OUR EDITORIAL BOARD’S OPINION: Gwinnett taxpayers thrown curve

Gwinnett County leaders are in danger of stretching their success in landing the Brave’s Triple-A franchise too far. If they keeping insisting that taxpayers pay the escalating costs for a stadium, they might get tagged out at third.

Residents have reason to be concerned about the recent sequence of events that boosted the overall cost of the stadium by 50 percent, from $40 million to about $60 million. Either the initial cost was vastly understated or the new price tag contains some unnecessary frills. Whatever reason, Gwinnett taxpayers have been unfairly left out of the loop.

The Gwinnett Convention and Visitors Bureau, the unelected county agency supervising the construction, now wants to extend the stadium concourse and cover part of the stands with a canopy, two features that weren’t part of the original concept.

The vote to raid the county’s reserve fund for $19 million for the stadium was part of the Gwinnett County Commission’s consent agenda last week —- meaning that it got no public discussion. Commissioners claimed the convention bureau had already negotiated the price tag, and if sent back to the bureau to renegotiate, construction might not finish in time for next April’s opening day.

That unquestioning attitude among Gwinnett officials is what’s most troubling about the whole stadium deal. Indeed, a successful minor league franchise might generate enough economic activity in the county to ultimately pay for itself. But the county commission, the county’s economic development promoters and the convention bureau have conducted so much of the Braves deal in secret that Gwinnett residents have reason to be leery.

Gwinnett’s 775,000 residents had no clue that the Braves franchise might move from Richmond to Gwinnett until the deal was announced last January. The county also committed to build the team a new stadium that had to be completed in less than 15 months. The deadline, imposed by the Braves, now provides protective cover for the visitors bureau and the commissioners to do what they think is best without any meaningful public participation.

To pay for the new stadium, Gwinnett chipped in $12 million from the county’s recreation reserve fund and enacted a car rental tax. The county is borrowing $33 million against the anticipated revenue from that tax. Intent on opening the facility in April 2009, the county couldn’t wait to actually start collecting the tax.

The $19 million tapped from reserves may not seem like much. The county had about $150 million in the account, but that money is there for a reason —- to be used in the event of a budgetary emergency or a natural disaster that demands the county’s response. The stadium deal isn’t in either category.

The county has already enacted a hiring freeze on new, nonemergency employees. The county tax collector’s office has gone to a four-day week. County employees hear daily rumors about layoffs, changes in their health benefits and pension plans. District Attorney Danny Potter correctly complained Wednesday that his budget request for two victim assistance workers as well as more attorneys and investigators for the county’s crowded criminal court docket didn’t get the consideration that the stadium obviously did.

Besides, who really thinks that if the county’s public health workers asked for $19 million more for immunization programs, well-baby clinics and chronic disease management that the commission would put that request on the consent agenda and blindly approve it? Advocates for the homeless have been begging the county for years to help fund a shelter. Who thinks the commission would dip into the county reserves to fill that need?

The Braves deal may still turn out to be a great one for the state’s second largest county. But Gwinnett voters elected the county commission to run the county; they didn’t hand that power off to the convention and visitors bureau. The commission needs to take control of the project and not spend one more dime on it without letting Gwinnett residents in on the decision.

—- Mike King, for the editorial board (mking@ajc.com)