Fresh Loaf

Beltline, Georgia Department of Transportation and Amtrak officials have until tomorrow afternoon to update the U.S. Surface Transportation Board about the fate of the Decatur Belt, a strip of abandoned rail in Northeast Atlanta which all sides say they need to control for very different rail projects. (Here are some maps of the project and area in question.)

Late last week, residents of several at-risk neighborhood organizations — including Poncey-Highland, Inman Park and Old Fourth Ward — asked Amtrak and GDOT to scrap their plans for commuter or intercity rail running along the Decatur Belt. (Click here to read their Word Document press release.) While all the agencies promised to work together to try and resolve the issue, they’re keeping mum on how things have progressed. On Tuesday, Mayor Shirley Franklin told U.S. Congressman John Lewis the sides are still negotiating. Nonetheless, keep checking back for updates about the story.

In other Beltline news, some areas of the 22-mile loop of parks, trails and transit that would require rezoning are scheduled to be discussed — and possibly voted on — by the Atlanta City Council’s Community Development and Human Resources Committee on Monday, March 9 at 6 p.m.. Included are project areas near Old Fourth Ward, Grant Park, Northwest Atlanta, and others.

A full list of the areas follows after the jump. If you want to get involved, stop by City Hall or contact your councilmember.

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In January, Gov. Sonny Perdue told a banquet room filled with business folk that he had a grand plan to make Georgia more attractive for biotech companies.

The plan: He’d direct his floor leaders to introduce legislation that would grant legal immunity to drug companies whose products were approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Wrench, meet plans. The U.S. Supreme Court today ruled the FDA’s stamp of approval doesn’t exempt drug companies from product-negligence lawsuits.

In one of the most important business cases in years, the Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that a drug company is not protected from injury claims in state court merely because the federal government had approved the product and its labeling.

The 6-to-3 ruling went in favor of a Vermont musician, Diana Levine, who was awarded more than $6 million after losing much of her arm following a botched injection of an anti-nausea drug. It was a defeat for the Wyeth pharmaceutical company, which had asked the justices to throw out the award, and by extension other companies that might have pursued Wyeth’s line of argument in similar cases.

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The key issue before the justices was whether the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of drug labels should pre-empt lawsuits in state courts contending, as Ms. Levine’s did, that the labels did not contain adequate warnings.

UPDATE: Johnny Legal points out in the comments that Perdue could still pursue his plan. After the jump, another opinion from an anonymous friend familiar with legalese.

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It’s not just snowing, Atlanta — it’s THUNDERSNOWING! Yar! What is “thundersnow?” It’s a perplexing mix of God’s belches and Bill Brasky’s dandruff. It has nothing to do with the weather.

The Georgia Department of Transportation is asking motorists to curtail their driving. Schools tomorrow may or may not close. Television reporters are at Piedmont Park and in Coweta County (?) looking miserable. You can follow all the fun on Twitter at #atlsnow and #thundersnow, among others.

And there’s also a commemorative t-shirt you can buy:

(Image from Regator’s “thundersnow” t-shirt page on Zazzle)

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Will April 3 look like this?

Earlier this month, the Georgia General Assembly took the unprecedented step of adopting a stretched-out legislative calendar that called for lawmakers to hold session only three days a week through the end of March, recess for at least eight weeks and then re-convene for five days in late June to finalize the state budget.

That was before Congress approved the $787 billion federal stimulus package – including close to $6 billion for Georgia – and before the state had finalized its revenue projections. Now that state budget-writers know roughly how much money they’ve got to work with, there’s really no reason to drag out the session any longer than necessary. Thursday was the 24th legislative day.

According to a little Gold Dome bird – who claims to have seen the soon-to-be-dropped bill – the new end date for the 2009 Legislation session will be no later than Friday, April 3. That would be one day earlier than last year.

Apparently, the leadership hasn’t quite settled on whether to go the full 40 days or try to wrap things up a few days early. If they opt for the latter, the session could be over as early as Wednesday, March 25. I’ll believe that when I see it.

