Thank you for this voter guide. The section on the 3 amendments was very helpful.

However, I found most of the candidate profiles to be overly superficial and frequently focused on unimportant issues.

Your section on the US Senate race was poor. Your profile of Jim Martin was shallow and dismissive. Yet, this race is the highest profile (excepting of course the presidential race). The fact that you did such a lousy job exposes your bias as a Republican talking point rag. Why bother trying to masquerade as a legitimate newspaper, why not rename your paper, "The Right-wing Rag".
 

It's a great guide. Thanks. But of course the Chamber supports the three amendments. It’s the ultimate lobbyist for the industries that want to profit by playing fast and loose with state and county revenue. As one developer said about it, “The devil is in the details,” and like the Chamber, Sunday Paper didn’t give all the details.

Amendment 1: It isn’t the large landowners that require a tax incentive to hold off on development; it’s the smaller landowners who tend to sell their parcels for development. Timber companies own many of the undeveloped 200+ acre parcels in Georgia, and they don't intend to develop the property at all. They just want the tax break. The state loses the revenue and we get nothing for it. Unless we want the poor, helpless timber industry to avoid paying their already unfair share of property taxes, don't vote for it.

Amendment 2: TADs are being used, in place of impact fees, to attract developers to urban and suburban properties even when the property is the most desirable and marketable, and developers are lined up to bid on it. Instead of the developer chipping in to cover the cost of dramatic change to the communities’ infrastructure, the homeowners and retailers will pay the price. Uncontrolled use of TADs, especially without impact fees, just increases developer profit on the backs of homeowners and the school district. But developers want it so maybe we should vote for it anyway.

Amendment 3: This is the worst change Georgia could suffer. This only applies to new PRIVATE communities that counties don’t want to support, creating little fortresses of private cities and neighborhoods around the state. It’s an easier way to make more profit building more barriers and increasing exurban traffic. And worst of all, we are changing the Constitution to appoint developers as self-monitored tax collectors; floating their own bonds at public rates to cover the costs they should get financed. It’s the wrong way the finance the wrong kind of community in rural areas that Amendment 1 is asking to conserve.

Are we completely insane?

Bill