Nick Millwood wants you to be angry at Mitchell Horner. He just needs you to not think too hard about why.

The Ringgold mayor and newly qualified candidate for the Republican nomination for Georgia House District 3 has built his campaign launch around a single accusation: that Representative Mitchell Horner was “too silent” during the Catoosa County GOP ballot dispute in spring of 2024. Millwood told the Catoosa County News that Horner should have done something when the local party tried to screen some local candidates off the 2024 primary ballot.

He has posted on Facebook accusing the Catoosa County Republican Party of trying to “steal citizens’ political power.” [To be clear, I think the Catoosa GOP was wrong during the 2024 primary.] His stated campaign priorities include voter rights to choose candidates without the interference of political parties. It sounds great on a campaign flyer or a 30 second campaign sales pitch. It falls apart the second you ask a follow-up question.

Here is the follow-up: What, specifically, was Representative Mitchell Horner supposed to do?

Not in the abstract. Not in the vague language of campaign rhetoric. Concretely. What action was a state legislator supposed to take when two groups of citizens in his county disagreed about what Georgia election law allows?

Because that is what happened.

The Catoosa County Republican Party believed O.C.G.A. 21-2-153 and the First Amendment gave them the right to vet candidates seeking their party’s ballot line. The candidates who were denied believed the statute sets the qualifying requirements and the party cannot add to them. Both sides hired lawyers. Both sides went to court. A Superior Court judge ruled. The party appealed. The case went to federal court. It went to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. The 11th Circuit sent it back. The state court issued a permanent injunction. Nine committee members were held in willful contempt.

Most recently, U.S. District Judge William M. Ray II, a Trump appointee, mostly ruled against the party’s freedom of association claims but interestingly kept the constitutional question alive.

The system handled it the way it was designed to do.

Multiple courts across multiple levels of the judiciary examined the law, weighed the arguments, and issued rulings. The candidates who were blocked got on the ballot. Three of them won. The party’s qualifying affidavit was struck down. The contempt fines were assessed. The permanent injunction was entered. Every mechanism that exists to resolve a legal dispute between citizens was engaged, and every one of them functioned.

So again: What was any state legislator supposed to do?

Millwood’s answer is that Rep. Horner should have introduced legislation. He should have passed a law. He should have used the power of state government to intervene in a local party dispute and make sure one side won before the courts could finish their work.

A candidate running as a Republican in one of the most conservative districts in Georgia is arguing that the correct response to a legal dispute between citizens was more government. More legislation. More state intervention. He is asking you to believe that a state representative who respected the independence of the judiciary and let the legal process play out was derelict in his duty. And that the better approach would have been to send politicians in Atlanta scrambling to rewrite the rules before a judge could weigh in. That is not a conservative position.

I do not care what letter is next to your name on the ballot. If your first instinct when citizens disagree about what a law means is to demand that the legislature rewrite the law and expand the power and scope of government before the courts can interpret the law and dispute, you are not describing limited government. You are describing its opposite.

There is something else worth noting that I wrote about already. Nick Millwood pulled a Democratic primary ballot in 2016. He pulled a Democratic primary ballot again in 2018. The 2016 Democratic presidential primary featured Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. The 2018 Democratic gubernatorial primary produced Stacey Abrams as the nominee. Not exactly beacons of conservative limited government thinking. But perfectly legal thing to do and his choice.

But a man who twice chose Democratic primary ballots in two of the most consequential Republican primaries in recent history is now running as a Republican on a platform that amounts to: the state government should have intervened faster and harder in a local dispute. More government. His flagship issue is that a conservative state legislator showed too much restraint. His core complaint is that the courts and judges were allowed to do their jobs without legislative interference.

Now. Here is the part where I am going to be more honest than Millwood is capable of being. I was opposed to and remain opposed to what the Catoosa GOP did and I believe some of their leadership had misguided personal reasons as part of their driving justifications but they were not entirely wrong about the problem. They identified something real and in need of addressing. They just built a terrible mechanism to fix it.

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For most of American history, political parties picked their own nominees. Conventions, caucuses, backroom negotiations, party bosses with cigars and grudges. The presidential primary election as we know it did not exist in any meaningful form until the Progressive Era, and it did not dominate the nominating process until the 1970s.

What happened over that century was that the parties outsourced their most important internal function, choosing who carries their name on the ballot, to the general public. Across the country there are variety of methods in use. In a closed-primary state, that means outsourcing it to registered party members. In an open-primary state like Georgia, it means outsourcing it to anyone who walks in and asks for your ballot on Election Day. That is an extraordinary transfer of power.

It is also a trade-off that most voters never think about, because primaries feel as natural as general elections now. But they are not the same thing. A general election is a public act of self-governance. A primary is, at its core, a private organization deciding who represents it. We have just become so used to letting the public handle it that we forgot it was ever the party’s job. And that matters.

The Catoosa GOP looked at Georgia’s open primary system, looked at the fact that anyone can pull a Republican ballot regardless of whether they have ever voted Republican before, and asked a reasonable question: What stops someone with no meaningful attachment to party principles from running under the party name in a district where the Republican nomination is the only election that matters?

That is not a paranoid question. In a county that voted 77 percent for Trump, winning the Republican primary is winning the seat. The general election is a formality. If your primary is open to all comers and your district is a one-party lock, then the primary is functionally the election, and the party has no gatekeeping mechanism at all.

