Your responsibility as a reasonable Gwinnett resident (and a long-time reader of my newsletter!) is to cut through the hysteria and educate yourself on what will certainly be a contentious public debate with plenty of misinformation to go around.

Your involvement can begin now. There’s a “call to action” at the end of this article, so please read on.

Background

In 2009, a private company approached the county with the idea of selling or privatizing Briscoe Field. The county had received other offers in the past but the proposal from Propeller Investments was unique. First, the company seemed to know what it was doing and had some big names on its board of advisors. More importantly, the Federal Aviation Administration was accepting applications for five slots in its Airport Privatization Pilot Program. From a county press release:

“Congress established the FAA’s Airport Privatization Pilot Program to explore privatization as a means of generating access to various sources of private capital for airport improvement and development. Private companies may own, manage, lease and develop public airports. The Act authorized the FAA to permit up to five public airport sponsors to sell or lease an airport and to exempt the sponsor from certain federal requirements that could otherwise make privatization impractical.”

As fortune would have it, Gwinnett snagged one of the five program slots. The exploration of privatization could move forward.

The county then issued a Request for Qualifications, the next step in the process, to identify firms that had the financial resources and management capability to improve and run Briscoe Field. Three responses were received, including one from Propeller Investments. The other two appeared, in my opinion, to be from shell companies with little substance. Since the RFQ, Propeller has been the most proactive in presenting its vision for Briscoe.

Then the train left the rails. A special grand jury determined that the County Commission had overpaid millions for several tracts of land, oftentimes for no other reason than to benefit friends of a particular Commissioner or to exact political payback on a fellow board member. Chairman Charles Bannister allegedly lied to the grand jury, then resigned abruptly to avoid indictment. District 4 Commissioner Kevin Kenerly was indicted for bribery and failure to disclose his financial interest in some of the deals. Kenerly resigned later under public pressure with just days left in his term.

The remaining Commissioners decided to back-burner talk about the airport until a new Chairman could be elected and take office this month.

Limiting Our Options

D-4 Commissioner John Heard, whose district includes the airport, campaigned against privatization and scheduled service last year and even helped to launch a citizens’ group to oppose it. Immediately upon taking office, Heard announced that he would ask the Commission to remove ticketed service from further consideration. He added a resolution to that effect to the most recent board meeting agenda.

Heard and the other Commissioners subsequently deferred to newly-elected Chairman Charlotte Nash’s request to table a vote until the May 3 meeting. (Commissioners Mike Beaudreau, Lynette Howard and Shirley Lasseter were prepared to defeat Heard’s resolution.) The Commission scheduled the public hearing that will occur this evening, April 28, at 7 pm at 12Stone Church on Buford Drive in Lawrenceville. [Details]

Next Steps

I presently favor privatizing Briscoe Field and am excited about the possibility of catching an AirTran-like regional flight from a small, family-friendly airport just 15 minutes from my home. I was fortunate to be asked to design and host the web site for the “pro-privatization folks” at www.FlyGwinnettForward.com. As a consequence, I have seen pages of research and spent hours exploring the issue on my own. So far, I like what I see.

“Fly Gwinnett Forward” is a group of community leaders who believe that scheduled service at Briscoe would benefit the county and the region in numerous ways. The group is committed to providing you with factual information in a calm and reasoned way. You can read more about these individuals at their site. The group also has a Twitter page at www.twitter.com/flygwinnett and a Facebook page at www.facebook.com/flygwinnettforward.

Regardless of your present opinion, I hope that you, like me, are 100% in favor of our County Commission having as much information in their hands as possible– whether they approve privatization, privatization with scheduled service, or nothing at all.

I share the opinion expressed by numerous community leaders and the Gwinnett Daily Post editorial page:“…the right way to proceed with the Briscoe Field issue is to have a clear idea of what is on the table and the only way to do that is to hear the actual proposals. Until then, people are saying no or yes to the unknown.”

It is extremely interesting to me that the same people who criticize the Commission for failing to make informed decisions and seek public input on recent hot button issues (land deals, garbage transfer stations, baseball stadiums, etc.) now want the Commission to make a decision on airport privatization without full information and without allowing the public to become fully engaged.

We will have plenty of time to discuss very legitimate concerns– added noise, the impact on property values, traffic congestion and more. But it would be irresponsible for the Commission to limit its options before the process even began.

What You Can Do Today

Personally, I do not believe that tonight’s public hearing has much value, as the GDP noted. The Commissioners have specifically asked, however, to hear from citizens who favor a full investigation of the possibilities and an open, spirited debate of substantive issues.

If you can attend tonight’s meeting, please do. You may not be one of the 40-50 citizens who will be able to speak, but your presence says a lot by itself. Whether or not you attend tonight, please go to www.FlyGwinnettForward.com now and select the link at the top of the middle column. You will be able to send the following message to the Commissioners:

“Dear Commissioner, do not limit our options at Briscoe Field! Please issue a Request for Proposals (RFP) to collect the info needed to make a decision based on fact and logic. This opportunity is too important to our county to dismiss it prematurely. Thank you for your service.”

Those trying to limit our options at Briscoe are very loud and very angry. It is extremely important that the Commission receive this message from you today. [Go]

While you are at the FlyGwinnettForward site, subscribe to their newsletter. If you’re a Facebook member, check out their page and tell your FB friends about it. You will also find commentary on various issues and rebuttals of the most common arguments against privatization at “A Better Informed Gwinnett.”

