Remember the good old days out here in the rural counties when your commissioner could rock, grade and maybe even pave your driveway if you supported him? Well, those days are gone out here because our commissioners don’t want to go to prison. Now, there is hope and help from our good neighbors down in Augusta, with their new Public-private partnership we are calling the Mary Davis Sand and Gravel Company. Call Augusta Mayor Pro tem Davis at (706) 821-1831 and you may be able to arrange what one of my neighbors got here in Lincoln County – men, trucks, trailers, supplies, fringe benefits, and heavy equipment expended fixing a private road. All for FREE!
No need to worry about tipping the Augusta workers, either because they get the greater of 3 months severance pay or a full retirement if they get caught.
Even getting 300 tons of stone like THIS isn’t impossible, because the Augusta Landfill down on Deans Bridge Road has stockpiles of everything you need – sand, gravel, screenings, surge stone and even rip rap. Those can be loaded up and sent out to us through the same gate that the equipment loaned to my neighbor was.
If you look at the pictures of my neighbor’s Augusta-built project, there is even drain pipe furnished with the deal you get from Mary Davis.
You don’t even have to pay a registered contractor with expensive insurance, permits, a business or contractor’s license in your county, either. Those gifts give a pretty big bonus to your free work value from Mary Davis.
If the equipment from the landfill is tied up and can’t get to you, then the nice sheriff down there has a guy who will meet your equipment needs with no delay, stationed at the shooting range next door.
Augusta taxpayers and residents, you do not qualify for this program, so don’t attempt to call. You give but cannot receive.
We out here in the sticks thank you for your generosity and the kind treatment we get from Mary Davis Sand and Gravel.
The November 2014 race to fill Georgia’s House District 122 seat, vacated by retiring Representative Ben Harbin of Evans, was the ugliest, most hotly contested election in the modern history of Columbia County. It saw 2 months of nonstop attacks by radio station talk show host Austin Rhodes on hapless candidate Joe Mullins conjoined with the collapse of the campaign of departing Columbia County District 3 Commissioner Mack Taylor. Taylor’s efforts became mired in a nasty war with Mullins, complete with subterfuge, private investigators, and backdoor conniving with the radio talker. Columbia County, sick of the carnage, chose political newcomer Jodi Lott in the December runoff.
Representative-elect Lott was probably giddy with excitement still when she was sworn in this January. Her refreshing enthusiasm, undiminished by the grinding reality check of public life, was apparent to everyone in the area. Her primary campaign issue, a “fairtax” (a sales tax) to replace the state income tax, seemed unstoppable in the Georgia House of Representatives, as leadership and the membership voiced support.
Like the rest of us, Jodi Lott found the meaning of “lip service,” that when grizzled politicians like House leaders move their lips, you can count on it being in service to a lie. In this case her treasured tax relief met uncompromising doom at the hands of Governor Nathan Deal, who cited the danger that moving from an income tax to a sales tax would pose to Georgia’s burgeoning film industry, which heavily benefits from income tax credits. The House leadership beat a retreat, citing the futility of going against the governor’s wishes.
That is the “official story.” Here is a much more accurate explanation. The reason that the citizenry of Georgia will never see their income taxes cut, or replaced by a sales tax, is that other income tax credits have been a back-door, almost totally-unaccounted for, stream of public funds to connected political donors from the Republican hierarchy in the legislative and executive branches. They give away income taxes that have to be made up by increased income taxes on us. No income tax means that the payola scheme dies.
Our City Stink/Agraynation.com collaborative effort uncovered the scandal in 2012, during investigation into the details of the Magnolia Trace subsidized housing development uproar. After the public fury, this writer had traveled to the Georgia Department of Community Affairs (DCA) offices and spent an afternoon pouring over records of the Magnolia Trace income tax credit applications in the company of DCA attorney Phyllis Carr. The review did not uncover any smoking guns assignable to Columbia County Officials, but found a huge one wafting smoke toward the Georgia Republican Party and its senior officeholders in government.
You see, the availability of income tax credits, especially the low income housing tax credit, had been around for years. Most of these credits expired unused. That was until Missouri based Affordable Equity Partners got measures through the Georgia legislature allowing the credits to be exchanged, marketed and sold to taxpayers, who could use the tax credits. Affordable Equity and its sister Capital Health Management, Inc. funded a bevy of GOP-beneficent PACs and made direct contributions to nearly all of the important party office holders. To date, Governor Deal has received $10,000, House Speaker David Ralston has received $9,500, and Lieutenant Governor Casey Cagle has received more than $17,000 from this stable of companies and related PACs. The GOP, its incumbents in the legislature, and other supporting PACs have received another $240,000.
