Only fifteen minutes on any topic, said Chairman Bill Slaughter, even though 8 people wanted to speak about trash at last night’s Lowndes County Commission Regular Session. But there is no such rule in the county’s relevant ordinance.
He was enforcing an odd mashup of the county’s 25 January 2013 ordinance about
Citizens Wishing to Be Heard.
It does have these two rules: Continue reading
Yesterday’s County Commission meeting was billed as a
Budget Discussion Meeting,
and apparently it was not a public hearing on the county’s budget,
because state law requires such a hearing to be advertised in the newspaper
or published as a news story, a week in advance.
This is different from public notice for other Commission meetings:
for budget hearings the notice has to be not just sent to the newspaper:
it has to be published, and not in the legal notices section,
and it has to appear at least a week before the hearing.
It’s also illegal
to refuse to provide a copy of the submitted
draft budget to the public or the news media:
O.C.G.A. 36-81-5.(d) On the day that the proposed budget is submitted to the governing
authority for consideration, a copy of the budget shall be placed in a public location which is convenient to the residents of the unit of local government. The governing authority shall make every effort to provide convenient access to the residents during reasonable business hours so as to accord every opportunity to the public to review the budget prior to adoption by the governing authority. A copy of the budget shall also be made available, upon request, to the news media.
LAKE is a news medium,
according to federal law.
Georgia Department of Audits and Accounts has Georgia Law on Local Government Budgets: Continue reading
A federal corruption probe and a developer charged with bribing a county commissioner, who already resigned, admitting it; all that plus drug dealing, nepotism, perjury, cronyism, and at least one prison term, in Gwinnett County. This AJC story has a quote by VSU alumnus and current ADS rep. Steve Edwards.
David Wickert wrote for the AJC 8 September 2012, Widening probe stains Gwinnett reputation,
New details of a federal investigation paint a troubling picture of corruption deeply embedded in Gwinnett County—allegations that may undermine the county’s previously sterling reputation as an economic dynamo.
Bribery allegations have now embroiled two county commissioners, a planning commissioner and a zoning board member….
One of Lasseter’s first acts upon taking office in January 2009 was to appoint Gary — a longtime friend — to the Municipal-Gwinnett County Planning Commission, which would pass judgment on his development plans, including the waste transfer station off Winder Highway.
More dominoes in the federal corruption probe began falling last week, when Continue reading
A long list of agricultural corporations wrote a letter thanking Jack Kingson (R GA-01) for working to get the Monsanto rider into the 2013 Ag. bill:
Again, we commend Subcommittee Chairman Kingston’s efforts and urge the support of Section 733 in the Fiscal Year 2013 Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration and Related Agencies Appropriations Act.
This letter is on
Monsanto’s own website.
It contains not one word about public health or quality of food or preservation of farmers who do not choose to
poison people the Monsanto way.
The glyphosate mentioned in the letter is the principal ingredient in Roundup, and
research shows it causes DNA damage even when vastly diluted.
Monsanto’s glyphosate-resistant crops are genetically modified to include a gene which produces a poison that
other research indicates is toxic to humans.
These poisons are what the Monsanto rider makes harder to get out of fields.
June 12, 2012
The Honorable Harold Rogers
Chairman
House Committee on Appropriations
United States House of Representatives
H‐307 U.S. Capitol
Washington, D.C. 20515The Honorable Norm Dicks
Ranking Member
House Committee on Appropriations
United States House of Representatives
1016 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515Dear Chairman Rogers and Ranking Member Dicks:
Our organizations strongly support Section 733 of the Fiscal Year 2013 Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration and Related Agencies Appropriations Act. The provision will give growers assurance that crops developed through biotechnology that have already been approved by the Department of Agriculture (USDA) can be planted and harvested under temporary stewardship conditions in the event of litigation against the agency’s decision. We commend Subcommittee Chairman Kingston for including Section 733 in the subcommittee bill and urge your support for this necessary provision when the Appropriations Committee considers this bill later this month. The provision addresses Continue reading
Speaking of Veolia winning its high bid for garbage collection, here’s a clue to how much more its rates may go up.
Remember
ADS Veolia was bought hardly a month later by ADS, owned by Highstar Capital
of New York City?
