Economist.com Cities Guide: Atlanta Briefing - April 2006

News this month

Campbell in the soup

On March 10th, after two days of deliberation, the jury returned verdicts in the trial of Bill Campbell, Atlanta’s mayor from 1994 to 2002. The charges involved Mr Campbell’s handling of city contracts while he was mayor. He was found guilty on three counts of tax evasion, but not guilty on charges of racketeering and bribery. The verdicts were the culmination of a lurid six-week trial that included testimony from several of Mr Campbell's former underlings, a former golfing partner (who admitted to delivering payments from a contractor in the mayor’s golf bag), and a former local television presenter, who said her affair with Mr Campbell included trips to Paris, paid for in cash.

The verdicts disappointed prosecutors, who had spent six years investigating Mr Campbell before bringing him to trial. The ex-mayor is not due to be sentenced until June 13th. But as a convicted felon, he may lose his licence to practise law in Georgia and Florida, where he has lived since leaving office. It is up to the local bar association to decide.

Capitol offence

Police in Washington, DC, have requested a warrant for the arrest of Cynthia McKinney, a Democratic congresswoman who represents Georgia’s fourth district. Ms McKinney, who lost her seat in 2002 and regained it in 2004, reportedly slapped a police officer after he tried to keep her from entering the Capitol building on March 29th. Ms McKinney, who was not wearing her congressional lapel pin at the time, had tried to evade the metal detectors, which members of congress are allowed to do. In her defence, she claimed that the officer had “inappropriately touched” her and that she was a victim of racial profiling (she is black). Ms McKinney's lawyer said she had been “assaulted” by the officer, was “in fear for her safety” and would seek a criminal investigation against him.

Ms McKinney has made headlines before. In 2001 she was widely derided for suggesting that George Bush might have known in advance about the September 11th attacks. More recently she apologised for using federal money to fly Isaac Hayes, a singer and prominent Scientologist, to a ribbon-cutting ceremony in Atlanta.

Korean careers

State officials celebrated the announcement on March 13th that Kia, a South Korean carmaker, had signed a deal to build a new plant in West Point, a town in north-west Georgia. The $1.2 billion factory, which should be running by 2009, is the first to relocate to Georgia in a wave of carmakers heading south. Toyota has a plant in Kentucky; Honda and Hyundai both have one in Alabama; and Nissan has one in Mississippi (which reportedly offered $1 billion in incentives for the Kia plant). In 2003 DaimlerChrysler halted a deal to build a plant near Savannah, Georgia.
With the factory expected to create more than 2,000 jobs, and five suppliers expected to create another 2,000, Sonny Perdue, the state governor, has reason to believe that securing the plant will help his re-election campaign this year. But the jobs did not come cheap: Georgia reportedly offered Kia some $400m in incentives—about $160,000 per job—mainly in tax breaks and land.

County towns

The Georgia state legislature has approved bills to allow two communities in north Fulton County and two in south Fulton County to vote on potential incorporation. Once incorporated, they would be able to collect their own tax revenues and provide their own municipal services, such as law enforcement and water/sewerage. If they remain unincorporated, the county will continue to provide such services. Milton and Johns Creek, the two northern communities, will vote in July; Chattahoochee Hill Country and South Fulton must wait until the summer of 2007.

Fulton County already contains nine incorporated cities, including most of the city of Atlanta and the newest city, Sandy Springs, which voted to incorporate in 2005. The people in relatively wealthy Sandy Springs complained that the taxes they paid to Fulton County were delivering poor municipal services, and so they voted to take control of such services themselves. But the trouble for the rest of the county is that as more and more incorporated communities keep their tax dollars for themselves, service levels elsewhere in the county worsen. Moreover, one state lawmaker, representing the northern Fulton city of Alpharetta, plans to introduce a bill next year splitting the county into two, with the Chattahoochee River as the border. If that happens, the new northern county will be considerably wealthier than its southern neighbour, which could exacerbate the inequality in tax-funded services.

From the ashes

April 21st will see the start of a $23m renovation of downtown’s Winecoff Hotel, which was Atlanta’s tallest when it opened in 1913. The Winecoff is best known as the site of the deadliest hotel fire in American history: 119 people died in a blaze that broke out on December 7th 1946, as the “absolutely fireproof” hotel lacked fire escapes, fire doors or sprinklers. The disaster led to revisions in many state fire codes, including Georgia’s. The building became a retirement home in the 1960s, but by the mid-1980s most of it was vacant. It is scheduled to reopen as a 127-room boutique hotel in spring 2007.

Catch if you can

April 2006

Bear on the Square Festival

April 21st-23rd 2006

Once a gold-rush town, Dahlonega, north of Atlanta, now boasts a large tourist economy and puts on festivals such as “Bear on the Square”. This annual three-day event began in 1996, named after a baby bear that had to be rescued from a tree in the town square. Meant as a celebration of north Georgian culture—North Georgia State University’s Appalachian Studies programme is a sponsor—the festival features plenty of family-friendly activities, including bluegrass music, a crafts auction, a “musical instrument petting zoo”, picnics, a pie-baking contest and an old-time medicine show. This weekend Dahlonega will also host a stage of the Tour de Georgia, an annual cycling race, and a gold-panning championship.

Events are mostly in Dahlonega’s town square and in Boisson Hall. Some are free; evening concerts are $15. For more information, see the Dahlonega Chamber of Commerce or the festival’s website.

More from the Atlanta cultural calendar