced a DRI (Development of Regional Impact) request for waste transfer station rezoning so it was easy to assume the county and possibly the region had a mutual agenda for the transfer station. During a recent discussion on the dangers of regional government with Valdosta mayor, Larry Hanson, I asked if the transfer station was a regional interest. He assured me the City of Valdosta had no knowledge and no interest in that transfer station prior to articles in the Valdosta Daily Times. I’ve not had an opportunity to discuss the possibility of mutual agenda with the county and if it comes up again in the future I am assuming proper procedures will be followed which mandate public meetings and input into the planning before a third DRI is entered, not after.

I worked a contract for the IT of a Pensacola, FL software company that had waste management software contracts all over the US. It was my job to be

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Coke and Pepsi exit ALEC

Yesterday Coca-Cola announced it would no longer be a member of ALEC, the law-drafting pressure group American Legislative Exchange Council. Pepsi already decided that last year. Voting with your pocketbook works! There’s plenty more to do: ALEC pushed Georgia’s HB 87 that provides “customers” for CCA’s ICE prison yet is opposed by local farmers; ALEC backed the “Stand Your Ground” law that Trayvon Martin’s killer is hiding behind; ALEC is behind the charter school constitutional amendment that will be on the ballot in November. ALEC is crony capitalism in our legislature, our neighborhoods, and our schools. Here’s one way to oppose ALEC that works.

Leon Stafford and Aaron Gould Sheinin wrote for the AJC yesteray, Coke cuts ties with ALEC,

“Our involvement with ALEC was focused on efforts to oppose discriminatory food and beverage taxes, not on issues that have no direct bearing on our business,” Coke spokeswoman Diana Garza Ciarlante said.

Here’s ALEC’s “model legislation”: A Resolution in Opposition to Deiscriminatory Food and Beverage Taxes,

…opposes all efforts — federally and on the state level — to impose discriminatory taxes on food and/or beverages.

Now I don’t like food taxes, either: they’re the very model of regressive taxes that affect the poor more than the rich. But beverage taxes? As in taxes on the sugar water Coca-Cola sells? Those might improve public health and increase state revenue.

So how much has Coke supported ALEC in this?

Ciarlante said the company would not disclose its financial support of ALEC but said it was restricted to yearly dues. She said it had been a member for approximately 10 years. The company had received some phone calls protesting its relationship with ALEC, she said, but declined to comment on the decision beyond the company’s statement.

I wonder how much other support Coke provided, as in for example introductions to power-brokers around Atlanta.

Coke’s rival Pepsi also declined to renew its ALEC membership when it expired at the end of 2011, spokeswoman Heather Gleason said. The company’s 10-year membership focused exclusively on tax issues related to the beverage industry, she said.

And Pepsi probably also didn’t want to talk about lobbying for tax breaks for sugar water while legislatures are cutting education budgets.

What does ALEC do, anyway?

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Good thing we didn’t buy a “jail to nowhere”

Still more evidence that private prisons are bad business. If the Industrial Authority won't do due diligence before buying into boondoggles like biomass and private prisons, we'll have to do it for them.

Kirsten Bokenkamp wrote for ACLU Texas 4 April 2012, Nobody wants a “Jail to Nowhere”,

…a number of Texas counties and towns ( the article points to Anson, Littlefield, and Angelina, Newton, Dickens and Falls Counties as a few examples) were sold on the idea that mass incarceration was in Texas to stay. According to the article, most of the privately operated county jails sit less than half full, and guess who is left holding the bill? (Hint – it is not the for-profit prison company).

Meanwhile, we can look askance at anything else that is pushed by ALEC, like private prisons and charter schools are.

-jsq

 

Commissioners panic about trash at undisclosed location @ LCC 2012 03 31

The Lowndes County Commission continues to hide when it talks about waste disposal. The VDT got slightly more specific about the undisclosed location of the Lowndes County Commission Retreat, and much more specific about what they were doing, yet according to state law their minutes need to be still more specific. And it’s not clear why they’re panicking about waste disposal when the deficit on that public good has come down rapidly in recent years.

David Rodock wrote for the VDT Saturday, Commission tackles key issues: Waste management, tax lighting districts and SPLOST discussed at retreat,

Commissioners and staff from Lowndes County buckled down Friday at Chairman Ashley Paulk’s guest home to address issues such as waste management, special tax lighting districts, SPLOST negotiations and necessary expenditures for equipment and staff.

A LAKE roving reporter (not me) observed many vehicles at Shiloh Farms’ recent acquisition in Berrien County on the north side of GA 122 a bit east of Old Valdosta Road (Cat Creek Road), so that seems likely the undisclosed location.

By the end of the afternoon, Commissioners made decisions on a few key issues.

It’s good to hear our elected representatives were working, even though they do not appear to have followed state law about this open meeting. And we can look forward to the names of which of them voted for each decision, according to the recent Georgia Supreme Court decision.

Here’s one thing they were working on:
Solid waste management, which is currently handled with collection centers, has run at a deficit of over $300,000.

That’s less than the deficit it was running last time (23 May 2011) the Commission had a meeting at an undisclosed location with no agenda where they talked about waste disposal. According to David Rock in the VDT 24 May 2011, Commissioners want Lowndes out of the trash business,

In total, the county is currently spending $782,058.34 each year for solid waste disposal, a reduction from $1,176,207.75 in 2007.