Look at ADS’s bid for Proposal D: $18.39.
That’s $220.68 a year. Which is even higher than Wakulla County, Florida’s $196 a year, which Gretchen warned us all about more than a year ago. And more than double the $100 a year for the former county waste collection sites.
Want to guess how much ADS’s monthly rates will rise? Maybe Continue reading
Local Lowndes County and city officials are awaiting breathlessly the news from Atlanta today about new rules on LOST negotiations. Currently, negotiators have to choose one of the positions submitted by the contending parties. The GA Supreme Court may decide to let negotiators pick some other division of LOST funds. Valdosta Mayor John Gayle cancelled a meeting here yesterday so he could be in Atlanta for this court decision. Lowndes County Commissioners are rumored to be planning a meeting tomorrow morning after the decision.
Fox 31 posted 30 May 3012,
Supreme Court of Georgia to hear Turner County LOST case
There’s much more detail in that article. Also, Tim Omarzu wrote for timesfreepress.com 9 May 2013, Georgia top court to consider LOST negotiations.On June 4th, the Georgia Supreme Court will hear the case between Turner County and three cities over the distribution of Local Option Sales Taxes. Below is the entirety of the facts in the case as released by the court:
In this dispute between the governments of Turner County and three cities over how Local Option Sales Tax (LOST) proceeds should be distributed, the county is appealing a superior court ruling which picked the cities’ plan for distribution over the county’s.
-jsq
The facts don’t match County Chairman Bill Slaughter’s assertion
(according to the VDT Thursday):
That decision was made in a good-faith effort to find the lowest possible rate for garbage service for the citizens of Lowndes County, he said Tuesday.
Commissioner Richard Raines moved and the Commission voted to approve 9 October 2012 Proposal D and awarded it to the lowest bidder for that specific proposal, which was Veolia. But that wasn’t the lowest-priced proposal, according to the sheet of choices they were using in that meeting:
Continue reading
It’s a good start. Next: stop locking so many people up in general.
It costs
far less to educate than to incarcerate,
and educated children can contribute to society, instead of being
a drain on resources.
Brentin Mock wrote for ColorLines Friday, Good News in Mississippi: School-To-Prison Pipeline Closes,
The sealing of the school-to-prison pipeline in Meridian, Miss. has officially started after a U.S. District Court judge approved what the Department of Justice is calling “a landmark consent decree” that features a “far-reaching plan to reform discipline practices … that unlawfully channel black students out of their classrooms and, too often, into the criminal justice system.
In March, the Justice Department reached agreement Continue reading
Former Chairman Ashley Paulk may say he didn’t tell Cory Scarborough of Deep South Sanitation that any contract by the county for curbside pickup would be non-exclusive (VDT 30 May 2013), but David Rodock reported for the VDT from Ashley Paulk’s guest house at a Lowndes County Commission retreat chaired by Ashley Paulk that:
Commissioners decided that getting out of the “trash business” was best and that a non-exclusive agreement with current curbside pickup companies (which about 12,000 citizens already employ) would provide service without putting any people out of business.
The VDT reported
(
Commission tackles key issues:
Waste management, tax lighting districts and SPLOST discussed at retreat
by David Rodock, 31 March 2012)
Commissioners “decided”.
Yet there is no vote recorded, in contravention to Georgia open meetings law
and a recent
Georgia Supreme Court decision.
How is this doing
“the people’s business”?
Maybe if they took a vote and recorded it properly we’d all know what they said.
-jsq
Counter to state law, Lowndes County did not hold public hearings within 45 days before the decision to close the waste collection centers.
§ 12-8-24.2. Public hearing prior to entering contract regarding landfillThe governing authority of any county or municipal corporation and the directors or managers of any local authority or special district shall hold a public hearing before entering into a contract for the sale, lease, or management of a landfill or solid waste disposal facility owned by such county, municipal corporation, local authority, or special district. The party responsible for holding such a public hearing shall cause notice of the hearing to be posted at the site of the landfill or facility and to run in a newspaper of general circulation serving the county, municipal corporation, local authority, or special district not less than 30 nor more than 45 days prior to the date of the hearing.
Can anyone argue that “or solid waste disposal facility owned by such county” does not include Lowndes County’s former solid waste collection centers? Continue reading
