You heard it right: at a time when the state was choked by an historic drought, had cut billions of dollars in state funding for public education and had seen its highways become overcrowded with commuters, Perdue put the prestige of his office behind a program to build more boat docks for bass fishermen.

Walter Jones of the Morris Newspapers chain wrote an excellent article that brought his readers up to date on what you could call “Sonny’s Folly” –

The Go Fish program was spawned in controversy, and now that it’s operating, it continues to draw critics as it falls below expectations.

A year after then-Gov. Sonny Perdue proposed it in 2007, critics complained that taxpayers shouldn’t be funding a $19 million program to attract anglers when the state was cutting its budget, laying off workers and imposing furloughs for teachers, troopers and prison guards.

Perdue defended the program on two grounds.

First, the construction of 17 large boat ramps across the state to accommodate tournaments and an exposition center would be paid partially with matching private funds and partially by borrowing money with bonds that cannot legally be used for day-to-day operations like employee salaries. So, the $19 million couldn’t have prevented any layoffs, cuts or furloughs had it not gone to Go Fish.

Second, he said fishing’s growing popularity means the state can reap the benefits of a new kind of tourism. . . .

However, a sportsman reviewing this program might conclude it’s not a keeper.

Figures from the Department of Natural Resources show that in 14 months of operation, the education center has had 15,301 visitors and 2,613 participated in its education programs.

The revenue has also fallen far short. Since opening, the center has taken in $83,508, or an average of $5,964 per month.

At a recent meeting of the Coastal Caucus at the Capitol, Rep. Ellis Black, R-Valdosta, asked Natural Resources Commissioner Mark Williams about it.

“I’ve been at two meetings lately when questions have been asked about it lately,” he said. “I’ve been by it, and it looks like attendance is low.” . . .

Information the agency prepared for Black in response to his inquiries to Williams estimated the economic punch to West Point Lake for its May 5-8 Bass Master Elite Pride of Georgia Tournament at as much as $5 million.

Though modest compared to some economic-impact figures floated around in the sports world, the $5 million is likely to be inflated, according to Bruce Seaman, associate professor of economics at Georgia State University.

“I would be genuinely interested in how they did that study,” he said.

Last year’s version of the same event drew 99 anglers to West Point. That impact figure is equal to each buying a new, $40,000 boat when they arrived.

In such a rural area, money brought in by visitors has little of the multiplier effect that can magnify spending on hotels, restaurants and souvenirs in a larger city, notes Jeff Humphreys, director of the University of Georgia’s Selig Center for Economic Growth.

These winners and losers are typically defined by what they did to gain or lose political power.  I have modified that concept to decide who would be on my list:  in Georgia politics, winning and losing depends on who ultimately ends up with the money.

One of the biggest groups of winners in 2011 was Gov. Nathan Deal, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, and the state’s business leaders who were lobbying to expand the Georgia ports facilities by dredging the Savannah River.

This group still hasn’t figured out how to get the federal government to pay for most of the $600 million project, although I’m sure they will be successful at some point.  They were able, however, to overcome a major regulatory obstacle presented by the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (known as DHEC for short).

DHEC in September denied an important environmental permit that was needed for the river dredging project to move forward.  The prospects for the mega-project, which has also been under steady attack from environmentalists who say the dredging will harm the river bed and nearby estuaries, did not look very bright.

On Oct. 28, however, a fundraiser was held in Atlanta for South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley that was hosted by Eric Tanenblatt, a Republican power-broker who’s a former chief of staff to then-governor Sonny Perdue and a major supporter of such figures as George W. Bush and Mitt Romney.

Haley, who took home at least $15,000 from that Atlanta event, appoints and controls DHEC’s governing board.  Less than two weeks after the fundraiser was held, the DHEC board reversed the agency’s earlier denial and voted to issue the environmental permit.

It was a nice haul for Haley, although she’s now stirred up a huge, stinking pot of excrement in her home state and has seen her approval numbers sink faster than the Titanic.  It was an even bigger win for the Georgia officials who support the $600 million harbor expansion.

Officials of the Georgia Power Co. also had a big year before the Public Service Commission, which at one point was considering a proposal to require Georgia Power to pay a financial penalty if there were major cost overruns on the two nuclear reactors being built at Plant Vogtle.

The PSC had good reason to think about a risk-sharing proposal.  The first time Georgia Power built nuclear generators at Plant Vogtle, the cost ballooned from initial estimates of $660 million to more than $8 billion.

Georgia Power officials, however, said they would not agree to share the financial risks of the latest nuclear project.  Their lawyers said “no” throughout a series of appearances before the regulatory agency and kept saying “no” until the PSC finally gave up and scrapped the plan.