The Catoosa GOP and many others in Georgia and elsewhere saw that problem and tried to fix it. The Catoosa solution was a disaster. A 16-member committee with a secret interview process and a notarized affidavit requirement is not prudential transparent scrutiny and party governance. It is a bad nightclub with a bouncer with an inferiority complex. Think Roadhouse but no Patrick Swayze.

It concentrated enormous power in a tiny group, lacked transparency, defied a court order, and ultimately cost the party $71,000 in legal fees, contempt citations for nine members, and a permanent injunction. The candidates they blocked got on the ballot anyway. Three of them won. The mechanism failed on its own terms before it failed in court.

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But the fact that the Catoosa GOP built the wrong solution does not mean they asked the wrong question. The tension between open primaries and party principles and identity is real and it is older than anyone reading this. Smart people have been arguing about it for decades. There is no clean or easy solution.

Closed primaries create their own problems. Party registration requirements in a state without party registration would require a wholesale rewrite of Georgia election law (the option I prefer). Convention systems are sometimes shady and favor insiders. Every option involves trade-offs.

Which brings us back to Nick Millwood, who has managed to position himself on the wrong side of every layer of this question simultaneously. He is attacking the screening process while benefiting from the open primary system that made the screening question relevant in the first place. He is a man who pulled Democratic primary ballots in 2016 and 2018 seeking the Republican nomination in a district where that nomination is the only prize worth having. He is the case study the Catoosa GOP was worried about, running on a platform that says the Catoosa GOP had no right to worry in the first place.

And his answer to all of it is that a state legislator should have passed a law. More government. More intervention. More politicians in Atlanta telling local citizens and local courts and local judges how to sort out their own business. The Catoosa GOP recognized a real issue and got the answer badly wrong. Millwood is not even admitting the possibility an issue exists. His case rests entirely on the assumption that voters will not bother to question it. The argument falls apart the moment anyone checks it. He is hoping no one does.

The political circus in Catoosa County is nothing if not entertaining, if a bit expensive for those footing the legal bills. For the last two years, the Georgia Republican Assembly (GRA) and the local Republican party leadership have been desperately trying to build a wall around the primary ballot. They wanted a gatekeeping function . . . a way to vet candidates and banish the impostors before the voters ever got a say. They were sued, they were held in contempt of court, and they were effectively told by a judge that their little affidavit scheme was counter to Georgia law.

The GRA lost the battle in the courtroom thus far (federal case is still alive). But they are poised to win the war in the court of public opinion, thanks to an unwitting benefactor named Nick Millwood.

Millwood, the recently resigned Mayor of Ringgold, has announced his candidacy for Georgia House District 3. He’s running as a Republican, which is his right under Georgia law. He is campaigning against the "gatekeepers," painting himself as champion against the Catoosa GOP leadership and their purity tests. He’s framing his run as a defense of democracy against the "thugs" who tried to block candidates in 2024.

It’s a nice narrative, really. There’s just one problem: Nick Millwood is the walking, talking vindication of every paranoid conspiracy theory the Catoosa GOP & GRA has ever spun about Republican primaries being infiltrated by wolves in sheep’s clothing.

We don't have to guess about Millwood’s political compass; we have the receipts. In Georgia, you don’t register by party. You prove your allegiance by the ballot you pull in primaries. And Nick Millwood’s ballot choices reveal a history that should disqualify him from a Republican nomination in any district, let alone one that gave Donald Trump 77% of the vote.

Let’s rewind to March 2016. While actual Republicans were holding their noses and voting for Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio to stop a populist wave, or early embracing that wave that would become the MAGA movement, Nick Millwood walked into his polling place and requested a Democratic ballot. He voted in the primary that featured Hillary Clinton versus Bernie Sanders. How bout them choices?

He had a choice between a candidate promising to ban assault weapons and a self-described democratic socialist. Both candidates wanted to ban guns, restrict speech, and open borders…just to start. Millwood chose to participate in that Marxist rodeo of a selection process. Actual conservatives pulled a republican ballot and helped prevent the catastrophe of electing one of the loons from the left.

Perhaps that was a momentary lapse? A fever dream? Hardly. Fast forward to May 2018. The Georgia Republican Party was in the fight of its life to maintain the Governor’s Mansion. The Democratic primary featured Stacey Abrams—a candidate who ran on unlimited abortion access, sanctuary state policies, California style gun control, and allowing biological males to compete in women's sports. It was a radical leftist platform.

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In that cycle, with the stakes painfully clear, Nick Millwood did not request a Republican ballot to help decide the conservative future of the state. He requested a Democratic ballot. He voted in the primary that nominated Stacey Abrams.

Let that sink in. The man now asking for the Republican nomination for House District 3—a nomination that effectively guarantees election in Northwest Georgia—spent two of the most consequential political cycles of the last decade helping pick the opposition’s candidates.

Millwood’s defense, presumably, will be that he is a "moderate" or that "people change." But the Republican Party is not a rehab center for wayward Democrats. It is a political organization built on a platform. That platform is antithetical to the 2016 and 2018 Democratic Party platforms Millwood chose to align with. To pull a Democratic ballot in 2018, while Republicans were fighting tooth and nail against the Abrams agenda, when the direction for the republican party in the state was being debated and decided isn't just a difference of opinion; it’s a rejection of the core principles that define the Georgia GOP.