(Photo by Thomas Wheatley)

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After hours of debate, the Georgia House of Representatives passed a controversial bill that would allow Georgia Power to charge customers in advance for financing costs on two proposed nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle.

The bill now moves back to the state Senate where it originated and passed by a wide margin. That chamber will then send it to Gov. Sonny Perdue’s desk for signature. The governor has not said whether he supports or opposes the measure. It merits a mention, however, that Perdue’s chief of staff is a former Georgia Power executive.

Full list of how lawmakers voted will be posted when it’s available.

(Photo courtesy of Plant Vogtle)

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Arson. Black-market firearms. Cocaine trafficking. Armed robbery. Police extortion. Naked ladies.
Last week’s federal conspiracy trial of strip-club careerist Boyd Smith felt like a crash course in two-bit criminality, coupled with a seminar in sleaze.

Smith, the former manager of Platinum 21 on Cheshire Bridge Road, is charged with having schemed with two colleagues to torch the competing Club Onyx in early 2007. Each hour of court testimony peeled back a new layer of scuzz.

Smith worked for Howard “Bit” Thrower, who oversaw Platinum 21 and Flashers in Sandy Springs on behalf of owner Harry “Mario” Freese. Thrower, a bear of a man who sounds like Kris Kristofferson with a mescal hangover, is an accused drug-runner-turned FBI informant who helped the feds nail two Fulton County police officers for shaking down Freese.

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Flanked by the Gold Dome’s top pachyderms, Gov. Sonny Perdue yesterday gave residents another peek at his plan to overhaul the state’s transportation agencies.

From Dave Williams at the Atlanta Business Chronicle:

Perdue unveiled plans Thursday to introduce legislation merging two transportation agencies created by former Gov. Roy Barnes into a new organization that essentially would take over the main planning and funding duties of the Georgia Department of Transportation.

The DOT would maintain its operations and maintenance functions and could compete with private highway contractors for road-building projects.

The State Transportation Authority would consist of 11 members appointed by the governor, lieutenant governor and speaker of the House. Its board would make policy decisions that now are the responsibility of the 13-member DOT board, which has one member representing each of Georgia’s congressional districts.

The bill, which is still being drafted, is expected to be longer than the Bible. Perdue told reporters he won’t support either the state Senate or House’s proposals to increase transportation funding until they tend to his reorganization effort.

(Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

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Never on a Sunday

This afternoon, I shuttled between two depressing committee meetings at the State Capitol — one in which a GOP lawmaker browbeat state university professors for having nationally recognized expertise in the field of sexual behavior and another for which the Christian Coalition had bused in dozens of fresh-scrubbed teens to testify against their elders being allowed to buy a six-pack on Sunday.

“The Bible says alcohol is wrong,” declared one young lady.

One of the boys took a more pragmatic stance, asking, “The state might get a few more million dollars, but at what cost of the blood of people who crash and die?”

What cost indeed. Of course, the bill by Sen. Seth Harp, R-Midland, had its supporters. Kroger is for it. So is the convenience store industry and the Gwinnett Chamber of Commerce, whose representative framed the issue as one of “basic economic fairness,” since restaurants, stadiums and performance venues are currently allowed to serve booze on Sundays.

Harp himself told a heart-breaking story about soldiers from Fort Benning who were reunited with loved ones just before shipping out overseas, but because it was a Sunday, they were unable to properly party down. Well, maybe it was just me who was left quietly sobbing.

Anyway, the bill wouldn’t automatically allow Sunday sales. Instead, it would permit cities and counties to let voters decide. There are some cities in Georgia now that are completely dry on Sunday, restaurants included (I’m looking at you, Snellville). This bill wouldn’t change that, unless those places wanted to enter the 21st century.

The committee won’t vote on the bill until next week.

