By DAVE HAMRICK
Editor-at-large

Short subjects:

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution came up with a great idea: rating quality of life in all the metro Atlanta counties and writing a series of articles plying on the NCAA basketball tournament.

The idea is to narrow down to a single best county using the scores on the criteria to name the “sweet 16,” etc.

Clever.

On the first test, Fayette County did very poorly, second from the bottom on the percentage of land set aside as green space.

I couldn't believe it.

I drive around Fayette County a lot, and I see acre after acre of uninterrupted farm land, woods, and neighborhoods with tons of “common space,” plus oodles of undisturbed buffers.

Then it dawned on me. The test is not about green space; it's about government-owned green space.

I'm not opposed to the government owning some parks and nature preserves, and maybe Fayette could stand to do a bit more in that area. I'm not even sure if the AJC was counting privately owned nature preserves such as those maintained by the Southern Conservation Trust.

At any rate, Fayette's in the “Final Four” and next Monday's AJC will have the final rankings on each criterion. I'll be watching to see how many more criteria are directly tied to the size of the government and the degree to which it involves itself in our lives.

The legislature has finished its work and gone home, and we have a new education bill. As I said in an earlier article, I'm happy with some parts and less happy with others.

I think the concentration of resources in the first three years of schooling is fantastic. I think the concentration of more power in the governor's hands is not.

The bill needed another year to simmer before being served up to the public, but Gov. Roy used his considerable political ability (along with his party's majority) to ram it through prematurely.

I like a lot of what Roy Barnes is doing and how he thinks, but I'm getting a sneaking, uneasy feeling about his methods. Every great idea he has seems to wind up giving him and a few others more power and more control over your life and mine.

Methinks he hath a lean and hungry look.

Along with the education bill, another notable action of this legislature was a bill doing away with Old Sparky.

The electric chair will be thrown out in favor of the more humane lethal injection.

This is where I part company with many conservative pundits, who seem to delight in thinking up the most inhumane executions imaginable and waxing wistful over the fact that such will never happen.

Yes, I'm still for the death penalty. But for the sake of our own humanity, not that of the pond scum who commit wanton murder, executions should be handled as humanely as possible.

We all die, and after that, the judgment. I'm willing to leave it at that.

Back to Opinion Home Page | Back to the top of the page