This is the ultimate irony of Millwood’s candidacy. He is running against the "gatekeepers," yet he is single-handedly proving their point. The GRA and the Catoosa County GOP argued that without screening, charlatans would hijack the brand. They were told they were being paranoid, that the voters could decide.

But in a district like HD-3, the Republican nomination is the crown jewel. It is the only prize that matters. If Millwood wins the primary, he doesn't just win the seat; he validates the very "accountability" rules his campaign opposes. If a man who pulled a ballot that included the Abrams agenda can secure the Republican nomination in one of the reddest districts in the state, then the GRA was right: the label means nothing, and the brand is dead.

A Millwood victory would be a catastrophic humiliation for the anti-accountability rule faction. It would stand as irrefutable evidence that without some mechanism of accountability, the GOP is willing to stand by while the party is raided and subverted by the opposition.

Opponents of the Catoosa screening rules argued that 16 people on a committee shouldn't decide who is a Republican. That is a fair argument. But the flip side is that the candidates themselves shouldn't dupe the voters just to get in power.

Most people (myself included) opposed the heavy-handed, legally dubious tactics of the Catoosa County Executive Committee. But there is a difference between opposing a bad process and ignoring a disqualifying record.

Nick Millwood is not a Republican. He is a politician who, when the chips were down and the choice was clear, chose to align himself with the modern Democratic Party. He chose the party of gun bans, open borders, and radical social policy. Now he wants the Republican seal of approval because he knows he can’t win as a Democrat.

Regardless of what one thinks of incumbent Rep. Mitchell Horner—whether he is too talkative, too young, or too policy-wonkish—he is a Republican. Nick Millwood is not. To hand the nomination to a man who voted in the Abrams primary is to admit that the Republican Party in Catoosa County stands for absolutely nothing.

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Most cease-and-desist letters arrive because someone published something false and refused to take it down. This one arrived after the corrections were already posted.

On February 19th, Catoosa County Commissioner Chuck Harris received a legal threat from Denise Burns, a candidate for the 53rd District State Senate seat. Harris had written a social media post that got some things wrong — he’d mistakenly implied she had oversight of funds connected to alleged fraudster and GRA insider and donor Brant Frost, and he’d called her the treasurer of the Georgia Republican Assembly (GRA) where she actually served as Assistant Secretary. Harris figured that out himself quickly. By 8:30 the next morning, he’d scrubbed the mistaken language, posted a correction, and acknowledged he had her title wrong.

He didn’t need a lawyer to tell him he’d overstated it. He just fixed it.

Which makes what happened next worth examining. Harris received the cease-and-desist — after the corrections were already posted.

Anyone who’s followed local politics around here knows that online mobs have spun up regularly over the past few years. Accusations that don’t hold up. Manufactured outrage. Noise designed to drown out the facts. Half-truths, whole lies, and everything in between. You know how many cease-and-desist letters got sent over all of it?

Zero.

Because when the accusations are false, the truth does the work. You point at the facts and let people decide. You don’t need a lawyer. You need patience. Any political figure who’s been around long enough understands this.

This is exactly why Burns sending this cease-and-desist — after corrections were already made — is so revealing.

Burns’ problem isn’t that Chuck Harris overstated a point and then corrected it. He did what anyone operating in good faith does: he made an error, fixed it publicly, and said so. Her problem is that the truth doesn’t help her, and he was talking about it.

Burns was an officer of the GRA, the organization that authorized, promoted, and proudly lent its name to a PAC now under ethics investigation for illegally influencing elections. That PAC was funded in large part by money connected to a $140 million Ponzi scheme that wiped out hundreds of elderly and Christian investors. Correcting “treasurer” to “Assistant Secretary” and correcting an already corrected post raises a new question: why is she more concerned about which title she held than about everything happening around her while she held the title?

Harris posted his correction. The cease-and-desist came anyway. Harris, to his credit, responded with the appropriate level of seriousness. He posted a correction and apologized for any “emotional distress” his error may have caused.

Definitely not treasurer. Noted.

Good thing we got that cleared up.

Everything else remains.

Denise Burns is running for State Senate. She wants the voters of the 53rd District to trust her with their representation, their tax dollars, and their laws. Those voters have every right to know who she is. Not just which title she held, but what she did with it, who she stood beside, and what was going on inside the organization she served while she was serving it.

A heartfelt letter from Colton Moore

My Dear Fellow Georgians,

While confined in a narrow Fulton County booking room, having willfully arranged my presence at that exact location one year ago for what I can only describe as performance art of the highest constitutional order, I now feel compelled to respond to criticisms from the moderate wing of my party who question my methods. To them I say: You clearly haven't seen my fundraising numbers and social media clout now that I am running for Congress with this priceless mugshot.

Some call it “a stunt.” Some call it “a planned tantrum for social media.” I call it civil rights history, and history will remember it as I do: a watershed moment in American freedom.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once wrote from a Birmingham jail cell, arrested for challenging segregation and the full machinery of statist racist oppression.

I, Colton Moore, was tackled and assaulted for attempting to attend a speech I had been explicitly told not to attend, after I had already called a dead man corrupt during a day honoring his service in front of his widow and children.

The parallels are obvious, assuming you’ve suffered a stroke, several concussions or some other cognitive trauma.