The Magnolia Trace affair was also a scandal in its approval process and the political donation largess was a deciding factor for approval, in this writer’s opinion. How widespread are these failures and malpractices by DCA and how much is it costing the people of Georgia?
Representative Lott and tax reformers, take note! To get tax reform for the people the path is directly through your leaders’ hefty campaign finances.
Let’s see if the candidates now running for Senate 24 and House 123 seats on passing a “fairtax” have that much tenacity.
Owners like to use a contract delivery method called “Design Build” when they don’t know what the heck they are building, don’t want to take the time to design it before bidding it out, or have a site with too many unknown conditions. Since they don’t know these things they put a fig leaf of protection against unlimited costs called a “Guaranteed Maximum Price” or GMP. Even in commercial or industrial construction, supposedly knowledgeable in cost controls and with fewer unknowns, GMP contracts are a challenge to administer, because the assumptions the contractor gives in quoting a GMP generally last only days or weeks. Owners would be better off with a pure cost-plus contract with great controls, but the owner’s internal politics command at least a fiction of a fixed price.
Imagine trying to catch a butterfly in a windstorm – that is how elusive the “guarantee” becomes.
In government there is no better money-hemorrhaging device than these contracts, hence perhaps GMP should automatically be understood by citizens as being “Guaranteed Money Pit.”
The City of Augusta, Georgia loves to squander money using GMP contracts, having thoroughly embarrassed itself with the things. Augusta built a $30 million Convention Center across land the city didn’t own, and then had to pay for it with Kitchen Equipment added by change order to a “guaranteed” price, spent about $50 million on a Municipal Building Remodeling that was supposed to cost $20 million, mostly covered by another GMP contract, and built houses in the Laney Walker district with maximum-price, not to exceed contracts that never were adjusted to actual cost.
There were only three finalists selected by Augusta for the Old Green Street Library remodeling, and two of the three had “Allen” in their name. The low bidder who didn’t have “Allen” in its name and who bid on the whole project in its bid, with a Guaranteed Price for all of the work, somehow didn’t get the award. RW Allen, LLC was awarded the work on a piecemeal basis, destroying any figment of a guarantee, in this writer’s estimation.
John Allen, nephew and contributor to Congressman Richard W. Allen, is a principal in the Allen-Batchelor firm, which was also on the finalist listing.
District 8’s Wayne Guilfoyle said it best, “If all three firms are proposing this project, the following including the proper scope, met the required schedule and fully capable of completing the RFP, why are we selecting the highest bidder?” Then later Commissioner Guilfoyle said, “So we’re approving something we don’t have a clue, only a partial.”
Comments of Al M. Gray to the Augusta Commission
Equal Protection, Equal Accountability
March 1, 2016
Mayor Davis, lady and gentlemen of the commission, thank you for the opportunity to speak today.
The baseball great Yogi Berra once said, “If you come to a fork in the road, take it,” but after its last two meetings perhaps this body should stop, back up and try another fork before the wheels come off of Augusta’s government like one of those KME firetrucks. Citizens, officials, and observers far and wide have been taken aback by votes to remedy a pay-increase scandal which represents a horrendous breach of Constitutional equal protection for the one employee, and the simultaneous dismissal of equal accountability for three others, who arguably had more responsibility.
The vote, and particularly the commentary during the last commission meeting, filled me and most observers with dismay, not just because of the ugly tone, but because the transparency so loudly promised during the SPLOST campaign is obviously dead. A citizenry who saw its garbage collection service cut in half now sees, yet again, tomfoolery to shift money between accounts to cover benefits to the downtown. They see the time-consuming machinations this administration has undertaken to do it during a time in which new SPLOST controls were supposedly a priority.
The biggest scandal in Augusta history – the financially ruinous TEE Center/Laney Walker Development deal – wasted more $tens of millions than a convention of con artists could dream up. The principle TEE contract required extensive records to be kept until the year 2020, yet neither side of the ugliness of the last 2 weeks wants to empower Augusta by learning from its mistakes there. One faction wouldn’t want it out during the state Republican Party Convention at the Convention Center out of fear of embarrassing party officials and the city. The other seems to want to maintain the sloppiness to get tens of millions more in loot with assertions of, “it’s our turn, now”, or, “we are getting our share.”
Politicians like to create a façade of controls to hide the looting, but not controls to stop the looting. With the TEE Center, Augusta wound up with the daisy chain of “expert” controllers, costing a combined $1250 per hour, who controlled almost nothing and rubberstamped nearly everything. The powerfully-written construction management contract that Augusta won was turned into mush at their hands. Why?
