Georgia Politics, Campaigns, and Elections for July 20, 2015

On July 20, 1864, the Battle of Peachtree Creek took place in Atlanta. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has a special online section on the Battle of Atlanta.

Sir Edmund Hillary was born on July 20, 1919 in Auckland, New Zealand. He and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay became the first to summit Mount Everest on May 29, 1953.

Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton gave the speech nominating Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis for President on July 20, 1988 at the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta. Dukakis accepted the nomination the next day.

The 1996 Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony was held on July 19, 1996 and competition started the next day.

The Georgia State Quarter was released on July 19, 1999.

The Augusta Chronicle has a piece on the 1963 Mayoral election.

Augusta’s 1963 mayoral campaign took place between Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech in Washington and President Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas.

In fact, the pages of The Chronicle throughout 1963 are filled with national stories of civil rights debates, international accounts of communist threats, nuclear worries and rising concerns with a country called Vietnam.

Augusta, for its part, was talking about illegal gambling.

The US Army Corps of Engineers has released video of the recovery of artifacts from the sunken CSS Georgia in the Savannah River, which is being done as part of the Savannah Harbor Expansion Project.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers released footage of the efforts being taken to recover the Civil War ironclad CSS Georgia, currently at the bottom of the Savannah River directly in front of Fort Jackson.

The video is courtesy of Michael Jordan of Cosmos Mariner Productions. Jordan is currently filming a documentary of the recovery efforts.

U.S. Navy Divers from the Mobile Diving and Salvage UNIT (MDSU) 2 and Explosive Ordinance Disposal Technicians from Explosive Ordinance Disposal Mobile Unit 6, in conjunction with archaeologist and conversations, Naval History and Heritage Command and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are working to secure and raise the 153-year-old ship.

Georgia Politics, Campaigns, and Elections

We are told that the Cruz campaign is also planning stops in Savannah, Macon, Newnan, and of course, will be in Atlanta for the RedState Gathering.

Former Congressman Jack Kingston headlined a Meet-and-Greet for J. Max Davis, the Republican candidate for State House District 80 on Saturday at Lucky’s Burgers and Brew in Town Brookhaven.

With a dog-friendly patio, waterbowl outside the store and decorations consisting entirely of photos of Golden Retrievers, this is the perfect place for the GaPundit family and hounds to tuck into a burger.

The official count of attendees from the restaurant management was 97 souls on a beautiful Saturday morning. Among them were Brookhaven City Council Members Bates Mattison and Joe Gebbia, State Reps. Tom Taylor (R-Dunwoody) and Ed Setzler (R-Cobb), and both the current and most recent past State Representatives from neighboring HD 54, Beth Beskin (R-Buckhead) and Edward Lindsey (R-Buckhead). Lindsey said this race is personal for him because the next occupant of the HD 80 seat will represent his backyard.

We caught up with Jack Kingston for a minute outside the venue to talk about why Jack Backs J. Max.

Carroll County schools will be hit by the gas tax increase, according to The Times-Georgian.

Georgia’s new gas tax, while not raising the price of gas as much as initially projected, is putting the squeeze on school systems’ transportation budgets, including both Carroll County and Carrollton. The state’s gas tax rate increased from a net 19-or-so cents per gallon excise tax to a straight 26-cent-per-gallon tax on July 1.

Macon-Bibb County schools will also be paying higher taxes to fill up their school buses, according to the Macon Telegraph.

The change in fuel taxes, part of a $1 billion transportation bill aimed at addressing lagging infrastructure across the state, impacts almost everyone buying gasoline in Georgia.

The bill that went into effect July 1 not only has led to more taxes for consumers at the gas pump, but state and local governments are seeing their costs rise by about 11 cents more per gallon, according to the Georgia Department of Revenue.

Macon-Bibb County’s price to buy gasoline jumped about 9 cents a gallon and 11 cents a gallon for diesel, Macon-Bibb spokesman Chris Floore said.

Last year’s consumption of 1.15 million gallons of gasoline and diesel would have cost Macon-Bibb an extra $117,000 had the tax been in place then, Floore said.