King wrote about his disappointment with the white moderate. I too am disappointed—with the Republican moderate who insists that shoving state troopers isn’t the most effective legislative strategy for our party. These moderates suggested I apologize for my remarks about former Speaker Ralston, as if the dead man’s grieving family in the gallery wanted “decency and respect” instead of “the truth.”

King faced beatings, bombings, and assassination attempts. I faced a $1,000 bond and the crushing emotional burden of being treated like someone who did something on purpose and then had to deal with it. Future generations will struggle to distinguish which struggle was more harrowing.

My anniversary commemoration comes on Martin Luther King Jr. Day and included a mugshot graphic comparing me to Donald Trump, because we were both processed at the same facility. Sure, the surrounding details of King’s ordeal, Trump’s arrest and my photo-op differ slightly, but why ruin good comparisons with facts?

Where King had Bull Connor, I had Speaker Jon Burns.

Where King had segregation, I had something far more insidious: being told “no.”

The Birmingham campaign required months of planning and training. Mine required receiving a letter telling me not to do something, then immediately organizing and planning and doing it anyway, loudly, with cameras rolling.

Some claim State Patrol said I “pushed into troopers multiple times.” That’s their perspective. My perspective is that the troopers got in the way of a TikTok in action.

Consider the brutal unseen sides of our oppression: King spent 11 days in jail. I spent several hours being processed before making bond and immediately visiting Emory Midtown Hospital, where I documented my swollen hand for social media with the dedication and seriousness of a war correspondent and the self-awareness to photograph from my good side. Suffering isn’t suffering until it’s shareable.

And let us examine the deeper constitutional crisis at play. King fought against laws that denied Black Americans the right to vote, to attend schools, to sit at lunch counters. I fought against a House Speaker's directive that denied me the right to attend one specific speech after I'd violated every possible norm of legislative decorum and basic human decency.

Both involved a man. Both involved state authority. Both involved consequences for defiant action. Therefore, obviously, they're basically identical. The math checks out.

Now, a year later, I’ve plastered this mugshot everywhere with all the subtlety of a 1980s used car dealership owner in a cheap suit with greasy hair who insists on being in his own bad commercials, because I am running for Congress to replace Marjorie Taylor Greene—a seat I believe requires someone who can become the story instead of doing the actual work

The 14th District faces real problems: healthcare, infrastructure, jobs. I offer something rarer: a proven record of getting kicked out of caucuses, banned from rooms, and starting fights that don’t need starting. Not every candidate can say they’ve offended veterans and widows simultaneously, then called it bravery.

My campaign material and every fundraising email says I’m “Trump’s #1 Defender” and that "no one has been more pro-Trump than I have." This is demonstrably true if you exclude everyone who worked in his administration, everyone who served in Congress during his presidency, everyone who campaigned for him before I did, and everyone who supported him without also getting themselves expelled from their own party's caucus.

The establishment punished me, you see. They banned me from the House chambers for my stirring eulogy of Speaker Ralston, in which I called him "one of the most corrupt Georgia leaders that we are ever going to see in my lifetime" while his grieving family watched from the gallery. Leadership requires difficult moments, like desecrating memorial events for personal publicity. viral moments and the algorithm requires sacrifice, folks.

Dr. King wrote, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” and King said, “When you are right you cannot be too radical.”

I say, when you are Colton Moore, you cannot be too shameless and it is my belief that a ban from anywhere is a fundraising opportunity everywhere.

King challenged America to live up to its ideals.

I am challenging Northwest Georgia voters to send to Congress a man whose primary credential is getting arrested at the same processing center as President Trump and refusing to shut up about it since.

For the record, the comparison photo is NOT AI-generated. Some people saw this graphic and assumed it was satire. I have never been more serious about anything in my life. I really orchestrated all of this for the sole purpose of epic social media clout.

Dr. King and President Trump both built movements.

I built one hell of a photo-op and plan to ride it like a rented mule as long as I can or the voters see through it and I need a new con.

Yours in totally justified and not at all manufactured outrage,

Colton Moore
Congressional Candidate, Georgia’s 14th District
Martyr to the Sacred Cause of Getting Arrested for Publicity
Heir Apparent to Americans Greatness (grammar is for moderates)

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Here’s a riddle for you: What do you call a board of directors that oversees a nine-figure budget, manages massive capital asset portfolios, makes decisions that shape thousands of young lives, and have the power to transform whole communities yet are paid less in a year than a high school student earns working at chick-fil-a during the summer?

In Georgia, we call it a school board.

We have two groups of local officials who hold immense power over our daily lives. One group, county commissioners, manages roads, public safety, and county services. The other, school board members, oversees the education of Georgia’s children, manages billion-dollar budgets, and shapes the future of our communities.

An analysis of compensation and budget data from 175 school districts and 145 County governments reveals a stark and troubling disparity. Collectively these school districts manage $23.6 billion in taxpayer revenue—40% more than the $16.8 billion overseen by county commissions. The median school board member earns $4,343 annually. The median county commissioner earns $14,249. That’s 3.3 times more pay for significantly less financial responsibility.

School board members oversee $12,185 in public funds for every dollar of compensation. Commissioners manage $2,688 per dollar. As a percentage of budget, total board compensation runs about 0.04% of district revenue. Commissioner compensation runs 0.18%—4.5 times higher relative to the money they manage.