If there are any cost overruns on the $14 billion Vogtle project, the expense will be borne by Georgia Power’s customers and not by its executives or shareholders.  The utility giant was a giant winner in this regulatory game.

Two Georgia politicians who took themselves off the hook for some major financial obligations in 2011 were Congressman Tom Graves of Gordon County and state Senate Majority Leader Chip Rogers of Woodstock.

Graves and Rogers borrowed $2.2 million from the Bartow County Bank several years ago to buy and renovate a fleabag hotel in Calhoun known to locals as the “Methamphetamine 6.”  In 2010, the bank sued Graves and Rogers for defaulting on the loan.

In addition to skipping out on the loan, the bank alleged in its lawsuit, Graves made a “fraudulent transfer” of property he owned in Gordon County “with the intent to defraud lender in the collection of obligations owed by Defendant Graves.”

There is a word that is generally used to denote people who don’t pay a sum of money that they are legally obligated to pay.  That word is “deadbeat.”  In the course of filing the various court papers associated with this particular litigation, Graves’ lawyers used a version of the deadbeat defense to argue that the whole affair was really the bank’s fault: the bankers should have known they were lending money to someone who would try to sandbag them on the repayment.

Here’s how the Chattanooga Times-Free Press reported it:

Bloom [Graves’ lawyer] did not return messages, but in the court documents he says the bank is “simply wasting the court’s time and resources in attempting to enforce personal guaranties against individuals it clearly knows to be unable to perform under those guaranties.”

He argues that, based on legal precedents, if the loan is based on personal guarantees banks must ensure the borrowers are capable of repaying the money before agreeing on a loan. He argues the agreement never was valid to begin with because the bank knew that Rogers and Graves, a champion of fiscal responsibility in Washington, could not back up their personal guarantees. Bloom quotes the deposition from bank Vice President Alan Black in which Black acknowledges “I knew that they didn’t have $2.2 million, no.”

In the midst of all this legal wrangling, the Bartow County Bank collapsed and was sold off by regulators. The bank’s former chairman later told a reporter that the loan to Graves and Rogers “was one of the larger loans, and it contributed significantly (to the bank’s failure).”

The financial institution that acquired Bartow County Bank continued the efforts to collect on the loan, but finally reached a settlement with the two lawmakers in August.  The terms of the settlement were not disclosed, but I would bet the amount involved was much less than the original $2.2 million loan.

Graves and Rogers were the winners.  The Bartow County Bank was the ultimate loser.

[I’ll inject a note of media criticism here.  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, for some reason, fell asleep on the Graves-Rogers default story and slumbered through most of the litigation, never giving this the attention it deserved in the traditional media.  The one reporter who really dug into it was Andy Johns of the Times Free-Press, who dutifully read through the reams of documents filed at the Gordon County courthouse and came up with some fascinating nuggets of information.  It’s intriguing to think what would have happened if the AJC had taken a similar interest in this story.]

A big loser in Georgia politics during 2011 was former governor Sonny Perdue, who made not one but two unforced errors in the race to determine a Republican nominee for president.

Perdue was an early endorser last spring of Newt Gingrich, but got nervous and jumped ship within a few weeks after Gingrich’s campaign started imploding under the weight of media stories about his charge accounts at Tiffany’s and the departure en masse of his campaign staff.

The ever-astute Perdue was convinced he had now picked the real horse in this race:  former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty.  Perdue shifted his allegiance to Pawlenty, who had hired Perdue’s golden-boy protégé, Nick Ayers, as his campaign manager.  Pawlenty also received numerous donations from people whose paychecks at various times have been signed by Perdue, including Derrick Dickey, Trey Childress and Dan McLagan.

In the words of Texas Gov. Rick Perry:  “Ooooops!”  Pawlenty barely had time to deposit all those contributions before he shut down the operation and announced he was withdrawing from the race.  Gingrich, of course, subsequently arose from the dead and soared back near the top of the Republican race, although his numbers were again starting to tank as the end of the year neared.

Since that debacle, Perdue has – wisely, I think – declined to issue any further public endorsements in the presidential race.

Another group of political winners is the 236 men and women who make up the membership of the Georgia Senate and House of Representatives.  The General Assembly once again declined to pass any bills that would limit the amount of money lobbyists can spend to entertain lawmakers.

That suits the leadership just fine.

“Let the people be the judge about what’s acceptable and what’s not acceptable,” said House Speaker David Ralston, who once took his family to Europe on a $17,000 trip paid for by a lobbyist. “I trust their judgment.”

