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Land Use:
Georgia Rural Development Act
Our Position: oppose
Bill Number: SB414
Sponsor: Sen. Cecil Staton
Legislative Session: 2006
The intention of SB 414 is said to be for the promotion of residential development in the state's less-developed counties, with an emphasis on "retirement communities." But a reading of the legislation reveals very little that is relevant to the title of the bill; SB 414 is simply a way for politically savvy developers to use publicly authorized tax-free bonds to pay for infrastructure which other, competing developers are already having to provide using their own funds. While a provision that would give the new "private cities" entities the power of eminent domain to acquire property has been removed since the bill's introduction, a critical problem which remains in the concept is that private individuals, real estate investors and developers, are being given the power to use public financing, and to tax people to pay for it, on no more authority than a single vote of a county commission to create a “district.”
Status
The “Private Cities” bills, (SR 682, SB 414), a Constitutional Amendment and an enabling act that will allow the development of quasi-municipal governments in GA counties, following nominal approval by the “host” counties, failed in the State Senate on Wednesday, March 8. The House may consider Private Cities on March 12, Day 30.
Action Needed
As mentioned in recent editorials blasting Private Cities legislation in the Atlanta and Macon papers, these bills should be defeated because they: (1) create a new level of government in a state with 159 counties and over 500 cities; (2) give private developers the powers of a local elected government; (3) create taxation without representation by establishing one acre, one vote elections; and (4) give giant corporate developers a monopoly to the detriment of small developers/homebuilders.
Background
This is another variation on the popular “public-private partnership” theme that has marked the Perdue years. SB 414 would set up “community improvement districts” which are designed as quasi-municipalities that can issue debt and levy taxes in support of streets, sewers, water and parks, including for reservoirs. They have condemnation power for those uses, and for toxic cleanups, etc. They would be run by boards of 5, 4 of whom are picked by the property owners (developers) during the build-out phase. Their employees will be eligible for enrollment in the State Retirement System. This looks like a permanent arrangement, and ordinary people get to pick the boards, but only after there are 250 ordinary voters living in the Districts. These are unlikely to ever “wither away” and they are also unlikely to ever easily become legitimate municipalities, or annexed by such communities. If these districts were only available to the truly deprived counties in the state, perhaps such public assistance to developers would be merited, but SB 414 is available to any developer in any county, and of course they would like to take advantage of low cost capital for infrastructure and tax exemptions for the streets and parks of gated communities in high growth counties, where sales of houses are far likelier than in the poor rural districts of south Georgia. Various versions of the Private Cities scheme have set forth complicated schedules for actual people, resident voters, to take political and management control of the districts over time, but the current version is strictly an allocation of voting power by acres of land owned, with “one acre, one vote,” as long as the key decisions about debt and taxes are being made. This is little short of a new corporate form of feudalism, yet another attack on private property rights from supposed property rights advocates.
Additionally troubling is the fact that stronger ethics provisions which were added to SB 414 earlier in its consideration were wiped out in the rewrite. While the bill has some public notice provisions, it conspicuously precludes any meaningful public participation in any of the borrowing and spending activities subject to that public notice. Finally, even though the bill continues to be called the “GA Rural Development Act,” there is nothing in the measure that would lead anyone to think that a single one of these private cities would ever be created in an area that could actually use the stimulation this kind of public assistance to private capital provides.It may be possible to rewrite SB 414 to make it do what its proponents claim it is intended to do, but that does not seem likely, or what its proponents are really interested in doing. The fact that a Constitutional Amendment is required to allow the use of tax-free bonds for residential development makes its passage highly problematic. Such measures require a two-thirds vote of both chambers, and such a margin will be difficult to obtain when the public learns what is really being proposed, versus what is being sold.
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