This pattern holds at every budget tier. Small-jurisdiction commissioners (under $25 million in revenue) earn a median of $11,555. Small-jurisdiction board members earn $3,600. Large-jurisdiction commissioners ($75-200 million) earn $19,485. Large-jurisdiction board members earn $6,850. More budget, less pay—consistent across the state.

The local numbers are worse. In Walker County, school board members earn $50 per meeting or $1,463 a year to oversee $116 million. That’s $79,370 in public funds per dollar of pay. Walker County Commissioners earn $19,000 to manage $70 million—$3,689 per dollar. Walker’s board handles 66% more money for 92% less compensation.

This pattern is not unique. Nearby in Catoosa County, school board members are paid a flat $250 a month, or $3,000 a year to oversee $167 million while county commissioners earn $30,397 for managing $66 million. More than double the budget, one-tenth the pay.

And it doesn’t stop there.

In Jackson County, school board members are paid $1,075 to oversee $147 million. Commissioners get $22,883 to oversee $140 million, a nearly identical revenue responsibility. Pay ratio: about 21 to 1

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Low pay narrows the candidate pool. It selects for people who can afford to serve: retirees, the independently wealthy, those with flexible jobs. It excludes many working parents, hourly employees, people without schedule flexibility. It makes the position a luxury rather than a civic opportunity andOur boards become less representative of the communities they serve.

Low pay encourages deference. When board members feel more like volunteers than decision-makers, they often defer to the superintendent and professional staff. That’s not inherently bad—expertise matters—but boards are supposed to provide oversight, not rubber stamps. A board that doesn’t feel ownership of its role may not exercise it fully.

Low pay diminishes the position’s perceived importance. If we pay commissioners three times more for similar or smaller responsibilities, we’re implicitly saying that managing roads and permits matters more than managing schools. Maybe we believe that. But we should say so clearly rather than letting compensation structures say it for us.

And often, board members work more. Look at Walker county. Last year the county commission reduced its schedule to just a single required meeting per month. The school board, meanwhile, holds a regular meeting and a planning session each month, plus numerous additional meetings during the year for the budget, millage rates, and other critical matters. plus school board members are the among the only local officials in Georgia required by law to complete continuing education hours. Commissioners aren't.

This isn’t about individuals. The men and women serving on school boards across Georgia are, by and large, dedicated public servants. They put in long hours for little pay because they care about their communities. But the system itself is the problem. It is built on an assumption of altruism that is both unsustainable and unwise.

And common sense tells me when you pay people $1,463 to oversee $116 million, you’re not buying fierce independence. So what's the answer? Pay board members more? Or are commissioners overpaid?

There is one final point to consider: Over the last twenty years, county budgets grew more slowly than School budgets. Districts hired staff at unprecedented rates. And student achievement? It declined. By essentially every measure. Counties did less with less. Schools did more with more—and delivered worse results.

Maybe commissioners make too much. Maybe board members make too little. Maybe both. But Georgia clearly has a compensation setup for school oversight that incentivizes deference and discourages scrutiny.

And then we wonder why the bureaucracy runs the show and things never change.

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BASE DATA

School Board Member Compensation

• Source: open.ga.gov (2024)

• This is the average annualized compensation per board member for each district

• Example: Walker County = $1,463/year per board member

Commissioner Salary

• Source: Georgia DCA Annual Wage & Salary Survey (various years, most recent available)

• This is the annual salary for one commissioner

School District Revenue

• Source: Carl Vinson Institute, UGA (2024)

• Total revenues for the school district

County Government Revenue

• Source: Carl Vinson Institute, UGA (2023)

• Total revenues for the county government

As I argued last week, the four-day school week won’t deliver what advocates promise. But the deeper question is why we’re having this debate at all.

Walker County Schools recently surveyed parents about switching to a four-day week. It’s the latest in an endless parade of seemingly important debates, schedule tweaks, and distracting shuffles that consume school boards across Georgia. Four days or five? Earlier start times or later? New reading curriculum or old? More technology or less?

But the truth is none of that matters very much.

Whether a district adopts the latest teaching fad, fits its state-mandated instructional minutes into fewer days, or rolls out yet another curriculum overhaul, they are merely rearranging deck chairs on the titanic. No schedule change, no new textbook, no instructional strategy will deliver meaningful improvement until we confront the structural rot underneath: the obsession with “seat time.”

To understand why, you need to know some history—and how Georgia has doubled down on it.

In 1905, steel magnate turned philanthropist Andrew Carnegie established a foundation to provide pensions for college professors. But he immediately had a problem How do you decide which institutions qualified as “colleges” rather than diploma mills looking for a payday. The solution required colleges to admit only students who completed a four-year high school course, which meant defining what a “high school education” actually was.

In 1906, the foundation proposed a standard unit of measurement. One “unit” equaled 120 hours of classroom contact. A neat, progressive-era metric. Colleges wanted pension money, so they adopted the standard. High schools wanted their graduates admitted to colleges, so they restructured their entire existence around it.

The Carnegie Unit wasn’t designed by educators studying how children learn. It was invented by accountants solving an administrative problem. Yet by 1930, this arbitrary metric had come to dominated American education. In Georgia, we haven’t just stuck with this century-old mistake. We’ve added to it.

