The unfortunate damage from the 1993–2001 Development Authority of Peachtree City mismanagement era was painfully ended last week. Although the infamous authority lost the war, the local homeowners and businesses will be the ones burdened with paying the almost $930,000 in reparations for the next 10 years.

The total damages amounted to $1.5 million. This was the largest such development authority-type scandal in metro Atlanta history.

The mayor called for members of the current Development Authority and city staff to painstakingly search through the authority’s minutes and various other documents looking for any kind of capital-like expenses they could find to attribute some of the illegal loan monies toward.

Now in reality, many of those items would most likely have been paid for with the millions of dollars received in illegal hotel/motel tax dollars, ticket fees or tennis fees.

Everyone on the City Council seemed content to follow the “search and affix” strategy except for Councilwoman Judi Rutherford who voted in opposition.

The heartbreaking, not to mention appalling, truth is even with the application of such a loose standard for resolution, there is still a monstrous $580,000 of the illegal debt which had to be labeled as unaccounted for.

With little legal room to maneuver, the new leadership at the Peachtree National Bank put their head in their hands and agreed to write off over half a million investor-deposited dollars to the poor management and deficient oversight practices of the past.

The moral of this story is never, never ever trust government, and always demand accountability.

The Founding Fathers structured our government the way they did for a reason. The sanctity of local government depends upon an assiduous press and an energetic electorate willing to hold local officials accountable. When passivity reins, corruption flourishes.

Former City Councilmen Rapson and Weed worked with me on creating mechanisms for accountability to prevent such disastrous scandals in the future. The cornerstone of the initiative was a mandate that the Tourism Association — who now manages the tennis center and amphitheater, and receives city tax dollars – should have one member of the City Council on their board. This insured our city officials knew what was happening in both public meetings and private executive session discussions.

Unfortunately, one of the first official actions of the Logsdon administration was to rescind the mandate for an elected city official to be on the Tourism Association board. Their argument was the city officials could review the minutes of the association instead.

Unfortunately, many of the Development Authority misdeeds never appeared on their minutes, and they were conducting activities in private, non-recorded executive sessions which should have been in the public domain.

At the Wednesday meeting, Mayor Logsdon, Councilman Kourajian and Councilwoman Plunkett (Plunkett voted against removing the measure previously) expressed an interest in reexamining the mandated position vote.

If you want the accountability initiative restored, you need to e-mail your words of support to the mayor and council at council@peachtree-city.org and let them know you want the safeguard back in place.

In all forms of democracy, the citizens are ultimately responsible for the performance of their government. Build your government on a firm foundation of openness, honesty and accountability.

Steve Brown
Peachtree City, Ga.