The federal Comptroller of the Currency shut down the First Southern National Bank of Statesboro Friday afternoon, bringing the number of bank failures in the state to 17 for this year and 68 since the onset of the great recession in 2008.

Both totals are the highest for any state.

Heritage Bank of the South, an Albany financial institution, agreed to acquire and assume all of the deposits of First Southern National Bank.

First Southern National Bank had $164.6 million in total assets and $159.7 million in total deposits as of June 30, according to numbers supplied by the FDIC.

The cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF) will be $39.6 million, which brings the total costs of Georgia’s bank failures since 2008 to nearly $9 billion.

Coincidentally, the Associated Press sent out an article by Shannon McCaffrey over the weekend that included comments from the chairman of another Georgia bank that failed this year, the Bartow County bank.

That’s the institution that loaned $2.2 million to a company owned by a pair of Georgia politicians, U.S. Rep. Tom Graves and Senate Minority Leader Chip Rogers, only to have Graves and Rogers default on the loan.

The former Bartow bank chairman, Morgan Akin, told the AP that the failure of Graves and Rogers to pay up on the loan they took “contributed significantly” to the ultimate failure of the Bartow County Bank.

Graves and Rogers recently reached a settlement on the loan default, an agreement for which the details have not been made public. From the article:

Akin said that while the arrangement may be fair and equitable for Graves and Rogers, it hasn’t been good for Bartow shareholders who saw the nearly 40-year-old community bank sink. Nor has it been fair, he said, to the FDIC, which says the bank’s failure is expected to cost $69.5 million. The FDIC is funded by insurance fees from banks.

Akin said he was speaking up because he felt only one side of the story had been represented. He said he was disappointed with Graves and Rogers, who cast themselves as champions of fiscal responsibility.

“They talk up the tea party stuff, but when it comes to their own finances, they’re irresponsible and leave the bank on the hook,” he said.

Another former board member, Lehmann Smith, backed up Akin’s claim that the default helped bring the bank down.

“We were just a small community bank, and that’s a whole lot of money,” Smith said.

Graves and Rogers secured that bank loan to purchase a motel in Calhoun called the Oglethorpe Inn. That business venture did not work out, and Andy Johns of the Chattanooga Times-Free Press reports that the city of Calhoun is going to be stuck for the costs of demolishing the structure:

Calhoun taxpayers could be on the hook for more than $100,000 to clean up a business blunder by two lawmakers who preach cutting taxes and rail against government intervention.

Calhoun City Administrator Eddie Peterson said if City Council members declare the Oglethorpe Inn a health hazard, the Gordon County town is looking at spending “lots of dollars” to raze the structure, formerly owned by U.S. Rep. Tom Graves, R-Georgia, and state Senate Majority Leader Chip Rogers, R-Woodstock.

The city has had to clear out derelict garages and houses at times, but taking down the large two-story motel would mean spending money the city doesn’t have, Peterson said.

Mayor James Palmer said he and other officials are looking at legal options to recover the costs, but they might have to move forward on the property in the coming weeks.

“We’re trying to exhaust all options before it comes back on the taxpayers,” he said . . .

In a phone interview Friday, John Edens, the hotel’s former manager before he bought the motel from the lawmakers in late 2009, said the motel is in bad shape. When the power was cut off in February, residents — including several “meth heads” — ransacked the furniture and rooms, he said.

Edens said he removed the doors on all of the rooms to keep the motel from becoming “the biggest whorehouse in Gordon County.”

The rooms have been open to the elements ever since.

“It looks like Baghdad,” Edens said.

Will the Senate mess with the House map?

The House and Senate redistricting maps, which were passed by their respective chambers last week, are scheduled for consideration by the opposing chamber this week.

Normally, the House would routinely rubberstamp the Senate plan and the Senate would do likewise to the House plan as a matter of legislative courtesy.

Gov. Nathan Deal and several House members from Hall County, however, are not happy with way Hall was divided up in the House plan and there has been talk that the Senate might make some changes to the House map as a result – which would be a blatant violation of legislative courtesy.

Will the Senate go so far as to mess with the House map? And will the House put up with it if they do? That’s the story to watch over the next couple of days.

Chambliss says he’ll run again

The Tea Partiers are angry with him because of his “Gang of Six” involvement and would-be GOP kingmaker Erick Erickson has been howling for him to be kicked out of office, so what does Sen. Saxby Chambliss plan to do? Why, run for another term.

Chambliss told reporters last week in Savannah he’s “wide open running again” and “campaigning every day” in the runup to 2014.

From a report by Larry Peterson of the Savannah Morning News:

“Obviously when you make a decision to get involved in an issue like this, there are political consequences,” he said. “I’ve taken a lot of arrows and I’m sure I’ll take a lot more.

“(But) there have been a lot more accolades … for trying to solve the problem.”

The plan he backs would close tax loopholes while lowering rates, slash spending and rein in entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare.

“You run for public office to try … to make a difference,” he said, adding that he’s made the deficit an issue where he wants to leave his mark.

© 2011 by The Georgia Report

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In agreeing to pay the civil fine, Morris neither admitted nor denied the violations alleged by the federal banking agency.

The consent agreement reached between Morris and the FDIC does not specify what the alleged violations were.

Ironically, the FDIC has initiated legal proceedings that involve the chairmen of both the House and Senate banking committees in the General Assembly.

Sen. Jack Murphy (R-Cumming) is the target of a $70 million lawsuit filed by the FDIC in January that accuses Murphy and other insiders at Alpharetta-based Integrity Bank of gross negligence in their operation of the bank, which went under in 2008.

Murphy became chairman of the Senate Banking Committee this year. After the allegations in the lawsuit were made public, he and the Senate leadership rejected calls for Murphy to step aside as committee chairman.

© 2011 by The Georgia Report