By CAL BEVERLY
Publisher

Let's all take a deep breath.

The Development Authority of Peachtree City has turned an otherwise mundane funding dispute into a political mud bath. In a letter to The Citizen Wednesday, the whole appointed seven-member board accused one elected City Council member of trying to enrich himself at the Authority's expense and painted the elected mayor as a one-man crusade to get his hands on the hotel-motel tax. And, the Authority chairman described the Council as "ethically challenged." Having used that phrase myself, I'm still astonished by who is brandishing it in the current situation.

I confess I've never heard of such a bizarre political confrontation in all my years of covering news. It's quite a spectacle: An obscure, unelected, answer-to-nobody, narrowly specialized group spitting in the face of the very Council that levies taxes on behalf of the authority and appoints its members.

Somebody's boxers have gotten into a big wad. Nobody is covered in glory in this mess.

Current Council members Steve Rapson and Dan Tennant voted last year to approve a contract between the taxing authority the city council and the receiving bodies the city's development and airport authorities. Now they say they didn't realize they were voting on a "substantial change" to an already negotiated intergovernmental contract.

The change was substantial. Previously, the council had ultimate prerogative to hike the tax on hotel and motel rooms, lower it or abolish it. Subject to "no substantial change," the Council voted last year to let then-Mayor Bob Lenox and City Attorney Rick Lindsey iron out remaining differences with the two authorities.

Lenox and Lindsey negotiated new language that allows the two unelected authorities to veto any future council decision to change the tax, up or down. Mayor Steve Brown says that's not kosher. Rapson and Tennant say, in effect, they were snookered into voting for a contract that had been profoundly altered from what had been represented to them by Lenox and Lindsey.

Wednesday night, four councilmen, absent Annie McMenamin, voted to appoint a special counsel to find out who knew what when and whether the current council can get out of the pact.

Ironically, the change had been requested by the airport authority, not the development authority, though the development board is the one hollering the loudest to keep control of the cookie jar.

Jim Wooten, one of the few sane voices on the AJC editorial board, has preached for years about the dangers of letting unelected, unaccountable authorities get hold of public tax money and spend it any way they choose. He probably has noted that once the authority gets the money, it fights to keep it. And so it is in Peachtree City.

Someone wiser than I has said that persons do things in groups they would never consider as individuals. Thus, I cast no aspersions on the individual members of the development authority. I'm sure the six men and one woman are all honorable people who volunteered for the good of their community.

Individually, they are good folks, but collectively they are acting stupidly. They are acting as if they have some sort of political constituency. Except for the council that appoints them, they have no proper constituency.

We elected the city council members. Nobody elected the authority members to anything or for anything.

We get to toss out city council members every four years. We get to choose them and we get to reward them or punish them at the ballot box. We can hold each and every council member accountable for every penny and every action.

That's not so with our seven-member development authority. Nobody can hold the authority members accountable for the use or misuse of public tax money. Unless they commit a felony, they can't be removed by anybody for the duration of their six-year terms. They can spend tax money on whatever they choose in pursuit of "economic development," and nobody can tell them not to. Nobody gets to vote on their decisions or their actions.

The one check that elected, accountable officials have on such unelected, unaccountable bodies is the power of the purse. The council has always been the taxing power and could allocate such public money to the authority as the council deemed appropriate. If the authority spent unwisely, the council always had the ability to cut off the money.

Not anymore, with this "substantial change" negotiated by Lenox and Lindsey last year. Why would Lenox and Lindsey give away the council's power to tax? Why would they want to subject future councils' tax decisions to vetoes by two unelected, unaccountable boards?

Three members of the development authority were appointed by Lenox and company last year. Maybe that gives a clue.

The authority has ranged far afield of its utilitarian mission of convincing companies to locate plants in our industrial park. At Lenox's initiative, the development authority took over the struggling amphitheater in the early 1990s and then built a tennis center in Planterra Ridge. Lenox, himself a wealthy tenant of the industrial park, has been one of the authority's biggest boosters.

Maybe the authority is trying to develop a power base and a constituency as well as an industrial park. Maybe they want to be a power unto themselves. And maybe they shouldn't be dabbling in politics, but they are.

The authority is not alone in acting unwisely. Mayor Brown is jacking up his rating on the stupid meter by refusing to let opponents of his policies speak to the council during council meetings.

His silencing of dissenting opinions at public meetings is more than dumb; it is rising to the realm of jackass foolishness. Brown must learn one major lesson: Being mayor means you have to listen to everybody who wants to speak. Everybody, especially those who disagree with you.

Brown is not alone among elected officials who upon election seem to forget the value of public debate. The school board, the county commission, city councils all seem to think that putting stop watches on residents' comments is a smart thing to do. Such group-think alienates even supporters of the officials.

I say to Brown and all local elected officials: Let the people speak. You were elected to listen and to hear us and then to act. Do your first job, which is to listen.

My advice to otherwise good people on the various unelected boards and authorities: Don't get power-hungry and don't think that you have some divine right to public tax money. Let the folks who are elected make the decisions on when to tax and how much to tax. Stop politicking and start doing your narrowly defined, very specialized jobs.

New tennis courts and big names at the amphitheater are nice things to have luxuries, even but it's been a long dry spell for taxpaying industrial development in Peachtree City. We need new taxpaying industries to locate in the industrial park. What is the development authority doing about that?

The final question: Should Steve Rapson be voting on anything to do with the development authority, given that his wife is suing the authority?

Short answer: No, he should not be voting. It may not technically or legally be a conflict of interest, but it looks bad. A public official like an ethical lawyer should avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest. Whatever his reasons for voting, Rapson should sit this one out.

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