Tag Archives: VLCIA

The other immigration reaction

Probably everybody has heard that Alabama followed Georgia down the Arizona lock-’em-up anti-immigration path.

According to Albor Ruiz in the New York Daily News, 12 June 2011,

Washington’s inaction on the immigration crisis is no longer sprouting only hostile and inhumane local laws. But there is growing evidence an increasing number of local and state officials have tired of playing an abusive and costly anti-immigration game they don’t believe in.

Two weeks ago, Gov. Cuomo pulled New York State from the Secure Communities federal deportation program, following Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn who had done the same weeks before. And days after Cuomo’s decision Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick took the same courageous step. All three governors are Democrats and strong allies of President Obama.

They had plenty of reasons to quit the controversial Department of Homeland Security program. Promoted as a tool to deport undocumented immigrants convicted of serious crimes, in reality Secure Communities targets mostly low-level offenders or those never convicted of any crime at all.

And who benefits by arresting such people? Private prison companies, which hold the new prisoners.

It’s not just northeast state, either. Here’s a city and state on the frontline of immigration, Los Angeles, California: Continue reading →

Irregular VLCIA meeting Tuesday 14 June 2011

Industrial Authority changes “regular” meeting time to be same as Lowndes County Commission meeting.

Tucked away at the end of David Rodock’s 8 June 2011 article about a special called VLCIA meeting is this tidbit:

Board members changed the date of their next meeting to June 14 at 5:30 p.m. The public is invited to attend.
You wouldn’t know that by looking at VLCIA’s own meeting schedule web page, which shows no change from the regular schedule. That page also still says this:
All Meetings will be held at 5:30pm in the Industrial Authority Conference Room, 2110 N. Patterson Street, unless otherwise notified.
So maybe that’s where it is, or maybe not. Maybe it’s possible to determine the time or the location, but not both. Valdosta-Lowndes County Heisenberg Authority.

I would post an agenda, if they made them publicly available before their meetings, which they still do not. They should have quite a collection of agendas and minutes to approve Tuesday, given how many special called meetings they’ve had lately.

-jsq

Alabama requires schools to check for immigrants

Should schools teach all students to become productive members of society, or should they scare off people the state doesn’t like at the moment, spending resources to do it that could be spent teaching?

Liz Goodwin blogs in The Lookout for Yahoo! News, 10 June 2011, Alabama immigration law pressures schools to check immigration status

Alabama’s new immigration law is drawing comparisons to SB1070, the anti-illegal immigration crackdown signed into law by Gov. Jan Brewer last year before a judge quickly blocked it from going into effect.

But Alabama’s new law is actually much broader and much tougher than SB 1070–most notably for a provision that asks school administrators to check the immigration status of their students.

Supporters say the law will help the state determine how much public money goes to educating undocumented children.

“That is where one of our largest costs come from,” Sen. Scott Beason, R-Gardendale told The Montgomery Advertiser. “It’s part of the cost factor.”

So deal with it by putting more unfunded work on the heads of school administrators?

Besides, if all the schools are required to do is check, what money does that save? Continue reading →

Quakers and others organized private prison hearings in Tucscon

Churches don’t always sit quietly on their hands when there is injustice impending for their communities. Sometimes they help organize hearings in which pro and con are discussed and recorded, as the American Friends Service Committee did in Tucson last year.

According to Mari Herreras in Tucson Weekly, 26 October 2010,

The American Friends Service Committee, Private Corrections Working Group, UA Latino Law Students Association, and St. Francis in the Foothills United Methodist Church have organized a series of private prison hearings across the state that kick off tomorrow in Tucson at Pima Community College, Downtown Campus at 1255 N. Stone Ave., in the Amethyst Room from 6 to 8 p.m., moderated by yours truly, Mari Herreras.

The public is invited to present testimony, but the AFSC has also invited representatives from the Arizona Department of Corrections, Corrections Corporation of America (expected to build a new prison in Tucson) and Management and Training Corporation (which manages the Marana Community Correctional Treatment Facility). Word is no one has responded from those organizations, but AFSC organizers know the following presenters will be there to provide critical information on the private prison industry: Stephen Nathan, editor of Prison Privatization Report International; Joe Glen, spokesman for Maricopa and Pima Juvenile Corrections Associations; Brent White, UA law professor; Jim Sanders, real estate appraiser; Susan Maurer, retired corrections commissioner from New Jersey; and Victoria Lopez, from ACLU of Arizona.

The hearing will include the following community leaders who will hear testimony and ask questions: Pima County Supervisor Richard Elias; Tucson City Councilman Steve Kozachik; Assistant Tucson City Manager Richard Miranda; Representative Phil Lopes; and Mark Kimble, former associate editor of the Tucson Citizen.

They even made sure both the basic positions and the actual debate would be recorded: Continue reading →

U.S. Senate finds drug war failed

When it’s so obvious even the U.S. Senate can find it, after the rest of the world points it out, maybe there’s something to it.

Eyder Peralta wrote for NPR yesterday, Report: U.S. Drug War Spending Is Unjustifiable

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) said that after a year-long investigation by a Senate subcommittee, “it’s becoming increasingly clear that our efforts to rein in the narcotics trade in Latin America, especially as it relates to the government’s use of contractors, have largely failed.”