Attending both meetings, I was reminded of a favorite saying of a certain left-leaning legislator: “If Georgia didn’t have Atlanta, it would be Alabama.”

Except that in Alabama, you can buy beer on Sunday.

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WHITE ELEPHANTS Senate Bill 31 would provide safety net for Georgia Power

In 1974, Georgia Power broke ground on nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle near Augusta, embarking on a nuclear odyssey that would nearly bankrupt the company.

Almost 15 years later — and after several delays and environmental hurdles— the project’s construction costs ballooned from $680 million to a staggering $8.4 billion. And it wasn’t until then that Georgia Power could begin to recoup the cost from ratepayers.

Now, as the state’s largest utility moves forward on two new reactors at Plant Vogtle estimated at $6.4 billion, the first in nearly 30 years, the company wants to cover its assets — and it’s enlisted the assistance of a phalanx of lobbyists and a controversial legislative plan of attack.

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Architecture magazine Metropolis this month profiles the effort by Fulton County Commissioner Robb Pitts to raze — or is it renovate? — the historic Atlanta-Fulton County public library located downtown.

The library, completed in 1980, is the final work of famed Modernist architect Marcel Breuer and considered a masterpiece. The architecture community, enraged by the idea, wants to preserve the building.

From the magazine:

Having secured $85 million last November through a bond referendum, Pitts hopes to incorporate retail, dining, and performance space into a high-visibility property. An early choice was a site facing Centennial Olympic Park, a tourist destination bordered by such attractions as CNN Center, the Georgia Aquarium, and the World of Coca-Cola. But opening a new main branch would mean abandoning the existing one—a design that many argue is already a world-class piece of architecture.

It’s an excellent article and worth your time. Read it in full at Metropolis’ site.

To read more about or to join the preservation effort, visit local artist Max Eternity’s website.

(Photo courtesy of Wikipedia)

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Rumors have been swirling for weeks on Marietta Street about when — and on whom — the next shoe will drop. Just over the weekend, one AJC staffer told me the buzz around the building was that something big was about to come down.

Well, that hunch looks to have been correct. This morning, AJCers were asked to report to various small-bunch meetings at 11 a.m., where they were told “substantial” changes would be coming soon. Staffers were instructed not to discuss the content of the brief meetings, but from what I understand, they didn’t get many details anyway.

It seems the forthcoming changes will involve the merging of some sections of the print edition. This wouldn’t be a huge surprise to most observers, who’ve watched weekday sections shrink to eight, and sometimes even six, pages. There are days when the Metro section doesn’t contain a single paid ad, not counting paid obits, in-house promotional ads and trade-outs for AJC-sponsored events.

Apparently, the business section will be folded into the front, or “A” section. As for other changes, we’ll find out soon enough. But whatever happens, the result will be fewer jobs.

The AJC has gone through two rounds of buyouts — in spring 2007 and fall 2008 — and the feeling I get from staffers is that we won’t see a third round. Instead, the next step will be layoffs.

The logic goes that buyouts are fine if you have a bulging payroll and you simply want to lighten the overall load. But when you get down to the bone, you have to use a more precise tool to allow you to cut out redundancies while keeping the resources you need.

It’s not known when layoffs would happen, but the expectation is for sooner rather than later. More later…

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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Tom Coffin, the Atlanta arborist whose firing last summer caused a firestorm of controversy, says he’s suing the city.

In a suit filed Friday, Coffin’s attorneys say his supervisors at City Hall violated the state’s “whistleblower” statute when he was fired after raising questions about his colleagues’ alleged lax enforcement of the city’s tree ordinance.

“The City Council passed and the Mayor signed the Tree Protection Ordinance in recognition of how important trees are to the health and well-being of the city,” Coffin says in a press release. “I was hired to enforce the law and to ensure that my colleagues did so as well. My firing leaves the city with a broken ordinance and a mockery of enforcement. It is outrageous that I should have to sue for my job while the City, in the midst of a severe economic crisis, pays five field arborists to ‘look the other way’ and make excuses for their lack of performance and accountability to the law.”