While the original Carnegie standard called for 120 hours, Georgia defines a standard unit of credit as 150 clock hours. To meet this, the state mandates strict daily minimums. For high schoolers, that means 330 minutes of instruction per day. This rigid math dictates every bell schedule in the state. A student taking a standard six-period day must sit in a specific chair for roughly 50 minutes, 180 times a year, to reach that magic 9,000-minute mark.

This is a big reason why educational fads keep failing. You can introduce phonics or whole language, Singapore math or reform math, project-based learning or direct instruction. But every one of these approaches must be crammed into the same 150-hour box. The curriculum changes. The underlying architecture doesn’t. We keep redecorating a prison like a school should look while leaving the bars in place.

And the architecture gets something catastrophically wrong: people learn at different speeds.

You know this already. We all do. A child who devours books might need fourteen months to crack multiplication. A kid who struggles with reading might grasp chemistry immediately. The notion that 150 hours of seat time equals mastery of anything is absurd on its face … yet it remains the organizing principle of our schools.

In a time-based system, time is the constant and learning is the variable. A student who masters algebra in 60 hours must still sit through the remaining 90 to get credit. Bored. Disengaged. Waiting. Meanwhile, a student who needs 180 hours fails at the 150-hour mark and repeats the entire course, often re-sitting lessons they already understood. More often, that child gets passed along without acquiring the skill or knowledge required at all. The system rewards compliance, not competence.

Most Georgia districts, including Walker County, are “Strategic Waiver” or “Charter Systems.” Theoretically, this grants freedom from state rules. But in practice, districts rarely use these waivers to abandon seat time in favor of mastery. Instead, they use the flexibility to shuffle the hours, trading 180 short days for 150 long ones. They waive the schedule, not the philosophy. Funding remain tied to it.

We see the consequences everywhere. Nearly 40 percent of college freshmen require remedial coursework in math or English, subjects they supposedly mastered to earn their diplomas. Credit recovery programs allow students to “recover” a failed course by clicking through online modules in a fraction of the original 120 hours. If a student can earn the same credit in 20 hours of clicking that another student earned in a full year of classroom instruction, what exactly was the original seat time measuring? Employers have started to figure this out too, which is why many including Elon Musk have abandoned degree requirements in favor of skills assessments. The credentials our education system produces and cherishes have become proxies for compliance, not competence.

We’ve known the time model was broken for almost a century. The Eight-Year Study, conducted from 1930 to 1940 and funded ironically by the Carnegie Corporation itself, freed thirty high schools from Carnegie Unit requirements. They could design the system themselves. Students at these experimental schools could progress based on demonstrated learning rather than hours logged. The results were unambiguous. Graduates from experimental schools earned higher college GPAs, won more academic honors, and showed greater intellectual curiosity than their traditionally educated peers. The students from schools that deviated most from seat-time requirements showed the greatest advantages. The results should have transformed education. Instead, the findings were published in 1942, buried by World War II, and forgotten. We went back to counting hours.

Today, the Carnegie Foundation—the very organization that invented the Unit—is actively working to dismantle it, calling it “a barrier to reform.” States like New Hampshire have transitioned to competency-based systems where students advance when they demonstrate mastery, not when the calendar says so.

Georgia remains fixated on the clock. We have imprisoned educators and students in a system invented to calculate pension eligibility for professors who died before the Great Depression.

Local school board members need to understand that you are political actors whether you embrace it or not. The seat-time problem isn’t something Walker County can solve with a schedule survey or a curriculum adoption. It’s encoded in Georgia’s Quality Basic Education funding formula, in state requirements, in the entire statutory machinery that determines how schools operate.

Tinkering locally cannot fix a structural problem. That requires legislative action. Major structural reform.

This isn’t about picking fights in Atlanta. Most legislators have never heard the history of the Carnegie Unit, don’t know the time requirements, or haven’t seen the research on competency-based alternatives. They aren’t defending a broken system. They simply inherited it—just like we all have. The opportunity is education, not accusation. Local school Board members have the platform and the responsibility to start that conversation. Help your constituents understand why the current system fails. Not just that budgets are tight or test scores disappoint, but why we’re trapped in a model that rewards attendance rather than learning. Build coalitions with other districts. Bring legislators in as partners.

State representatives and senators want to help their communities. Give them something concrete to champion: seat-time reform, competency-based pilot programs, funding flexibility that recognizes one-size-fits-all fits no one.

Walker County’s four-day week survey will come and go. The next fad will surely pop up and yet more curriculum adoption will follow. Test scores will fluctuate. And nothing fundamental will change—until someone decides to stop debating which arrangement of 150-hour blocks works best and starts asking why we’re counting hours instead of learning.

The Carnegie Foundation has repudiated its own invention. Places like New Hampshire are showing alternatives can work. The research from the Eight-Year Study sits there, waiting to be rediscovered. Georgia School board members have the platform. Legislators have the power. They all have the duty and responsibility. Somebody in Georgia needs to go first.

