Let's all take

a deep breath.

The Development

Authority of Peachtree City has turned an otherwise mundane funding dispute

into a political mud bath. In a letter to The Citizen Wednesday, the whole

appointed seven-member board accused one elected City Council member of

trying to enrich himself at the Authority's expense and painted the elected

mayor as a one-man crusade to get his hands on the hotel-motel tax. And,

the Authority chairman described the Council as "ethically challenged."

Having used that phrase myself, I'm still astonished by who is brandishing

it in the current situation.

I confess I've

never heard of such a bizarre political confrontation in all my years

of covering news. It's quite a spectacle: An obscure, unelected, answer-to-nobody,

narrowly specialized group spitting in the face of the very Council that

levies taxes on behalf of the authority and appoints its members.

Somebody's

boxers have gotten into a big wad. Nobody is covered in glory in this

mess.

Current Council

members Steve Rapson and Dan Tennant voted last year to approve a contract

between the taxing authority the city council and the receiving bodies

the city's development and airport authorities. Now they say they didn't

realize they were voting on a "substantial change" to an already

negotiated intergovernmental contract.

The change

was substantial. Previously, the council had ultimate prerogative to hike

the tax on hotel and motel rooms, lower it or abolish it. Subject to "no

substantial change," the Council voted last year to let then-Mayor

Bob Lenox and City Attorney Rick Lindsey iron out remaining differences

with the two authorities.

Lenox and Lindsey

negotiated new language that allows the two unelected authorities to veto

any future council decision to change the tax, up or down. Mayor Steve

Brown says that's not kosher. Rapson and Tennant say, in effect, they

were snookered into voting for a contract that had been profoundly altered

from what had been represented to them by Lenox and Lindsey.

Wednesday night,

four councilmen, absent Annie McMenamin, voted to appoint a special counsel

to find out who knew what when and whether the current council can get

out of the pact.

Ironically,

the change had been requested by the airport authority, not the development

authority, though the development board is the one hollering the loudest

to keep control of the cookie jar.

Jim Wooten,

one of the few sane voices on the AJC editorial board, has preached for

years about the dangers of letting unelected, unaccountable authorities

get hold of public tax money and spend it any way they choose. He probably

has noted that once the authority gets the money, it fights to keep it.

And so it is in Peachtree City.

Someone wiser

than I has said that persons do things in groups they would never consider

as individuals. Thus, I cast no aspersions on the individual members of

the development authority. I'm sure the six men and one woman are all

honorable people who volunteered for the good of their community.

Individually,

they are good folks, but collectively they are acting stupidly. They are

acting as if they have some sort of political constituency. Except for

the council that appoints them, they have no proper constituency.

We elected

the city council members. Nobody elected the authority members to anything

or for anything.

We get to toss

out city council members every four years. We get to choose them and we

get to reward them or punish them at the ballot box. We can hold each

and every council member accountable for every penny and every action.

That's not

so with our seven-member development authority. Nobody can hold the authority

members accountable for the use or misuse of public tax money. Unless

they commit a felony, they can't be removed by anybody for the duration

of their six-year terms. They can spend tax money on whatever they choose

in pursuit of "economic development," and nobody can tell them

not to. Nobody gets to vote on their decisions or their actions.

The one check

that elected, accountable officials have on such unelected, unaccountable

bodies is the power of the purse. The council has always been the taxing

power and could allocate such public money to the authority as the council

deemed appropriate. If the authority spent unwisely, the council always

had the ability to cut off the money.

Not anymore,

with this "substantial change" negotiated by Lenox and Lindsey

last year. Why would Lenox and Lindsey give away the council's power to

tax? Why would they want to subject future councils' tax decisions to

vetoes by two unelected, unaccountable boards?

Three members

of the development authority were appointed by Lenox and company last

year. Maybe that gives a clue.

The authority

has ranged far afield of its utilitarian mission of convincing companies

to locate plants in our industrial park. At Lenox's initiative, the development

authority took over the struggling amphitheater in the early 1990s and

then built a tennis center in Planterra Ridge. Lenox, himself a wealthy

tenant of the industrial park, has been one of the authority's biggest

boosters.

Maybe the authority

is trying to develop a power base and a constituency as well as an industrial

park. Maybe they want to be a power unto themselves. And maybe they shouldn't

be dabbling in politics, but they are.

The authority

is not alone in acting unwisely. Mayor Brown is jacking up his rating

on the stupid meter by refusing to let opponents of his policies speak

to the council during council meetings.

His silencing

of dissenting opinions at public meetings is more than dumb; it is rising

to the realm of jackass foolishness. Brown must learn one major lesson:

Being mayor means you have to listen to everybody who wants to speak.

Everybody, especially those who disagree with you.

Brown is not

alone among elected officials who upon election seem to forget the value

of public debate. The school board, the county commission, city councils

all seem to think that putting stop watches on residents' comments is

a smart thing to do. Such group-think alienates even supporters of the

officials.

I say to Brown

and all local elected officials: Let the people speak. You were elected

to listen and to hear us and then to act. Do your first job, which is

to listen.

My advice to

otherwise good people on the various unelected boards and authorities:

Don't get power-hungry and don't think that you have some divine right

to public tax money. Let the folks who are elected make the decisions

on when to tax and how much to tax. Stop politicking and start doing your

narrowly defined, very specialized jobs.

New tennis

courts and big names at the amphitheater are nice things to have luxuries,

even but it's been a long dry spell for taxpaying industrial development

in Peachtree City. We need new taxpaying industries to locate in the industrial

park. What is the development authority doing about that?

The final question:

Should Steve Rapson be voting on anything to do with the development authority,

given that his wife is suing the authority?

Short answer:

No, he should not be voting. It may not technically or legally be a conflict

of interest, but it looks bad. A public official like an ethical lawyer

should avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest. Whatever his

reasons for voting, Rapson should sit this one out.