1. Given that there’s a serious economic recession and given that many — if not most — defined benefit plans are in trouble across the nation, explain your position on the county’s new retirement plan.

I am opposed to changing the current Award-Winning Defined Contribution Retirement Plan to a Defined Benefit Plan. Nationally most corporations have abandoned them and more and more governments are abandoning Defined Benefit Plans in favor of the more flexible and affordable Defined Contribution model. The failure of private corporations and increasing numbers of governments to properly fund their defined benefit plan has bankrupted many private companies and driven the unfunded liability in an ever increasing number of government plans to astronomical figures.

The current defined contribution plan provides 4 percent of the employee’s pay into their retirement account (401A) every month. If the employee chooses to save money in the deferred compensation plan (457) the county will match up to 8% at 50 cents on the dollar and place that money, at no cost to the employee, into their 401A retirement fund. They could therefore receive up to 8% of their pay at no cost to them in their retirement fund and have a companion 457 Plan which they pay for and own.

The employee manages their own accounts, choosing from several investment options. They own their accounts and upon separation or retirement vested employees can choose among several options to take their benefit. From that day forward the county (and the taxpayer) owes them nothing. The plan works well.

For many employees this plan is considerably more attractive than the current proposed defined benefit plan which requires them to pay 2.5% of their pay into the plan and would get 1.5% x years of service as their pension with NO COLA. The employees need to analyze this very carefully. Many employees could amass a greater retirement benefit with their existing program.

The defined benefit plan would be based on an employee’s salary and years of service. Each year the employee accrues a benefit equal to a percentage of their final pay or average pay.

In the current defined contribution plan the county has no obligation beyond making contributions to the employee’s account. If we change the current plan, the county (taxpayer) will bear the entire investment risk of the plan. If it is poorly managed (and most are) the taxpayer will be made to make up any unfunded liabilities.

Many of our citizens have lost huge percentages of their pensions or lost them completely in recent years. Some have had their pay reduced, benefits reduced and some have lost their jobs, experienced declining value of their homes and many have lost their homes to foreclosure.

I believe it is a mistake to place the burden of managing retirement accounts on the county (and by extension the taxpayer) by removing responsibility from the employee. I believe that as a matter of principle but in our current economic situation it is unconscionable.

2. Do you have any numbers on what such a plan will cost taxpayers in 10 years, 20 years? If you don’t have the numbers, why not and why should we believe your projections?

I do not nor does anyone else know what the proposed defined benefit plan would cost taxpayers in 10 to 20 years. It would depend on the level of contributions to the retirement account and the success or failure of those managing the retirement accounts, to include Investment and Fund managers, actuaries, the pension Committee and, of course, the County Commissioners. Experience throughout the country tells us that such a combination of decision-makers haven’t been successful in the vast majority of cases. What would ever lead us to believe our folks could be any better at it? When you obligate the county to pay pensions for the rest of the employee’s lives (and their beneficiaries should the employee agree to pay for that additional benefit) for employees who work for you for as few as five years, how could you possibly know?

GEBCORP, the company trying to get the plan business estimated a 7% return on investment in August 2007. What would you guess their estimate would be today and have the commissioners even inquired about it?

3. Again, economic realities have forced many private sector businesses and families to forego raises and increased spending. Are county workers — with big new raises — exempt from what the rest of us are facing? Defend (or condemn) big raises using taxpayers’ money at such a time as this.

As I have repeatedly stated, this level of base pay raise (and it doesn’t even include COLA and / or Merit Pay which will be added later) is unconscionable at this time. Our Commissioners should be doing everything in their power to control their appetite for spending during an economic crisis such as we are going through. An analysis of the county’s FY09 budget shows that department operating budgets are reduced in order to pay the extraordinary salary increases. To add insult to injury for this coming year (at least) the taxpayers will pay more for less service.

4. What specifically will you as a Republican do to ease taxpayers’ burdens when you are elected?

At a minimum I would move to reduce the millage rate to offset any increased assessments on taxpayer’s property. If you do not, it is an automatic tax increase (known as a back-door tax increase). If you are reading this and live in Fayette County you just got your second one in two years. In my six years as Chairman we reduced the General Fund tax rate (millage) 26%.

Only absolute necessities would be funded.

To help pay for the employees pay raise a hiring freeze was placed on 20 authorized positions. If they can do without these employees just to pay for pay raises for the others these positions need to be reevaluated and re-justified.

SPLOST road projects and Capital Improvement Projects for which funds have been “found” could be continued. Taxpayers have already paid for these through Property and Sales taxes, therefore no increased Property taxes would be necessary to fund them. In light of the extraordinary base pay raise the county employees have just received, no raises except the COLA should be considered until our nation’s economic crisis is reversed.