Coffins wants the city to rehire him and pay compensatory damages. He is represented by Brian Spears and Gerry Weber, former legal director of the Georgia American Civil Liberties Union.

View the press release and a pasted version of the suit after the jump. You can also download a PDF of the suit here.

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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Ryan Gravel

The Beltline Partnership, the fundraising and public awareness arm of the $2.8 billion project that imagines Atlanta circled by parks, trails and transit, has new board directors.

Most prominent among those, especially for people who keep their eyes on smart growth and transit projects in the city, is Ryan Gravel. An urban designer who envisioned the Beltline as a graduate student at Georgia Tech, Gravel now works at local architecture firm Perkins + Will. He’s become more engaged with the Beltline since the Georgia Department of Transportation and Amtrak unexpectedly announced they want to use tracks near Piedmont Park for a commuter-rail project, putting the project in jeopardy.

Ray Weeks, the partnership’s founding chairman, is stepping down now that his term on the board has ended. He will continue to serve as one of the organization’s chief fundraisers. Weeks is succeeded by AGL Resources CEO John Somerhalder.

The partnership’s roster includes some of the city’s biggest business names. Since its founding, the organization has been vital in securing private funds to help pay for some of the public-works project’s costs.

Full release, with details of who’s joined the board, after the jump.

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In 2005, Doug Abramson — along with an army of Midtown residents and Atlanta activists who banded together as Friends of Piedmont Park — fought tooth and nail to not only battle plans for a controversial parking deck in Piedmont Park, but also push the city and Atlanta Botanical Garden to act in a transparent manner about their plans for a project proposed on public land.

The fight split the neighborhood and the city. Signs in residents’ front yards became billboards for support or opposition. In July 2008, after much heated debate and several legal skirmishes, a Fulton County Superior Court judge said Friends of Piedmont Park must pay damages to the garden.

Nonetheless, Abramson remains involved in efforts to make government more transparent and accountable. And on Feb. 28, the Georgia First Amendment Foundation will honor Abramson for his open-government work at its awards banquet at the Commerce Club in downtown Atlanta. That night, at a reception honoring Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears, Abramson will be presented with the 2009 Open Government Hero Award.

For more information about the banquet, one which is sure to attract many of the state’s legal bigwigs and activists who are open government advocates, visit the Georgia First Amendment Foundation.

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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The state Senate today passed a bill 38-16 that would allow Georgia Power to begin collecting fees from customers to help pay for two proposed nuclear reactors prior to their construction. (The Senate Press Office included in its release about the bill’s passage this hilarious photo to the right of the bill’s sponsor, state Sen. Don Balfour, R-Gavelville.)

The bill now moves to the House, where Jim Galloway of the AJC says lawmakers are generally warm to the idea.

Supporters of the bill say it’ll save the utility — and in turn, customers — money in the long run.

But many lawmakers and consumer groups oppose the move because they say it sidesteps the Public Service Commission  — and partially exempts big business and industrial customers from the increased rates.

For an excellent rundown of the controversial legislation, view my esteemed colleague Scott Henry’s post.

After the jump, Dave Williams of the Atlanta Business Chronicle reports some lawmakers’ thoughts about the bill.

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Senate Bill 31 — to allow Georgia Power to charge Georgians upfront for the construction cost of two planned nuclear reactors — was expected to come up for a floor vote today. But it didn’t even make it onto the debate schedule. Why was this?

Plant Vogtle

Word is, because the votes aren’t there — which would mean Sen. Don. Balfour, R-Snellville, the powerful Senate Rules chairman, hasn’t yet managed to persuade several of his fellow Republicans to support his mucho controversial bill.

Some of the hold-outs, I was told, include Pres. Pro Tem Tommie Williams, R-Lyons, and Sen. Dan Weber, R-Dunwoody, a usually conscientious pol who isn’t afraid to break party ranks. So I asked Weber.

