Consider these fictitious,

hypothetical situations:

The City Council hires a police

chief and city judge and agrees that as part of their pay packages they

get a cut of traffic fines. In addition, the chief gets a rent-free office

in the police department to set up his own privately owned bail bonding

business.

Or this: As part of the pay

package of the city building inspector, the inspector gets to keep a percentage

of the license fees and inspection fees charged by his office.

Or this: The city recreation

department director pockets a portion of all the city youth league fees

and rec class fees. In addition, the rec department head sets up a rent-free

sports shop in the Kedron rec center with a batting cage. Every kid who

plays youth baseball on city fields must pay the rec director to practice

in his for-profit batting cage.

Do you suppose somebody ought

to get fired or go to jail for these activities? Of course, all these

are fictitious scenarios, completely out of the realm of outrageous possibility.

Or this: The publicly-paid

executive director of the development authority gets a specific-dollar

cut of every tennis lesson taught at the city-owned tennis center. All

league teams are required to take tennis lessons. Plus the director owns

a monopoly pro shop rent-free in the city-owned facility and uses development

authority employees to run the for-profit shop for his benefit.

Oops. That's not hypothetical.

That's going on right now, in broad daylight, with the smiling approval

of an appointed city authority and past benevolent city councils.

How could this happen, right

under our noses? How could ex-Mayor Bob Lenox, ex-City Councilman Robert

Brooks, now a member of the Development Authority of Peachtree City, the

Fayette County Chamber of Commerce, DIRECT PAC, state Rep. Lynn Westmoreland

and assorted former office holders and office seekers how could they ever

have given their approval to such a poorly managed, blatantly unethical,

possibly even illegal, sweetheart arrangement?

Does the blatancy of the activity

lessen its stench? Is it OK to disregard laws and ethical codes so long

as you are a mover and shaker in Peachtree City and your intent is to

provide an appropriate amenity for 600 members of your publicly-owned

club?

It seems that so long as one

is doing something "for the good of Peachtree City," one expects

to get away with actions for which any rural county commissioner or podunk

city official would instinctively know would get him thrown in jail.

I've heard the argument that

such arrangements are common with pro shops across the country. Well,

yes, in privately owned country clubs.

In most places I know, life

gets more complicated when you are dealing with public facilities, public

officials, public money. A new set of very understandable rules comes

into play. Unless it's in Peachtree City. That's different. For some,

only good intentions matter there, not law and ethics.

And these are all good people.

Well, yes. But, like in the game of tennis, the rules apply to good people

too. Tennis is a game of exact rules, specific boundary lines, unmistakable

out of bounds areas.

Both the written and the unwritten

rules have been broken in the tennis center scandal. The DAPC and its

executive director have played all over the court and on both sides of

the net and out beyond the fences, all in the name of doing good for Peachtree

City.

It should never have begun,

back yonder in the administration of ex-Mayor Lenox. And it is a scandal

that it continues to this day, right under our noses.

A laundry list of offenses:

· Commingled public and

private funds. Pay for use of a city-owned tennis court and the public

fee goes into the same pot as the pro shop's sale of tennis balls and

court shoes. And the accounting for the two is sloppy or nonexistent.

· No budget for years

for two venues with multiple millions in income and expenses. A public

body that operates for years before even asking for a budget in the past

year after the city's new mayor raises a stink about it.

· Management sweetheart

deals (percentages of tennis lessons, rent-free pro shop, no pro shop

employees' salary expenses because that's paid for with public money)

that would get public officials in other parts of the state fired or jailed.

· A multimillion-dollar

expansion program with little or no basic accounting procedures involved.

Scott Bradshaw, who resigned in disgust last week, charged that even more

than a year later, the staff still cannot produce a coherent report of

where all the public money went.

· Cost overruns of more

than $500,000, most undocumented and unapproved by the managing authority,

the DAPC.

· Unpaid construction

and vendor bills.

· A continuing debt load

of more than $1 million, with no discernible means to repay. The bank

loans to DAPC from Peachtree National Bank and Region's Bank appear to

be unsecured, since the DAPC does not own either the Fred Brown Amphitheater

or the tennis center. And now the DAPC has bailed out of its management

contract, tossing the overfed orphans back into the city fathers' laps.

Thanks a lot, DAPC, for this fine mess you leave us taxpayers with. So

who's going to pay off those DAPC bank loans? State law forbids the city

from assuming the debt without a referendum.

Maybe state Rep. Westmoreland,

in the midst of his run for Congress, might want to call for a special

session of the legislature to retroactively undo that law, as well as

the laws against public officials profiting from private transactions

with their public employer. You remember Westmoreland unilaterally undertook

to rewrite state law earlier this year to allow the DAPC to continue to

manage the two facilities, despite Mayor Steve Brown's urging to take

the facilities from the DAPC and put it under a new sports and entertainment

authority for more accountability. Wonder how Westmoreland feels about

that decision now.