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Sources:

1. Baird, Katy. “Walker County Considers Four-Day School Week, Seeks Parent and Community Feedback.” Chattooga County News, 22 Dec. 2024, https://chattooga1180.com/walker-county-considers-four-day-school-week-seeks-parent-and-community-feedback/

2. “Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Britannica, accessed 26 Dec. 2025, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Carnegie-Foundation-for-the-Advancement-of-Teaching

3. “The Carnegie Unit: A Century-Old Standard in a Changing Education Landscape.” Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Jan. 2015, https://www.luminafoundation.org/files/resources/carnegie-unit-report.pdf

4. “District Flexibility.” Georgia Department of Education, accessed 26 Dec. 2025, https://gadoe.org/policy/district-flexibility/

5. “Eight-Year Study.” Education Encyclopedia: State University, accessed 26 Dec. 2025, https://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/1947/Eight-Year-Study.html

6. Felton, Ryan. “Walker Co. Schools Considering Four-Day School Week.” Local 3 News, 22 Dec. 2024, https://www.local3news.com/local-news/walker-co-schools-considering-four-day-school-week/article_c03269f2-12cc-42cc-99fd-15730b77cf55.html

7. “Foundation History.” Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, accessed 26 Dec. 2025, https://www.carnegiefoundation.org/about-us/foundation-history/

8. Georgia. General Assembly. Official Code of Georgia Annotated, § 20-2-168, 2024, https://law.justia.com/codes/georgia/title-20/chapter-2/article-6/part-4/section-20-2-168/

9. Georgia. State Board of Education. “160-4-2-.46 High School Graduation Requirements for Students Enrolling in the Ninth Grade for the First Time in the 2008-2009 School Year and Subsequent Years.” Rules of the Georgia State Board of Education, accessed 26 Dec. 2025, https://apps.gadoe.org/sboe/SBOE Rules/160-4-2-.46.pdf

10. Georgia. State Board of Education. “160-5-1-.02 School Day and School Year for Students and Employees.” Rules of the Georgia State Board of Education, accessed 26 Dec. 2025, https://apps.gadoe.org/sboe/SBOE Rules/160-5-1-.02.pdf

11. Governor’s Office of Student Achievement. “School System Flexibility Choices.” State of Georgia, July 2015, https://gosa.georgia.gov/document/document/system-flexibility-updatepdf/download

12. “The High School Credit-Hour: A Timeline of the Carnegie Unit.” Education Week, 7 Dec. 2022, https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/the-high-school-credit-hour-a-timeline-of-the-carnegie-unit/2022/12

13. “How New Hampshire Transformed to a Competency-Based System.” Aurora Institute, accessed 26 Dec. 2025, https://aurora-institute.org/blog/how-new-hampshire-transformed-to-a-competency-based-system/

14. Knowles, Timothy. “It May Be Time to Retire the Carnegie Unit. Are There Better Measures of Learning?” Education Week, 28 May 2024, https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/opinion-it-may-be-time-to-retire-the-carnegie-unit-are-there-better-measures-of-learning/2024/05

15. New Hampshire Department of Education. “Performance Assessment of Competency Education (PACE),” accessed 26 Dec. 2025, https://www.education.nh.gov/who-we-are/division-of-learner-support/bureau-of-instructional-support/performance-assessment-competency-education

16. Schwartz, Sarah. “The Head of the Carnegie Foundation Wants to Ditch the Carnegie Unit. Here’s Why.” Education Week, 14 Dec. 2022, https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/the-head-of-the-carnegie-foundation-wants-to-ditch-the-carnegie-unit-heres-why/2022/12

17. “Strategic Waivers School Systems (SWSS) Evaluation.” Governor’s Office of Student Achievement, State of Georgia, accessed 26 Dec. 2025, https://gosa.georgia.gov/accountability/strategic-waivers-school-systems-swss-evaluation

18. “What Is the Carnegie Unit?” Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, accessed 26 Dec. 2025, https://www.carnegiefoundation.org/about/faqs/the-carnegie-unit/

Walker County Schools recently surveyed parents and the community about switching to a four-day school week. The appeal is obvious—who wouldn’t want a three-day weekend every week? Parents imagine more family time. Teachers envision relief from burnout. Administrators see a recruiting advantage and maybe some budget savings.

The impulse makes sense. While anecdotal claims about nearby districts experience with four-day school week are rosy. The empirical research and evidence for four-day school weeks don’t support the optimistic anecdotes and claimed impacts.

Districts nationwide have embraced the four-day week as a silver bullet. The number has grown from 108 in 1999 to over 850 today. The pitch from advocates sounds great: potentially slash operating costs by up to 10 percent while giving students and families a break and offering teachers a quality-of-life perk that might actually get candidates to return administrator calls. Everyone wins, right?

Not quite. A study from the Education Commission of the States found actual savings range from 0.4 to 2.5 percent of district budgets…essentially a rounding error. Why the gap? Because 80-85 percent of school budgets are fixed personnel costs. You still need the same teachers teaching the same number of required instructional hours. Buildings still run. Sports still happen. The central office stays open. Transportation savings are modest, and they often come by cutting hours for bus drivers along with other hourly or classified workers. This creates employee turnover and is expensive to replace.

The recruitment benefit is real. Independence, Missouri saw a 360 percent spike in teacher applications after switching. Sounds impressive until you look longer-term. Research from the Annenberg Institute found no evidence the four-day week improves teacher retention. Instead, the “extra day off” often becomes a invisible substitute for real raises, with slower salary growth baked in over time. Those longer school days can run from 7:30 AM to 4:30 PM, and plenty of teachers still spend Fridays grading, planning, and drowning in paperwork. Turns out you can’t cure burnout with a slightly longer weekend. Teachers still burn out. They just burn out differently.

