Four Athens-area state legislators met with Athens-Clarke County (ACC) Commissioners Nov. 11 to hear the commission’s wish list for items of local interest they’d like the legislature to act on. The discussions were friendly - and even the Republican legislators didn’t disagree with commissioners on most of the 15 items presented - but a big underlying issue was raised by a handout that Mayor Heidi Davison passed out. It listed over a dozen recent “unfunded mandates” - state and federal requirements like soil erosion and stormwater enforcement, or having to replace all road signs to meet new reflectivity standards - that the county must pay for, even while state money is cut (for Superior Court judges, for example) or promised money is eliminated. But Representative Bob Smith warned that the result of state budget-cutting is “not going to be pretty for the cities; it’s not going to be pretty for the counties.”

The twice-yearly meetings of commissioners and legislators have sometimes been tense in the past, especially about the commission’s desire to raise the local hotel/motel tax. The 7 percent tax on lodging is an “equitable” funding source, Commissioner Kelly Girtz said, that allows out-of-town visitors (football fans, for example) to pay costs for the services they require (like extra game-day policing). Commissioners want to raise the tax to 8 percent. But Rep. Smith, particularly, has opposed any increase. Smith said nothing last week on the matter, but fellow Republican Ralph Hudgens didn’t dismiss it outright, and asked several questions about the details.

Nor did Senator Hudgens dismiss the possibility of putting limits on private water withdrawals by homeowners who drill their own wells - or pump from a river or lake if they live next to one - in order to have unlimited water for landscaping. “What if everybody that lives adjacent to the Oconee River just

put a pump in there and drew out 99,000 gallons of water a day?” asked Commissioner Kathy Hoard. (They might be able to do without a permit, since state law begins regulating such surface withdrawals at the threshold of 100,000 gallons a day.) “We don’t have the tools” to discourage such withdrawals, Hoard said, even while other citizens are being asked to conserve water. Hudgens acknowledged the problem, but said such restrictions should be decided by the State Water Council once it has assessed regional water needs under the new statewide water management act.

Democratic representatives Doug McKillip and Keith Heard also attended the session (Sen. Bill Cowsert was absent). All the legislators seemed sympathetic to the county’s desire for a sales tax (subject to voter approval) to fund public transportation, and Mayor Davison said she expects the Legislature to approve some such option this year.

Rep. Smith was all enthusiasm about Athens Tech’s planned life sciences building and the prospects for entrepreneurship and local job growth in the biosciences. But “in order to create these jobs that OneAthens is talking about, we’re going to have to change the way we do business,” Smith said. Two years ago, he said, out of 25,000 undergraduate degrees awarded, Georgia universities produced only one high school physics teacher.

Smith also seemed to have gotten religion about passenger rail. “We created the rail in America, and now we’re lagging in it,” he said, citing “bullet trains” that run in Europe and Japan. A “Brain Train” to Atlanta that runs only 55 miles per hour? “It’d be nice,” Smith said, “but 210’s nicer.”

John Huie

jphuie@athens.net