Since former Mayor Brown and his followers keep hammering all the "devolopment" money that supports some of the candidates for District 72, perhaps a history lesson is in order.
Steve Brown's largest contributor in his mayoral campaign was a developer - Doug McMurrain. Steve Brown is a total hypocrite in talking against developer influence yet has a history of his largest contributor to his mayoral campaign being a developer. He wants Ramsey to be painted as a developer candidate yet accepts Doug McMurrain's $$$ no problem. I guess there is a qualitative difference in the type of developer whose support is accepted.

I read every candidate's letters and Thirty Years in PTC says former Mayor Brown is against local control? Maybe you confused another candidate's letter with his name.

The quotes below were cut straight out of former Mayor Brown's letter on this site:

"Our state constitution is an instrument of delegated powers; thus, I believe our state government should not stray from the powers granted to it and rigidly constrained by the constitution."

"Transportation – In short, we have a mess. There is no coordinated strategy linking new development in metro Atlanta to transportation improvements with the result being traffic congestion that is ranked number two in the nation. We must develop predictable growth models which are linked to development plans in the region which are rewarded with transportation improvements."

"If your area develops like a bat out of hell beyond the parameters of the agreed-upon model and plan, then you pay the consequences. Local governments need to be held accountable in this area. Build it now and figure it all out later is a horrible idea."

"The DOT had to drop 250 road projects this year because they lacked the funding. We need to reconfigure the system and DOT in an intelligent manner which rewards sound development and transportation principles and saves tax dollars."

"Tax reform and budgeting – Speaker Richardson’s alternative tax plan does not relieve us of paying taxes as you would be expected to simply pay in another format, sales taxes on everything. However, what the Speaker’s plan does accomplish is centralized government as cities, counties and school districts would be stripped of their power to levy most taxes."

"Local control of the community would be lost because local officials would no longer have the authority to decide how much to spend. Centralized government is not a step in the right direction."

"I was deeply concerned last year when the Sen. Chip Rogers’ (R-Woodstock) proposal on a flexible cap on state spending was rejected by the Republican majority. The conservative principles of government is best handled at the local level, the elimination of pork projects (it is in FY 2008) and reining in spending are being abandoned so far by the Republican leadership."

"Education – We are about to see a major tug-of-war over control of education. I am very opposed to the state collecting taxes levied for education and doling them out to individual school districts as they please. Such a system would be ripe for political favoritism. Fayette County has a great thing going in education; let us not ruin it."

Now it sounds to me like he is in favor of local control. I think the blogger was thinking about the posts from candidates Heidi Becker and Matt Ramsey which said almost nothing.