“I’ll probably support the bill,” he told me. “My concern is that Georgia is facing a substantial shortfall in [electrical] generating capacity.”

Fair enough, but Georgia Power has said it would build the two nukes even if the bill doesn’t pass.

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First there was “Soulja Girl.” Now, meet “mugging gone wrong.”

A video in which a young man in a MARTA station appears to turn the tables on a would-be mugger is the latest slice of drama to hit YouTube. Early in the morning on May 3, 2008, a station security camera captured the following footage (I’ve loaded the victim’s video of the event, which includes his comments):

After the jump, some details about the video.

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As you may have read, Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle is now on Twitter, joining the likes of state Sen. Eric Johnson, R-Savannah, and state Rep. Steve Davis, R-McDonough. (What’s with the Republicans and Twitter? Are any Georgia Democrats using the service?)

Once you follow the bright-eyed lawmaker — who’s considered one of the frontrunners for governor in 2010 — he’s really quick about returning the favor.

Muwahaha! Prepare to be bombarded with 140-character accounts of my visit to the taxidermist and confusion about where I should dine tonight, Mr. Lieutenant Governor!

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Georgia, has requested AMTRAK President Joseph Boardman work with city and regional planners, officials and residents to resolve the “Decatur Belt” dispute between the federal agency, the Georgia Department of Transportation and Beltline officials.

Lewis says AMTRAK’s actions “have the potential to unnecessarily disrupt one of the most important public benefit projects that the City of Atlanta has undertaken in recent memory.” He adds that “these combined actions are not the model of a productive and healthy local, State and federal partnership with the shared goal of revitalizing transportation services in Metro Atlanta.”

Download a PDF of the letter here.

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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HIT THE BRAKES Beltline faces another obstacle — from GDOT and AMTRAK

If there’s one thing we’ve learned about the Beltline, the 22-mile loop of parks, trails and transit proposed to circle Atlanta, it’s that surprises are to be expected. And some interesting developments are afoot with the $2.8-billion project.

If you recall, Atlanta Beltline Inc. — the nonprofit agency in charge of planning and implementing the project — finalized its purchase of a 66-acre piece of property in October owned by Gwinnett County developer Wayne Mason and his son Keith, an Atlanta attorney. The Mason property included  land and transit right-of-way. The $66 million purchase riled city watchdogs not only for the ultimate payout to the Masons — more than double what father and son originally paid for the land in 2004 — but also the deal ABI cut with a private partner group it needed to buy out if it wanted to use tax-exempt bonds to finalize the purchase before a Halloween deadline. That’s background, and for all intents and purposes, irrelevant for the moment.

Beltline leaders hoped to complete planning the area, implement transit, and sell off excess land to developers. They would then re-invest the windfall from those sales back into the overall project. But before it could do anything with the property, it first had to abandon the transit right-of-way. That humdrum process is conducted by the U.S. Surface Transportation Board and largely involves just some time for public comment and a shuffling of papers. It was supposed to be a walk in the park.

Looks like that’s not turning out to be the case. An eleventh-hour move by the state Department of Transportation and AMTRAK has potentially thrown a wrench in the Beltline. And why those two odd entities decided to hold hands and insert themselves into the conversation — this late in the party — is making folks scratch their heads.

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Late Saturday night, a Grant Park couple’s home burned for 25 minutes before firefighting crews arrived. Officials are probing why it took the City of Atlanta 911 call center so long to relay the message to fire crews. A computer malfunction has hindered the department’s ability to determine the exact time the 911 call was received.

Below is a video of the fire posted on YouTube by the couple’s neighbor.

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Tom Coffin, former Atlanta arborist

Tom Coffin, the Atlanta senior field arborist whose firing last summer sparked a firestorm of controversy, says he’s mulling legal options if the city doesn’t rehire him.

