Georgia Politics, Campaigns and Elections for January 31, 2014

On January 31, 1733, six boats carried Georgia’s first colonists to Trench’s Island, now called Hilton Head Island, where they spent the night before continuing on to land in Georgia at Yamacraw Bluff on February 1, 1733.

The United States Supreme Court held its first session in New York City, Chief Justice John Jay presiding, on February 1, 1790.

On February 2, 1848, the Atlanta City Council met for the first time.

On January 31, 1865, Robert E. Lee began service as Commander-in-Chief of the Confederate armies.

On February 1, 1861, Texas seceded from the Union.

On January 31, 1865, Congress passed the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, outlawing slavery.

February 2, 1870 saw Georgia ratify the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibits denying the right to vote based on an individual’s “race, color, or previous condition of servitude”.

On February 1, 1871, Jefferson Franklin Long of Macon, Georgia became the first black Member of Congress to speak on the floor of the United States House of Representatives. Long was born into slavery and taught himself to read and write. Long was a prominent member of the Republican Party, speaking on its behalf in Georgia and other Southern states. He helped elect 37 African-American members to the 1867 Georgia Constitutional Convention and 32 members of the state legislature; Long continued after his term in Congress as a delegate to Republican National Conventions through 1880. In 1880, Long’s support of Governor Alfred Colquitt showed that African-Americans could be an electoral force in Georgia politics.

General William Tecumseh Sherman visited Kimball Opera House in Atlanta on January 31, 1879, which was then serving as State Capitol, fifteen years after burning the city.

The first ever Groundhog Day was observed on February 2, 1887 in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania.

On January 31, 1893, the trademark for “Coca-Cola” was filed.

On February 1, 1956, the “Stars and Bars” state flag bill was passed by the Georgia Senate.

On February 1, 1965, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. arrived in Selma, Alabama, where he was arrested.

Richard M. Nixon announced his candidacy for President of the United States on Feburary 1, 1968.

On February 2, 1988, Georgia ratified the Twenty-Seventh Amendment, which prohibits Congressional raises (or hypothetical lowering of pay) from taking effect until the next term of office begins.

Atlanta Braves pitcher John Rocker was suspended on January 31, 2000 for remarks made to ESPN.

On January 31, 2001, the “Barnes Placemat” flag bill was signed into law.

On February 1, 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia exploded while re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere.

General Assembly Returns Today

The Georgia General Assembly returns to action under the Gold Dome today at 10 AM.

Currently scheduled committee meetings are as follows, but they are subject to change.

TBD	SENATE RULES – TBA	450 CAP
TBD	FLOOR SESSION (LD 14)	HOUSE CHAMBER
9:30 AM – 10:00 AM	Rules Committee	341 CAP
1:00 PM – 2:00 PM	Academic Innovations Subcommittee of Education	515 CLOB

More @Clusterflake

The time-lapse above is an animation of Google traffic maps showing how the traffic jam promulgated across Metro Atlanta in a very short time. It’s essentially an animated version of the graphic I share yesterday.

From WSB-TV, we have an explanation for how the behavior of snow hitting the ground in Atlanta differs from many other areas.

The short version of the explanation is that Atlanta usually isn’t cold enough for streets surfaces to be freezing when it starts to snow, so that snow hitting the ground melts on impact. Later it refreezes, creating large sheets of black ice.

I spent a number of winters in Illinois and Ohio, and this explanation seems accurate to me. At my mother’s house in Cleveland, you can shovel the powder snow off your driveway and walk, as it never melted and refroze as sheet ice, even when they get 18 inches of snow in one day. Outside my house right now, the front walk is a solid sheet of ice that I can’t shovel because its frozen hard. Driving on ice in Atlanta is much more treacherous than driving on fresh snow, or even packed snow, in Ohio.

Here’s a great explanation of both the snow and the traffic issues it caused, in narrative form. I’m not sure it’s 100% factually correct, but it illustrates the issue well.

[I]magine this scenario: The weather service has been calling for severe snow for a few days, but the predictions only promise an inch or less. Now, it is one thing for you the commuter to scoff at the weather, but what if your municipal powers-that-be took the same attitude? No preparation, no salting or sanding before hand, and (this is the big one) no planned municipal closures.

So high noon rolls around and the snow arrives, and hey, that stuff is coming down pretty hard, like something seriously worth considering. It is at this time that the powers-that-be decide to close several offices and multiple schools.

Schools. Schools containing children whose parents haven’t planned to fetch them until much later. So all of those parents now have to go rushing from wherever to their school of choice. Atlanta is a driving city, not a walking city or especially a rail or bus city, so thus commences a volley of unexpected traffic volume.

As the snow falls, several businesses catch the same idea, so they too decide to roll up the carpet and send their employees home a few hours early. This is a second unexpected volley of traffic.

Oh, and the sand trucks? They’re heading out for their first run. We’ve about 30 or 40 such trucks to serve all of Atlanta, by the way.

Now this whole time, the snow is still falling and since the temperature has been hovering right around 27 degrees, the stuff is sticking to the streets. All of these commuters are crowding these streets, and while some are lucky to have found some roads favored by that first run of sanding, most are just plowing through and keeping the streets mostly ice-free by friction alone.