If the Defined Benefit Retirement plan is not implemented by Jan. 1, 2009, I would do anything I could to legally stop it. If it has been, I would work to get support to do away with it to minimize the long-term negative impact on the taxpayers. If successful I would reinstate the current plan.

5. Suppose I’m a real estate developer who wants to rezone 100 acres in the center of the county to double its current residential density. How will you evaluate my request, step by step? And how would your governing philosophy incline you to vote on my request?
(If you can’t answer, why should anybody vote for you?)

I would, of course, look at both sides of the issue, I would personally survey the property, I would sincerely evaluate the request to include public input to determine if there was any overwhelmingly compelling reason to change the Land-use Plan. If there wasn’t (and there almost never is) I would vote no and give the developer a map of Henry County (just kidding).

Changing our land use plan should be an extremely rare exception because every time it happens in the county or our cities it negatively affects our future quality of life by overburdening our infrastructure.

6. How would you describe your political philosophy? Are you more conservative, more libertarian, or more moderate to centrist in your political views?

I’m a conservative Republican but lean to moderate conservatism on some issues.

7. In what area of service is the county most falling short right now? What would you do about that failure?

For the most part county employees provide services far superior to their counterparts throughout the region. My concern is that special interests seem to be more important than average citizens to some of our commissioners. One example is our Building Inspections. Because some (a few) developers complained about the inspection standards our inspectors have been severely limited in enforcing inspection standards. The Commissioners appointed a Citizen Committee made up of approximately 15 developers / engineers who had the County Ordinances revised. Some inspectors feel the head of that committee is now their boss. The head of the department resigned because he felt he could not do inspections to keep the developers happy and maintain his professionalism and integrity. We have some excellent well-certified inspectors whose morale is shot. Allegedly this all happened because some Commissioners did not want any more complaints from their “special interest” friends.

If elected I would conduct an assessment with assistance from professionals in the inspections field to determine the true extent of the problem and work to get the votes to remedy any verifiable problems that are uncovered. We must not be unfair to developers but we must always protect the safety and property investments of our citizens.

8. Why are you better for Fayette County than your opponent?

My education, training and experience of 29 plus years in the military combined with my 8 years on the County Commission (six as Chairman) leaves me in the best position to understand the challenges and remedies at both the county and regional level. My experience with multi-billion dollar military budgets and 8 years with county budgets qualifies me better than all other candidates to properly build and execute large budgets.

I’ve learned as did President Reagan to “trust but verify”. You can’t just go along to get along and expect our county to remain the best community in Georgia.

9. What are the biggest three challenges facing Fayette right now?
What will you do about these three challenges?

The three biggest challenges right now:
A) Coping with the national economic decline while maintaining our community’s quality of life.
B) The majority of Commissioners decision to prevent citizens from knowing what our government is doing.
C) Special interest voting creeping back into some Board member’s decision making.

Hopefully the upcoming election can change the makeup of the Board significantly enough to reestablish an open and honest Commission which will immediately change problems B & C. Problem A is more difficult but understanding the economic impact and being sensitive to our citizens first and foremost will help us avoid making our citizens problems more severe. We must avoid the temptation to raise additional tax revenue in the short-term with unplanned growth. The long-term affect of bad decisions now would destroy our quality of life in the future. Maintain our standards now and our community will remain the best in Georgia long after our current economic woes have subsided.

I have absolutely no problem with sharing my ideas with those who participate in the Citizen’s Political Forum. However, given the little amount of time remaining before the election I feel it would be unproductive and overly time-consuming to attempt to respond to, in some cases, totally false allegations, vitriolic personal attacks which have nothing to do with the issues. I invite anyone with questions or concerns to contact me via email (greg@gregmdunn.org) or phone (home 770-631-9630) and I will be more than happy to talk or correspond with you. However, with my active campaigning schedule I will be unable to answer on-line questions. Because I firmly believe in order to have a truly meaningful exchange of ideas it is imperative that both parties know with whom they are communicating.

---- Note: I have absolutely no problem with sharing my ideas with those who participate in the Citizen’s Political Forum, therefore I have submitted my answers for all to read. However, given the little amount of time remaining before the election, I feel it would be unproductive to spend an inordinate amount of time at the computer rather than meeting or talking in person with citizens. Although I have never personally participated at all in the art of blogging on the Citizen, I do know that a good percentage of what is written are groundless personal attacks, totally false allegations, and expressions of long-held deep-seated personal biases which cannot be changed by arguing on-line. It is impossible to know whether comments posted on the blogs are legitimate thoughts of concerned citizens or deliberate plants from political opponents. I firmly believe in order to have a truly meaningful exchange of ideas it is imperative that both parties know with whom they are communicating. I invite anyone with legitimate questions or concerns to contact me via email (greg@gregmdunn.org) or phone (home 770-631-9630) and I will be more than happy to talk or correspond with you.