© 2011 by The Georgia Report

Barnes at the time was a partner at the blue-chip Atlanta law firm King & Spalding.  He accepted the job as EPD director, the top environmental regulator in state government, for an annual salary of $155,000.  King & Spalding, the firm at which Barnes was a partner, had reported profits of $1.4 million per partner for 2007.  That is considerably more than $155,000.

Sierra Club lobbyist Neill Herring, who tends to be a little more cynical than I in such matters, noted that King & Spalding’s clients included the folks who were trying to get the necessary air quality permits from EPD to move ahead with construction of a $2 billion coal-fired power generation facility known as Plant Washington, near Sandersville.

Those requested permits were being challenged in various legal arenas by environmental groups who contend that coal-fired plants emit excessive amounts of greenhouse gases and pollutants.  Administrative Law Judge Ronit Walker would rule in December 2010 that EPD had failed to analyze the data sufficiently to justify its decisions about fine particle and carbon monoxide limits in the Plant Washington air permit.

EPD staffers subsequently revised the limits to align them with federal air quality rules.  It was disclosed on Nov. 21, three days before Thanksgiving, that the agency had re-issued an air quality permit that will allow construction to move forward on Plant Washington (the project is now expected to start up in 2012 or the year after).

Precisely 10 days after it was reported that EPD had re-issued the final permit necessary for Plant Washington, Gov. Nathan Deal’s office made an announcement that Barnes was stepping down as EPD director and would be “returning to the private sector.”

I asked Herring what he thought of this sequence of events in light of the observations he made in 2009.  “It would appear my speculation was not complete moonshine,” he remarked.

The replacement of Barnes by a new director at EPD actually won’t make much difference in the operation of the agency.  Deal nominated attorney and lobbyist Jud Turner, who once worked for that self-same Sonny Perdue as executive counsel, as the new director.

Upon the occasion of Turner’s confirmation by the Board of Natural Resources, the young attorney pledged to follow the same policies of Barnes in maintaining a “balance” between the objectives of “economic sustainability and environmental sustainability.”

Turner’s attitude illustrates the whole problem with EPD, according to the editorial board of the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer.  The Columbus paper commented today that the EPD director should do what the title of the agency suggests:  protect the state’s environment rather than look out for the economic interests of developers.

The newspaper’s editorial is worth quoting in full:

Jud Turner, Gov. Nathan Deal’s choice to head the Georgia Environmental Protection Division, will officially succeed EPD Director Allen Barnes in the new year. At Wednesday’s meeting of the state Natural Resources Board, Turner pledged, as reported by Morris News Service, to “adopt the policies of his predecessor in trying to keep economic development coming into the state while regulating its impact on the environment.”

The reaction of Georgia’s environmental community was almost certainly less than enthusiastic. And that skepticism might ultimately have less to do with Turner’s qualifications and values (or with those of his predecessor) than with the years-old conflict inherent in the agency he has been tapped to lead.

Barnes, who has led the EPD for slightly more than two years after succeeding Columbus native Carol Couch, acknowledged his conflicts with environmentalists but said part of the office’s responsibility is “to find that balance between a sustainable economy and a sustainable environment.” Turner echoed the observation: “There is a balance, as Allen has talked about, between economic sustainability and environmental sustainability.”

Of course such a balance is essential, in Georgia and everywhere else. So what’s the problem?

The problem is that while both economic development and environmental protection are critical, an agency officially titled the Environmental Protection Division should be primarily — perhaps exclusively — concerned with the latter.

The fact that Georgia’s top-ranking environmental watchdog is expected to concern himself/herself with economics, beyond the obvious responsibility of managing the department’s budget, goes to the chronic structural dysfunction of this part of state government. And that structural problem goes all the way back to the Carter administration. (That’s Jimmy Carter the governor, not Carter the later president.)

As part of a well-intentioned and efficiency-minded reorganization of state government, EPD was placed under the Department of Natural Resources, largely an economic development agency. As the decades have gone by, the tension between industrial and environmental interests — a familiar tension, but in Georgia one that plays out under the same bureaucratic roof — has made the merger look more and more like a shotgun wedding.

Environmental protectors should be protecting the environment … period. Surely there are ample forces in Georgia government to effect that balance to which the current and future EPD directors alluded. (Rest assured that in the Georgia General Assembly, business interests will be devoutly represented.)

Turner, like Barnes before him, would have a tough enough job just protecting Georgia’s precious and beautifully diverse environment. Having to worry about economic growth as well shouldn’t be part of his mission. But until Georgia leaders rethink the role and importance of environmental protection, EPD is destined to remain a second-tier bureaucracy.