Read more here: http://www.macon.com/2015/07/19/3850357_transportation-bill-means-higher.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy

Fresh off the retrial of DeKalb County CEO Burrell Ellis, District Attorney Robert James said he’s still looking into a question of “phony documents” that allowed Vaughn Irons to continue doing business with the County.

His office pulled records from the county government and the DeKalb Ethics Board in late February, soon after The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Channel 2 Action News exposed the fake document. Ethics Chairman John Ernst said that’s the last he heard from law enforcement on the issue.

James has several paths to choose from. For starters, the special grand jury whose work led to Ellis’ prosecution recommended criminal investigations of at least 11 other people, including Ellis’ campaign manager and the former public safety director, accused of smothering a detective’s probe into water department contracts. None of the 11 has been charged.

It was actually a draft written by the Ethics Board’s attorney for its possible consideration on the question of whether APD Solutions could bid for county business since its CEO, Vaughn Irons, is a member of the Development Authority board.

Someone had dressed up the draft to make it look valid. The signature of then-chairman Bryan Smith was on it, though Smith said he doesn’t recall signing it and doesn’t rule out forgery.

About the same time Irons made his call to Smith, then-DeKalb CEO Burrell Ellis intervened on Irons’ behalf, according to a former county official.

Kelvin Walton — the prosecution’s star witness in Ellis’ recent corruption trial — told the AJC that both Ellis and his chief of staff called him on Irons’ behalf in late 2011. Walton said his boss wanted to know why APD was being excluded, arguing, “I don’t think it’s a conflict.”

And how did work with Vaughn Irons’s company APD Solutions and DeKalb County go after that? Swimmingly if you were Vaughn Irons, according to a story in the AJC.

DeKalb County spent so much money on a wooden privacy fence, it could have built one four times as long, or one made of wrought iron.

But no one at the county questioned the $10,000 expense, part of a contract to rehab and sell foreclosed houses. Instead, payment went promptly to the contractor, which didn’t even submit an invoice, just an estimate.

And so it went for APD Solutions, headed by the politically connected chairman of DeKalb’s economic development arm, Vaughn Irons. Once a phony legal document allowed him to win the contract, his company was on DeKalb County’s gravy train.

APD could charge top dollar and add layers of fees without backup documentation, an examination by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found.

After the document showed up, APD caught another break. It managed to win a $1 million contract, even though it was the fourth-ranked bidder.

The bid committee had recommended contracts only for the first and second-ranked companies, but then-Community Development Director Chris Morris pushed to also award $1 million each to the runners-up.

The financial loser was the county.

All told, DeKalb wound up paying APD nearly $1 million to finish off and sell six houses in the Piedmont Point subdivision near Lithonia. The mostly finished houses had been sitting empty since a neighborhood developer went belly-up, suffering some damages from vandals and copper thieves.

Cobb County could be spending half-a-billion dollars on Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) and all they’ll get for it is worse rush-hour traffic, according to the AJC.

Cobb County’s controversial plan to build a $500 million bus rapid transit system will not improve rush-hour traffic along heavily traveled U.S. 41 and could make congestion even worse, according to a key environmental study necessary for the county to qualify for a federal grant that would pay about half the cost.

The document, called an Environmental Assessment, was released in April and includes traffic modeling at five “representative” intersections along the corridor, which is home of two busy employment centers, Dobbins Air base, Lockheed-Martin, residential enclaves, WellStar Kennestone Hospital and the Braves new stadium with its mixed-use development.

The report shows the bus system would provide no relief to motorists if operated under 2012 traffic conditions, and that it likewise will not thin heavy congestion in 2040 — under assumptions of both high and medium growth rates between now and then.

In fact, grades at four of the intersections fell in 2040 to an F with rapid transit in place. Those intersections graded either “D” or “E” without bus rapid transit, known as BRT.

Other Notable Events

The Barrow County Republican Party meets at 7 PM tonight., at the Winder Women’s Club, 15 W Midland Ave., in Winder. Georgia Republican Party Minority Engagement Director Leo Smith and Barrow County Commission Chair Pat Graham will speak.