So that’s a rapid reduction in cost to less than a third of what it used to be, and less than half of what it was only a year ago. Back to Saturday’s VDT report:

County manager Joe Pritchard assured them the budget was in better shape than last year.

So why are they panicking about waste disposal?

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Judge OKs Barnes and Richardson CWIP suit against Georgia Power

Historic Davids get approval for slingshot against power company Goliath.

Judge allows lawsuit over Georgia Power surcharge to go forward,

Fulton Superior Court Judge Ural Glanville’s ruling Thursday allows the lawsuit filed by former Gov. Roy Barnes and ex-Republican House Speaker Glenn Richardson to go forward.

The complaint said Georgia Power has improperly collected sales tax and fees on a surcharge created by a 2009 law. They say it has added up to as much as $100 million in costs to ratepayers.

This lawsuit opposes Georgia Power’s Construction Work in Progress (CWIP) that is already charging gapower customers for the Plant Vogtle nukes that won’t produce any power for years yet. If this lawsuit wins, they may not ever be built.

But you don’t have to wait for this lawsuit, or for the legislature to ban CWIP. You can oppose CWIP by paying for it in a separate check.

Maybe soon we can get rid of Georgia Power’s territoriality law so we can, like we could in 46 other states, generate our own solar or wind power and sell it to whomever we choose.

-jsq

Georgia Legislators

I blogged about State Rep. Mary Margaret Oliver and then happened to run into her about an hour later, along with her partner in ethics. This time she was in color.


Stephanie Stuckey Benfield (D-85 Atlanta) and Mary Margaret Oliver (D-83 Decatur):
Roswell, Georgia, 31 March 2012.
Pictures by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).

-jsq

 

Hunting for transparency

Some legislators tried to hide potential ethics violations in the name of privacy. They failed in the last hour of the last day of the legislative session.

Jim Galloway wrote for the AJC yesterday, Your morning jolt: The failed attempt to make ‘transparency’ commission a translucent one

In other words, the Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commission would have been handed permission to cut off from public view the more pesky complaints against your leaders. Cases that it would decide you didn’t need to know about.

Who did this, and when?

State Rep. David Knight, R-Griffin, introduced the conference report in the House, but didn’t mention the above paragraph. That came to light under questioning from state Rep. Mary Margaret Oliver, D-Atlanta, and other Democrats.

My AJC colleague Chris Quinn described a scene in which the tally board started out with green “yes” votes and red “no” votes evenly divided. But slowly, green lights began blinking out, and the red votes began to grow. At 11:08, the bill was defeated 25-143.

Sanity and ethics prevailed at the eleventh hour.

-jsq

 

County Commission retreat this weekend

Did you know about the Lowndes County Commission retreat this weekend? It wasn’t mentioned at their recent regular meetings, it’s not on their website calendar, and there’s no agenda posted, either. Fortunately, the VDT at least has been informed about it.

VDT editorial today, Commissioners annual retreat this weekend,

The Lowndes County Commissioners and staff are attending the annual planning retreat this weekend, but are not spending any county funds doing so.

Chairman Ashley Paulk invited the county to hold the retreat at his farm, and he’s doing all the cooking for their meals, at no charge to the county.

It’s good Ashley Paulk wants to contribute to the public good in that way.

However, this is a public meeting of an elected body, and the public has not been informed of where it is, for example, at which of Ashley Paulk’s farms? Maybe they’ll at least keep good minutes.

-jsq

 

 

A victory for transparency in government

Best to record those votes! So said the Georgia Supreme Court last month.

G.G. Rigsby wrote for SavannahNow 6 February 2012, Court ruling favors openness in government

The Georgia Supreme Court ruled Monday that votes taken in open meetings must be recorded, even if they are not roll-call votes.

The decision in Cardinale v. the City of Atlanta reverses a Court of Appeals ruling that the state’s open meetings law doesn’t require meeting minutes to reflect how members voted when the vote is not unanimous.

Matthew Cardinale filed a lawsuit against the City of Atlanta for failing to record how each city council member voted when a non-roll-call vote was taken at a February 2010 retreat.

Hm, the Lowndes County Board of Commissioners is meeting in retreat this weekend. Maybe they’ll keep good minutes.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Carol Hunstein said, “While the act provides for public access to agency meetings, it also fosters openness by, among other things, requiring agencies to generate meeting minutes that are open to public inspection so that members of the public unable to attend a meeting nonetheless may learn what occurred. …To adopt a contrary holding that agencies possess discretion to decline to record the names of those voting against a proposal or abstaining in the case of a non-roll-call vote would potentially deny non-attending members of the public access to information available to those who attended a meeting.”

Earlier this year, Effingham County’s commissioners took a secret ballot for vice chairman. At their next meeting, after questions from a reporter, they said how they voted so the information could be included in the minutes for the meeting.

The secret vote in Effingham was an indication that the case that was pending before the state Supreme Court was important, Cardinale said.

Effingham County… ah, yes! The county whose Industrial Authority fired Brad Lofton for non-transparent dealings.

Doubtless everything is on the up-and-up around here, so I’m sure all the local government bodies, elected and unelected, will have no problem recording how all their members vote.

-jsq