In mid-December, his attorney told the city — in the form of an ante litum notice — that he planned to sue to under the city’s “whistleblower” statute. Coffin has maintained he was fired because he alerted superiors about alleged lax enforcement by his colleagues of the tree ordinance — an eco-minded yet controversial law that forces homeowners or businesses to meet criteria before cutting down trees. Coffin, whom we cheekily referred to as a real-life Lorax, helped write the ordinance, and has earned both praise and scorn from residents and developers for keeping a watchful eye on its enforcement.

In an open letter last week to the city council and residents, Coffin said he’d prefer to be rehired and get back to enforcing the tree ordinance rather than head to court to argue a case he thinks he can win.

Coffin writes:

“…I seek reinstatement to the Sr. Arborist position that I won through merit and lost through deceit. I wish to continue my nearly 12 years of service to the city in formulating, implementing and enforcing one of its signature environmental laws. I seek my job back. I ask for compensation for lost salary and benefits, and for the legal costs incurred by me since my firing in July 2008. These demands are reasonable and minimal. I ask that the [city's Public Safety] Committee recommend this result to Council in the interest of justice, fairness and economy.”

Beth Chandler, the city’s attorney, says the law department is reviewing Coffin’s claim. There is no timeline for when a decision will be made, she says.

In an earlier open letter to city council and residents, Coffin said the city’s tree ordinance, in his absence, has become a “dead letter.” Coffin, who travels around the city on a recumbent bicycle, told CL on Friday that even months after he was sacked by the city he still finds himself surveying trees and reporting possible violations to the arborist’s office.

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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It’s often been theorized that small-town newspapers have the best hope for surviving the withering of the print media that’s occurring in every large city in America — including, of course, Atlanta. If that theory proves to be correct in Georgia, it will be despite the best efforts of state Sen. Cecil Staton, R-Macon

Last year, Staton introduced a bill — SB 391, to be exact — that would effectively deal a death blow to most small and mid-sized newspapers in Georgia by stripping them of lucrative legal ads. Described simply, his measure would shift legal ads and public notices from local papers onto a website authorized by the Secretary of State’s office.

The danger of Staton’s bill, which has yet to be reintroduced this session, is not that it has powerful backers — although it does — or that he’s particularly skillful at pushing bills through. The danger lies in the fact that his idea — or some version of that idea — actually makes a great deal of sense.

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Welcome to the poorhouse.

This past Monday, AJC staffers were informed about the sudden “retirement” of their boss, publisher John Mellott. Perhaps the first question that popped into everyone’s mind was, Who retires at 51?

On Wednesday, during the newspaper’s quarterly staff meeting, employees got to meet the new publisher, one Doug Franklin, who has years of experience as a veteran newspaper executive. (Mellott, by contrast, had previously run another Cox subsidiary, Dent Wizard.)

They were told that the bottom had fallen out of the embattled paper’s revenues sometime around October, which served to confirm the widely held suspicion that Mellott had been pushed out.

Franklin also told the assembled crowd that the AJC is currently losing about $1 million every week.

From what I understand, that little news flash got everybody’s attention.

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Mayor Franklin continues to remind everyone that she has a thin skin. This time, it comes in the form of open letter released minutes ago and addressed to Sgt. Scott Kreher, president of the Atlanta police union, who had publicly scoffed at her proposal to raise taxes to hire more cops.

“Can the mayor be any more full of hot air on that one?” Kreher was quoted as saying in today’s AJC.

Kreher dismissed Franklin’s proposal to add 400 officers to the APD by the end of the year as so much empty political rhetoric. Even if the city had the money, Kreher told the newspaper, the mayor knows it would take longer than that to recruit, train and certify so many new officers.

Here are some excerpts from Shirley’s fairly lengthy reply:

I have your public comments and I faithfully appreciate the frustration you must feel as you advocate for the officers and the International Brotherhood of Police Officers members in recent weeks. In spite of the divisive comments you have made about me I believe we share a common goal, which is a safe city. I think we both recognize the essential role our police officers contribute to achieving this goal.

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