Perdue pushed pet projects

By James Salzer

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Gov. Sonny Perdue leaves office in a week but Georgians will spend the next two decades paying off some controversial hometown projects he pushed.

Taxpayers will spend almost $4 million annually paying off Perdue’s Go Fish aquatic wildlife and fishing education center, some new equine and livestock facilities at the Georgia National Fairgrounds near his home and the purchase of the Oaky Woods conservation property at a price some lawmakers considered excessive. All are in Houston County, where Perdue was born, raised and plans to return when he leaves office.

The state is making debt payments on those three projects — worth a total of $60 million — at a time when legislators are approving tight budgets that forced teacher furloughs and layoffs, and brought spending cuts on everything from economic development efforts to health care.

The three projects are part of the about $1.2 billion a year the state is now paying on long-term debt, up about 60 percent from the year Perdue took office.

Bert Brantley, the governor’s spokesman, said there were solid reasons for funding each of the Houston County projects and they will benefit the state for years to come.

Perdue recommended the projects and state legislators voted for them — and added others of their own. But that hasn’t stopped lawmakers from grumbling about having to fund some of them in the governor’s back yard.

“Those are things in this kind of economy we can’t spend money on,” said House Appropriations Chairman Ben Harbin, R-Evans, who helped kill a proposal last year to spend another $9 million on the fairgrounds equine facility that had already cost the state $17 million.

The Go Fish Education Center, which Perdue picked for Houston County after lawmakers approved the funding, has particularly riled critics. Taxpayers will be paying about $1 million annually for another 18 years on the bonds sold to help pay for the project.

Joe McCutchen, an Ellijay retiree, newsletter publisher and budget watchdog, called it a “disgrace we are being stuck with that.

“We can’t afford that,” he said. “To think we are going to be saddled with that for all these years in inexcusable.”

In steering money to his home county, Perdue followed a long-standing political tradition.

Perdue’s predecessor, Democrat Roy Barnes, helped get $6 million for his hometown of Mableton for construction of an amphitheater and renovation of the historic Mable House. Before Barnes, the state poured more than $20 million into a resort in then-Gov. Zell Miller’s mountain hometown of Young Harris.

Sen. George Hooks, an Americus Democrat and longtime budget committee chairman, said Gov. George Busbee, who served from 1975 to 1983, was responsible for completing a freeway from I-75 to Albany, where he lived. Decades before, Hooks said, Gov. Marvin Griffin was instrumental in building an inland port in his hometown of Bainbridge.

Former state Republican Party Chairman Chuck Clay said it’s only natural that governors work to help their hometowns.

“To come and go without wanting to leave some beneficial imprint on his home community would defy human nature, and quite candidly, in most of these situations, they [governors] have been judicious about it,” said Clay, also a former Marietta lawmaker.

Perdue earned his political stripes in a system that was well known for lawmakers steering state money to hometown projects.

During the 1990s, lawmakers often added hundreds of local projects to the state budget, with legislative leaders frequently getting a little extra. Perdue, at one time a member of the Democratic Senate leadership, helped get more than $4 million to expand and run the Aviation Museum in Warner Robins, home to a growing Air Force base. He helped secure $385,000 for improvements at the Perry airport, which, as a pilot, he frequently used. Both are in Houston County.

The number of local projects dwindled during the tight budget times that marked Perdue’s tenure as governor. Small projects usually paid for in cash — lights for local ball fields, for example — largely disappeared in favor of more expensive construction projects that the state pays off over five, 10 or 20 years.

After Perdue took office, a panel he chaired, the OneGeorgia Authority, changed rules to allow Houston and other urban and suburban counties to qualify for grants and loans designed to help economically depressed areas of the state. The only places now not eligible for awards are most of metro Atlanta and two other North Georgia counties.

Records show that change helped Houston qualify for several grants, including $598,640 to assist site preparation for the new Little League Baseball Inc. location in Warner Robins, $1 million for improvements to the local airport and $3.5 million for improvements at a chicken processing facility in Perry.

The equine and livestock facility money drew attention in the 2010 legislative session because Perdue asked for money to complete a project that had already cost the state $17 million.

Brantley said Perdue didn’t put the Georgia National Fairgrounds & Agricenter in Houston County, so it’s not right to call improvements there a local project.

“Any project the fairgrounds requests, people view that as in the governor’s hometown,” he said. “That is like if the governor is from Athens, saying, ‘Oh, UGA needs a new building.’ ”

However, legislative critics noted that Perdue recommended the final $9 million to pay for an arena, practice ring and covered walkways throughout the facility at a time when lawmakers were searching for $1.5 billion in spending cuts from everything from schools to public health and prison programs.

The Go Fish center was part of Perdue’s program to promote fishing tourism and tournaments in the state. Lawmakers griped about the program, but they approved funding for megaboat ramps across the state and the education center in 2007. Just after Christmas that year, Perdue announced that the education center would be built in Perry, not far from his hometown of Bonaire. The megaboat ramps and docks have been credited with attracting fishing tournaments to the state. The fish center opened late last year.

Brantley said part of the decision for locating it in Houston County involved the willingness of the local government to help pay for the facility.

On Oaky Woods, the General Assembly approved a bond package — recommended by Perdue — that included money for land conservation. But the package was not publicly mentioned as the intended source of money for Oaky Woods, which is adjacent to property Perdue owns.

In December, a month before Perdue was to leave office, the Department of Natural Resources board and a commission the governor chairs approved the state’s purchase of Oaky Woods for $29 million. Most of the money came from the land conservation bond package approved by lawmakers earlier in 2010.

State officials voted to buy 10,015 acres of the property at $2,874 per acre. By comparison, developers bought the entire 19,000-acre Oaky Woods tract in 2004 for $1,600 an acre.

The owners had planned to develop the tract with shops, offices and thousands of homes before the real estate market deteriorated.

Brantley said the state has bought far more property in other parts of Georgia than in Houston County. Environmentalists had long wanted the pristine black bear habitat preserved.

Each of the three big Houston County projects — Oaky Woods, Go Fish and the equine facility — were paid for with bond money that the state will pay back over 20 years. Combined, the state borrowed more than $55 million for the projects.

Brantley said Perdue has supported several big bond packages in recent years so that the state could make long-term infrastructure investments — schools, college buildings, conservation land purchases — during a time when the government was short on cash.

He said the projects helped provide badly needed construction jobs at a time when the home-building market was suffering. And he noted that Houston County has been a growing area without any recent help from the state.

In general, Brantley said, “If you are from there, you know the local needs. But I don’t know that there is anything there where we can’t show you the justification for it.

“I doubt you’d find any disproportionate investment there as opposed to anywhere else.”

Still, such “investments” tick off some taxpayers such as McCutchen, who said projects like Go Fish should be funded by local residents if they want them, not by everyone in the state. McCutchen argues that too many state officials feel it’s their right to appropriate money for local projects.

“It’s an entitlement mentality. The government is supposed to be the servant of the people and it’s trying to be the master.”