Another Yogism by Berra– “It is Déjà vu all over again” – fits my 40 year odyssey out of Augusta, back, and now into this chamber. The mid 1970’s found me at the Labor Department in Augusta working to administer the old 13 county CETA employment programs. Fury erupted among the mostly black program management in Augusta that Columbia County had preselected an overwhelmingly white contingent of ineligible folks, but then came the embarrassing find that Augusta’s enrollees were mostly black ineligible folks.
A poor, blind, black woman with a young lad in tow came into the Program Director’s office to see the Reverend F. Francis Cook. “This is my grandson, Jonathan, who sees about me, the best he can, but he needs one of those CETA jobs you all are handing out,” she said. Deputy Director Cook was in tears. There were no jobs left for the eligible and deserving grandson. He got crowded out by black politics. F. Francis Cook made sure we quit running a program for cronies, to make room for his people and for ALL people.
Yes, you can use the system perfected by the last administration to loot the people and discriminatingly spread $millions, but, “They did it, and we are, too!” makes a twisted concept of equal protection, while hurting the wrong people -people in your community.
What happened over the last two weeks destroyed confidence that this commission desires the promised transparency and reform. Choose another fork, one of real reform; this one is a dead end for Augusta.
That lay under the Convention Center that Rick built.
This is the Center Manager/Owner
That had the parcel
That lay under the Center that Rick built.
This is equipment the partnership deal said would be paid for by
That Center Manager/Owner
That had the parcel
That lay under the Convention Center that Rick built.
That kitchen equipment that was going to be the cost of
That Center Manager/Owner
That had the parcel
That lay under the Convention Center that Rick built.
This is the lawyer who looked in vain for the city commission-executed PARTNERSHIP CHANGE
Permitting
That Administrator to work with Rick to bill the city for
That kitchen equipment that was going to be the cost of
That Center Manager/Owner
That had the parcel
That lay under the Convention Center that Rick built.
This is the Architect
Paid to prevent contracting snafus
Who got excluded from reviewing the purchase for which
That lawyer found no partnership change to allow
That Administrator to work with Rick to bill the city for
That kitchen equipment that was going to be the cost of
That Center Manager/Owner
That had the parcel
That lay under the Convention Center that Rick built.
This is the land right
Augusta found it had under its Convention Center after
That Architect noted his exclusion from the purchase review that might have stopped
That which the lawyer found no partnership change to allow
That Administrator to work with Rick to bill the city for
That kitchen equipment that was going to be the cost of
That Center Manager/Owner
That had the parcel
That lay under the Convention Center that Rick built.
This is the Manager/owners parcel value
for which Augusta was forced to trade the equipment to use its own building
on
That empty land right Augusta found it had after
That Architect noted his exclusion from the purchase review that might have stopped
That which the lawyer found no partnership change to allow
That Administrator to work with Rick to bill the city for
That kitchen equipment that was going to be the cost of
That Center Manager/Owner
That had the parcel
That lay under the Convention Center that Rick built.
These are the $8250 in 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 campaign contributions from the Center Manager/Owner
Rick got after buying
That equipment value it became necessary to trade for
That empty land rights Augusta found it had after
That the Architect noted his exclusion from the purchase review that might have noted
That which the lawyer found no partnership change to allow
That Administrator to work with Rick to bill the city for
That kitchen equipment that was going to be the cost of
That Center Manager/Owner
That had the parcel
That lay under the Convention Center that Rick built.
This is the rival donkey in Congress grinning like a mule eating briars
That Rick got those campaign contributions from the Center Manager/Owner seeing
That equipment value it became necessary to trade for
That land right Augusta found it had after
That Architect noted his exclusion from the purchase review that might have noted
That which the lawyer found no partnership change to allow
That Administrator to work with Rick to bill the city for
That kitchen equipment that was going to be the cost of
That Center Manager/Owner
That had the parcel
That lay under the Convention Center that Rick built.
In early 2012, Augusta faced a dilemma. It had constructed a $15 million parking deck that it did not own. Local activists with the Augusta Today Facebook group and CityStink.net had alerted the media when their research of real estate titles at the Clerk of Court’s office showed that the land was not owned by the city.
Cost recovery analyst Al Gray and Brad Owens took over the commission chambers to address the crowd and insist upon rights of audit, in what was seen as a one-sided contract.
Augusta’s Sales and Use Tax-funded project management firm was up for contract renewal. After behind-the-scenes support of the commissioners, the contractor reduced the contract price by about $184,000.
How a multidisciplinary review of an already-negotiated sales and use tax exemption package, including analysis of equipment purchase orders and contracts, produced $millions in additional savings.
This effort required study of the technical data and vendor operating manuals, knowledge of sales tax exemptions and application in a “direct-use” state, understanding of how tax codes were input to produce tax accrual reports, and taking the initiative to appeal that which had already been established.
