Metro news for Friday

By Bob Howard

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The Atlanta Regional Commission board has re-elected its chairman, Tad Leithead, to a second two-year term.

The ARC, led by a board of local elected officials and unelected citizens, is the official planning agency for metro Atlanta, and has spent the last year staffing the "roundtable" that drew up a $6.14 billion project list for next year's transportation referendum.  Leithead is chairman of the Cumberland Improvement District, a self-taxing business district that works for transportation improvements. In the past he worked for Cousins Properties.

Under Leithead the ARC lost its top staff leaders for several months, but it has just hired a new director, Doug Hooker. ARIEL HART

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A paving industry group has named a Georgia road project the best rural divided highway concrete project in the nation for 2010.

The project, designed by Georgia Department of Transportation engineers, added a third lane to nine miles of I-95 both northbound and southbound, and rebuilt several bridges and ramps. It was one of the final pieces of an 18-year effort to widen all of I-95 along Georgia’s coast, a 113-mile job costing more than $1 billion and completed last year, according to DOT.

The award is one of several the American Concrete Paving Association gives for different kinds of projects. ARIEL HART

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Kaffie McCullough, campaign director for A Future. Not A Past. (AFNAP) – the Juvenile Justice Fund’s campaign to stop the prostitution of children in Georgia – has been chosen to receive one of three Global Centurion Norma Hotaling Anti-Trafficking Awards for 2011.

The award recognizes leadership and originality in eradicating child sex trafficking.

In 2010, AFNAP implemented a groundbreaking “Georgia Demand Study" which showed 7,200 men knowingly or unknowingly purchase sex from underage females each month in Georgia. ANDRIA SIMMONS

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County by county

Bragbook

Someone in your neighborhood deserves a pat on the back. B5

Best in Class

Find out who deserves a gold star in your neighborhood schools. B4