I welcome your feedback on this unique opportunity in the comment section below or you can contact me by email at  bob@bobgriggs.com.

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11:58a: minor tweaks

The article also serves to highlight the need for a more comprehensive local immigration enforcement plan. Every offender detained under 287-g constitutes an unjustified burden on Gwinnett taxpayers, even if they only spend a couple of nights in jail before being deported.

A better approach would be to adopt a local version of the three-year-old Arizona law that requires businesses to enroll in the free, federal E-Verify program to qualify for a business license. If Gwinnett’s leaders eliminate the primary reason for illegal immigrants to live in Gwinnett—jobs—they minimize the impact of illegal aliens and their families on publicly-funded services including the jail.

Still, according to The Times’ analysis, 200,000 illegal immigrants in Georgia are driving to work daily. For them, the new laws mean any police stop, whether for a violation that caused an accident, or for a broken taillight or another driver’s mistake, can lead to deportation. Since 2006, thousands of immigrants, mostly from Latin America, have been deported from Georgia after traffic violations, often shaking up long-settled families.

Illegal immigrants who drive risk more than a ticket – Hawaii News – Staradvertiser.com

Sounds like time for a recall vote, doesn’t it?

Today, former Evermore CID Chairman Dwight Harrison will launch a recall effort– his second in less than two years– against two fellow board members, Emory Morsberger and Don Robison. The problem is that Morsberger and Robison aren’t guilty of anything except missing a few meetings earlier this year.

It was, however, under Harrison’s administration as chairman that the alleged gross abuses of the public’s trust described above occurred. If Morsberger and Robison are guilty of anything, it is of being too nice. To date, they and other board members have refused to expose Harrison’s abuses and air publicly the issues that have ripped the CID apart in recent months.

I suspect that, after today, that will change.

My views of Dwight Harrison are well known. I consider him to be one of the most devious and vindictive individuals in public office today. District 3 voters wisely rejected him for Commissioner in 2004. The business owners on Hwy. 78 (who elected Harrison to the CID and supported his recall campaigns) would do well to reject him now. The future of the CID is at stake.

Check back often for more reasons why “Dwight Ain’t Right” for the Evermore CID. I have also published additional comments here.

From the AJC:

After Harrison presents the petition to the board at the 2:30 p.m. meeting Monday, he said he will deliver it to Gwinnett County officials for verification. The earliest the recall election could happen is Jan. 26, Harrison said.

Evermore CID recall petition presented Monday  | ajc.com

Gwinnett County has no such policies. Sure, leaders crow about the county’s participation in 287(g) – a token, marginally cost-effective enforcement effort. Meanwhile, Mexican drug cartels and child prostitution rings use the county’s immigrant population as cover for their illicit activities.

The three-year, $385,000 study – released Tuesday by the university’s Center for Survey Research – also found that the county’s noncitizen Hispanic population, legal and illegal, dropped by 7,700 from 2006 to 2008, and that illegal immigrants accounted for 2,000 to 6,000 of that decline.

Attrition Works, Yet Again | Center for Immigration Studies

Those individuals were to be given an opportunity to contribute a statement or response which would be added to the report prior to its release. On Tuesday, however, Superior Court Judge Michael Clark reversed his order sealing the report for 1o days when it was leaked to the news media the day before. As a result, the report that was published on Tuesday included none of the named individuals’ responses.

The following is District 2 Commissioner Bert Nasuti’s addendum to the report. Nasuti, a bankruptcy attorney who served two terms on the Commission, did not seek reelection this year.

Addendum to Grand Jury Report Submitted by Bert Nasuti

I took the job of the Grand Jury very seriously. I was never disrespectful of the Grand Jury, or the tasks they undertook, in or out of their presence. To the extent the Grand Jury interpreted my view of their tasks any differently, those impressions are incorrect.

Much of the information in this report, regarding the specific history of certain property purchases and the parties involved, is the first time this Commissioner was made aware of said information, notwithstanding the fact that career, senior department head level employees of Gwinnett County, as well as possibly another Commissioner, were fully aware of the information while the transactions were being discussed, negotiated, and eventually closed. The fact this information was not provided to this Commissioner, verbally or otherwise, is regrettable.

The Grand Jury makes note of the workloads of District Commissioners and the lack of communication between staff and the Board. County staff apparently told the Grand Jury information provided to the Board was adequate. Not one of the properties involved in the investigation were located in my District nor brought before the board by myself. Staff was asked questions about each purchase – questions came from different Board members and were usually along the lines of “Does this purchase fit within the long range plan” or “Will this purchase fit the need within a particular area” and in many cases “do you support this purchase”. There was not even one instance when staff did not support a purchase or for that matter, even intimate that maybe it wasn’t a good purchase choice, wasn’t a good use of taxpayer funds, or that the staff may prefer another location.

The Grand Jury takes issue with the Board’s reliance upon staff yet notes that the overall workload of part-time Commissioners makes independent research and review of many board decisions, impossible. The end result is that the board’s reliance upon the opinions of executive level professionals was and is necessary and reasonable and routine in government administration . As you might expect, the decisions made relying on the staff opinions could only be as good as the information provided – which it turns out, was incomplete, inaccurate, and sometimes possibly not disclosed.

The Grand Jury is to be commended for its work and recommendations. Its suggested remedial measures should be considered and implemented by the board to the extent their authority allows, with consideration given to the legislature considering an expansion of the board structure as well.