The report comes a week after a high-powered commission of former world leaders came to the conclusion that the global war on drugs had “failed.” Mark wrote about that report, last week.

That would be Report of the Global Commission on Drug Policy that recommended start legalizing drugs with marijuana?

And what happens to what little there is of a business plan for private prisons when the U.S. and Georgia wise up and legalize marijuana and other drugs?

We don’t need another bad business boondoggle in Lowndes County. Spend that tax money on education instead.

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Industrial Authority debts could force Lowndes County to raise taxes

A mil here, a mil there; soon we’re into real money! Can the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA) commit we the local taxpayers to a $150 million bond issue for a private company like the Macon-Bibb County Industrial Authority just did? Maybe.

VLCIA has already issued $15 million in bonds for which apparently the Lowndes County Commission has committed the county, that is, we the taxpayers, to pay the debt service. That comes out of VLCIA’s one mil of dedicated tax income. But according to the intergovernmental contract, it’s actually not even just from VLCIA’s current millage:

Section 4.4 Security for Contract Payments and for Bonds.

(a) The obligation of the County to make the payments required pursuant to Section 4.1(a) hereof shall be a general obligation of the County for which its full faith and credit is pledged, and shall be payable from any lafully available funds, subject to the Tax Funding Limit. In particular, the County agrees to levy an annual tax on all taxable property located within its boundaries, as now existent and as the same may be extended, at such rate or rates, as limited by the Tax Funding Limit, as and when it may be necessary to provide the County with sufficient revenues to make all payments required to be made by the County under this Contract.
The current VLCIA millage is one mil, or about $3 million a year, collected by the county in property taxes and handed over to VLCIA.

But VLCIA’s charter says (in Section 5): Continue reading →

Biomass plant approved for Macon-Bibb County

How to get a biomass plant approved in Georgia: tack it onto an existing business. Remember to get an industrial authority to use a public bond issue to expand the private business.

Carla Caldwell wrote in the Atlanta Business Chronicle 7 June 2011, Graphic Packaging gets $140M bond deal

A deal OK’d by the Macon-Bibb County Industrial Authority provides revenue bonds for a $140 million expansion of Marietta, Ga.-based Graphic Packaging International’s Macon, Ga. mill. Improvements will include the addition of a biomass boiler and a 40-megawatt turbine generator geared to reduce emergency cost and improve profitability, reports Macon Telegraph website macon.com.

The authority approved the deal on Monday for the provider of packaging for food, beverage and consumer products. The biomass system, which is scheduled for operation by mid-2013, is expected to generate power from about 400,000 tons of logging materials, mostly the tops of trees, the Macon newspaper reports. Graphic Packaging’s (NYSE: GPK) Macon mill makes an estimated 1,600 tons of paperboard daily.

Maybe we should put some parameters on the types of industry we want around here to avoid this happening with the bonds the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (and the Lowndes County Commission) floats.

This rationalization is precious: Continue reading →

VLCIA hires Andrea Schuijer from Albany

According to David Rodock in the VDT today:
…a unanimous decision by board members to submit a formal offer to Andrea Schruijer for the position of executive director.

Absent from the meeting was board member Roy Copeland.

According to Steve Gupton, authority attorney, the three-year contract will include a salary of $100,000 per year. As with all its employees, the authority will pay seven percent into a retirement fund and 75 percent of health care insurance.

Schruijer, pending acceptance of the offer, will officially start employment on July 8.

She’s a former hotel marketing person, according to her LinkedIn account: Continue reading →

Sterling Planet wants to buy biomass site

Why would Sterling Planet want to buy the biomass site, unless they want to come back later and propose to build a biomass plant on it? Funny how the Industrial Authority didn’t mention this when they said Sterling Planet missed the June 1 deadline for building the biomass plant.

Here’s the relevant part of this morning’s VDT story by David Rodock:

The other major announcement at the meeting was the possibility of Wiregrass LLC exercising the option to purchase the 22.2-acre tract of land that was originally planned to be used for the biomass facility.

“We gave them the option to purchase the land based on certain terms and conditions,” said Gupton. “They basically sent us a certified letter prior to June 1 stating they wished to exercise their option to purchase the 22.2-acre tract of land within 60 days.”

“We are currently looking at the letter to understand if we agree if they have that option and will continue our due diligence,” said Allan Ricketts, project manager, via conference call. “We don’t know anything other than they have sent us a certified letter indicating that they would like to pursue that option.”

And why don’t you know anything other? Can nobody pick up the phone and call Sonny Murphy and ask him? You remember him, the Chairman of Sterling Planet who recently said:
It’s not over until it’s over.

-jsq

Prisons bad for education budget

Building a prison is not just a bad business gamble now that crime rates are down and state budgets are tight. It’s bad for other things, too. As the reporter who originally broke the story about the empty new prison in Grayson County, VA noted 2 January 2011, Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project, a national group that promotes criminal justice reform, summed it up:
“Corrections over the past 25 years has become an increasingly big component of state budgets, to the point that it’s competing for funding with education and other core services,” Mauer said. “And you can’t have it both ways anymore.”

If we want knowledge-based jobs here, a private prison is not how to get them. Let’s not build a private prison in Lowndes County, Georgia. Spend those tax dollars on education instead.

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