But with added volume, because the number of cars keeps increasing, these streets are getting crowded and the traffic is slowing and the snow melt that used to work so well isn’t nearly so effective. Now that melted snow is refreezing under the tires of all of these stacked motorists. Those tires manage to melt a little of the top layer, but it freezes right back quickly. The result is a particularly Southern phenomena that looks and feels like cold glass.

And an in-depth explanation of the issue from a geo-political perspective.

Partisan politics time! Republicans want to blame government (a Democrat thing) or Atlanta (definitely a Democrat thing). Democrats want to blame the region’s dependence on cars (a Republican thing), the state government (Republicans), and many of the transplants from more liberal, urban places feel the same way you might about white, rural, southern drivers. All of this is true to some extent but none of it is helpful.

How much money do you set aside for snowstorms when they’re as infrequent as they are? Who will run the show? (cities/counties/state) How will preparedness work? You could train everyone today, and then if the next storm hits in 2020 everyone you’ve trained might have moved on to different jobs, with Atlanta having a new mayor and Georgia having a new governor.

Regionalism here is really hard. The population of this state has doubled in the past 40-45 years, and many of the older voters who control it still think of it as the way it was when they were growing up. The urban core of Atlanta is a minority participant in a state government controlled by rural and northern Atlanta exurban interests. The state government gives MARTA, Atlanta’s heavy rail transportation system, no money. There’s a lot of tough regional and racial history here which is shameful, but part of the inheritance we all have by being a part of this region. Demographics are evolving very quickly, but government moves more slowly. The city in which I live, Brookhaven, was incorporated in 2012. This is its first-ever snowstorm (again, 2 inches). It’s a fairly affluent, mostly white, urban small city. They were unprepared too.

The issue is that you have three layers of government — city, county, state — and none of them really trust the other. And why should they? Cobb County just “stole the Braves” from the city of Atlanta. Why would Atlanta cede transportation authority to a regional body when its history in dealing with the region/state has been to carve up Atlanta with highways and never embrace its transit system? Why would the region/state want to give more authority to Atlanta when many of the people in the region want nothing to do with the city of Atlanta unless it involves getting to work or a Braves game?

The region tried, in a very tough economy and political year (2012), to pass a comprehensive transportation bill, a T-SPLOST, funded by a sales tax. It wasn’t perfect, but it was an attempt to do something. The Sierra Club opposed it because it didn’t feature enough transit. The NAACP opposed it because it didn’t have enough contracts for minority businesses. The tea party opposed it because it was a tax. That’s politics in the 2010’s. You may snicker, but how good a job has any major city done with big transportation projects over the past 30 years?

In a press conference yesterday, Governor Deal squarely accepted responsibility for the snowjam issues and called for a review of how we got there.

“I am not satisfied with the response,” Deal said. “But I am not going to look for a scapegoat. I am the governor, and the buck stops with me.”

Deal and Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed have previously blamed the near-simultaneous release of students, office-workers and government workers for traffic that turned minutes-long commutes into hours-long ordeals. Deal has also quibbled over weather forecasts, while Reed has questioned school districts for opening classrooms.

At a Thursday press conference, Deal was unequivocal.

“We did not have adequate preparation, and I do accept responsibility for that,” said Deal.

The head of Georgia’s emergency response, Charley English, also apologized for “getting this one wrong.”

Tellingly, Deal dodged questions about English’s future with the agency. His spokesman also said Deal was pressing emergency agencies for answers about the severity of the storm on Monday well before the storm hit.

On that last issue, one email in particular shows part of what was going on behind the scenes.

Gov. Nathan Deal’s chief of staff was raising questions about the severity of Tuesday’s storm almost a full day before it hit.

Emails obtained by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution show Deal’s chief of staff, Chris Riley, was pressing GEMA Director Charley English about the storm’s impact as early as Monday.

“Everyone keeps trying to tell me how bad the weather is going to be but I keep saying if the weather was going to be bad, Charley would have called and he hasn’t called me,” Riley said in an email to English.

The two later apparently talked by phone, and the governor’s staff said Riley pressed English on the issue. English, who has been with the agency for almost 20 years, acknowledged Thursday that he blew the call on the storm, not fully alerting the Deal administration about its impact on Atlanta until about 9 a.m. Tuesday.

After Jim Galloway published a hard copy of that email including Chris Riley’s email address, I suspect the Governor’s Chief of Staff will be using a different address for time-sensitive official communications by the end of the day

Events Calendar

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Georgia Historical Society: Georgia History Festival Kickoff at State Capitol

Cobb County GOP: Breakfast with Allan Levene, Barry Loudermilk & Larry Mrozinski

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DeKalb County GOP: Breakfast – Spotlight on Judicial System

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Houston County GOP: Meeting with David Pennington

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Senator John Albers: Roswell Town Hall

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Gilmer County GOP: U.S. Senate Candidate Forum

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GA GOP: U.S. Senate Debate at Kennesaw State

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Super Bowl XLVIII

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Association County Commissioners of Georgia: Capitol Connection Conference

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