The faux conservative voices in Fayette County are telling us that conservative principles only matter in campaign rhetoric and not practical application. In the South, we call that talking out of both sides of your mouth. State Rep. Matt Ramsey’s letter on district voting was a real humdinger in a very un-conservative way.

In the same letter where he derides a colleague’s actions as “tremendously irresponsible,” Rep. Matt Ramsey said he “was pleased to cosponsor House Resolution 1216, the Taxpayer Dividend Act, with a bipartisan group of my colleagues.”

He went on to say, “Georgia has the highest budget surplus in our state’s history.” And Ramsey and his colleagues have devised a priority formula for how to spend the surplus.

Go ahead and ditch the financial responsibility and reform jargon. The young man who was used as the poster boy of Fayette conservatism not only wants to spend all of your wasted budgeted tax dollars, but he also wants spend the surplus beyond the budget too. Does the term “conservatism” have any kind of relevant meaning in our current General Assembly?

It is amazing the speed with which Rep. Ramsey has abandoned and violated his conservative principles; two months to be exact.

Yes, Rep. Ramsey has gone from being a passive observer as a legislative staffer to an active participant, even cheerleader, for picking the pockets of the taxpayers.

What Rep. Ramsey should actually be denouncing is the serious neglect of the Fayette County Commissioners to act responsibly and change a voting system of three county voting districts based upon “militia districts” which were established in 1863. That’s not a typographical error; they date back to 1863!

In 1863 we were still fighting the Civil War and the western states were still “territories.”

Let’s take it further, Fayette County, itself, was created in 1821. Now would anyone dare think the population and demographics have changed in Fayette County, Ga., since 1863? The U.S. Department of Justice does, on the record.

In fact, the Fayette County Commissioners tried to sneakily change the districts based on a unfair formula at an out of town commission retreat where the local citizen voters would be none the wiser.

When the population of the Fayette County remained around 8,000 persons from 1863 to 1970, at-large voting was the appropriate way to go as the local voter had maximum impact.

However, with the county’s population pushing past 100,000, it is time to reinvigorate the conservative principle conceived by the Founding Fathers to continue to get government as close to the people as possible.

Because conservative thinkers have always espoused that the more remote government is from the people, the more dangerous it becomes, we ought to be diligent, as the population grows, to create a proportion modification which allows the most local type of vote to have maximum impact.

As someone who has read all of Rep. Ramsey’s campaign literature and was present during public debate, I find his remarks condemning district voting quite hypocritical.

First, he has never been able to intelligently defend his position in opposition. In his letter to the newspaper, Rep. Ramsey says, “The local legislative process does not exist to impose controversial top-down changes on a local community without that community’s support and against the will of the locally elected officials.”

Now wait a minute, he is talking about the same legislature wanting to strip local control of schools, centralize local taxation at the state level, not return budget surpluses, refusing to implement state budget caps and throwing down one unfunded mandate after another.

I do not think the local governments in this state asked for the new non-conservative Republican effort to eliminate local governmental control in Georgia.

I would have to conclude that Rep. Ramsey’s faux conservative’s actions are “nothing more than an attempt by a few individuals at the state Capitol to impose their will on Fayette County” (borrowing one of Rep. Ramsey’s lines) and all the other local governments in the state.

Second, Rep. Ramsey, who was elected in a district voting process himself, and his local faux conservative backers, the ones who do not want to see government get as close to the people as possible through district voting, can only muster a single anemic position against district voting: At-large voting made us a great community and district voting will change things.

Rep. Ramsey goes as far as saying our children’s SAT and ACT scores and the value of our homes are owed to at-large voting. That is an incredible mental stretch.

So from the 1800s to the early 1970s when the scores were awful and home values were low, at-large voting had nothing to do with it, but when a large influx of college-educated (from outside of Fayette County) families moved to the county bringing their intellect and wealth from the 1980s forward, we have to attribute the success in test scores and home values to at-large voting.

Incidentally, the Fayette Board of Education is elected by the district voting method using districts which do not date back to the Lincoln administration. So those arguments are good old faux conservative hypocrisy.

If we are totally honest, Fayette County, before the 1980s growth boom, was known for a few things, including burned-out farm land from over-planting cotton, moonshine, a lack of resources and poverty.

Furthermore, the reason Peachtree City is where it is today is due to the fact the land was so incredibly cheap. (The best way to fight faux conservatism is with the truth.)

We had a roving discussion about district voting a couple of years ago. One of the meetings was in Peachtree City. After the meeting, two women approached me and clearly stated they opposed district voting because they did not want those “black people” taking over our county.

I can only respond to such comments by saying they have a moral dilemma and not a political one. The sheer injustice of saying the shading of a person’s skin is an absolute indicator of how they behave and it should be used to prevent the extension of liberty by prohibiting the vote in a manner closest to the people is an outrage.

In fairness, I am not attributing this position to Rep. Ramsey, but it is used by some of the faux conservatives in Fayette County.

Again, let’s take a truthful approach to the race issue. The entire African-American population in Fayette County is around 12 percent. Logically, how is 12 percent of the population going to override everyone else?

A few weeks ago, voters in a county that is more than 96 percent white chose a black man from Cullman, Ala., James Fields, to represent them in the Alabama state House of Representatives. Last fall, another black man, Eric Powell, was elected to the Mississippi state Senate from a district that is more than 92 percent white. Both men decisively beat white candidates in districts that traditionally support Republican presidential candidates.

As a native Georgian, I have to sigh in disbelief when majority white districts in Alabama and Mississippi show more intellectual integrity on the issues of character and race than some of the faux conservatives living in Fayette County.

Unfortunately, Rep. Ramsey will not admit that the best way for the citizens of Tyrone and Peachtree City to battle unjust treatment with county recreation funding and a crooked SPLOST depriving them of their tax dollars is district voting.

He will not admit that the best way for the citizens of Brooks and Woolsey to keep the land surrounding their hamlets at low density is district voting.

He will not admit that the best way for the citizens in unincorporated North Fayette County to finally receive adequate representation is district voting.

Only a faux conservative would try to convince the public that direct representation and accountability to the specific voters of a district, the most local form of government closest to the people, is a bad idea.

Until Rep. Ramsey tells us he’s convinced that all state House of Representatives seats should be elected at-large by all voters in Georgia, he is nothing more than a hypocrite.

Steve Brown

stevebrownptc@ureach.com

Peachtree City, Ga.