Then there’s what happens to students. the part that should matter most.

A 2025 systematic review from the University of Oregon’s HEDCO Institute examined eleven rigorous studies and found no evidence of significant positive effects from four-day weeks. Elementary and middle schoolers saw consistent declines in math and reading scores. For high schoolers in non-rural districts—which includes half of Walker County—the news gets worse: decreased math scores, lower graduation rates, more absences.

This shouldn’t surprise anyone. Extended school days suffer from diminishing returns. Elementary students have limited attention spans. That extra hour at day’s end (when everyone’s exhausted) is dramatically less effective than the first hours of the morning. You’re not getting equal value from 120 hours of instruction on a compressed schedule; you’re getting 120 hours where the last 20 percent are increasingly less effective or even worthless.

The damage extends beyond academics. Studies link four-day weeks to increased juvenile crime. One Colorado study found nearly 20 percent more overall crime and a 27 percent jump in property crime among high schoolers. Leave teenagers unsupervised for three consecutive days, and they find … hobbies. And often not the kind that look good on college applications. Additionally, Food insecurity increases when students lose access to school meals on that fifth day. Screen time replaces instruction. Parents scramble for childcare many cannot afford or find.

The four-day week doesn’t solve problems. It masks or shifts them—from schools to families, from classrooms to communities, from educators to everyone else. In part two of this article I will explain why this proposal is like rearranging deck chairs on the titanic.

None of this means advocates for schedule changes are wrong to seek solutions. Teacher burnout is real. Budgets are tight. Parents are overwhelmed. These problems deserve serious answers. But adopting a four-day week addresses none of the root causes.

Teachers aren’t burning out because they work five days instead of four. They’re burning out because of bureucracy and mandates, inadequate support, poorly designed compensation system with limited opportunities to increase pay, and a system that measures compliance rather than effectiveness. The school system itself is burning out, not just teachers. A three-day weekend doesn’t fix any of that. It just gives tired and often disillusioned teachers one more day to dread Monday.

Budget pressures won’t ease by trimming 2 percent from operational costs while academic outcomes decline and families absorb new childcare expenses. That’s not real savings; that’s cost-shifting from school back to parents.

Walker County families deserve honest answers about what a four-day week would actually deliver: marginal savings, no improvement in teacher retention, declining student achievement, increased crime, and a whole lot of scrambling for Friday childcare. The research isn’t ambiguous. The promises don’t match reality.

If we’re serious about improving education in Walker County, we need to stop chasing educational fads or calendar gimmicks and start asking harder questions about why our schools struggle in the first place. The answer won’t come easy. But it won’t be found in a three-day weekend either. Part two of this article will be published soon.

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Sources:

1. Education Commission of the States. (2009). Four-Day School Week. Policy Brief. https://www.ecs.org/clearinghouse/82/94/8294.pdf

2. Thompson, P. N., Gunter, K., Schuna, J. M., Jr., & Tomayko, E. J. (2021). Are all four-day school weeks created equal? A national assessment of four-day school week policy adoption and implementation. Education Finance and Policy, 16(4), 558-583. https://doi.org/10.1162/edfp_a_00316

3. Morton, E. (2021). Effects of four-day school weeks on school finance and achievement: Evidence from Oklahoma. American Educational Research Journal, 58(1), 3-37. https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831220948848

4. Independence School District Missouri. (2024). Board of Education Meeting Packet. https://resources.finalsite.net/images/v1760044333/isdschoolsorg/d9kecxkuuihmwxmupha9/OnlineBoardPacket4.pdf

5. Camp, A. M., Anglum, J. C., Koedel, C., Lee, S. W., & Nguyen, T. D. (2025). The effects of the four-day school week on teacher recruitment and retention. CALDER Working Paper No. 320-0625. Brown University, Lehigh University, University of Missouri. https://edworkingpapers.com/sites/default/files/ai25-1372.pdf

6. Ainsworth, A. J., Penner, E. K., & Liu, Y. (2024). Less is more: The causal effect of four-day school weeks on employee turnover. EdWorkingPaper No. 24-1000. Annenberg Institute at Brown University. https://doi.org/10.26300/22k7-wq78

7. Day, L., Golfen, S., Grant, S., & Trevino, D. (2025). Does a four-day school week benefit students? Findings from a systematic review of 11 studies on student outcomes. University of Oregon HEDCO Institute. https://hedcoinstitute.uoregon.edu/sites/default/files/2025-06/does-a-four-day-school-week-benefit-students-hedco.pdf

8. Morton, E., Thompson, P. N., & Kuhfeld, M. (2023). A multi-state, student-level analysis of the effects of the four-day school week on student achievement and growth. EdWorking Paper No. 22-630. Annenberg Institute at Brown University. https://doi.org/10.26300/p96h-8a41

9. Thompson, P. N., Tomayko, E. J., Gunter, K. B., Schuna, J., Jr., & McClelland, M. (2024). Impacts of the four-day school week on early elementary achievement. Economics of Education Review, 99, 102497. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2024.102497

10. Thompson, P. N., Tomayko, E. J., Gunter, K. B., & Schuna, J., Jr. (2021). Impacts of the four-day school week on high school achievement and educational engagement. Education Economics, 29(6). https://doi.org/10.1080/09645292.2021.2002945

11. Fischer, S., & Argyle, D. (2018). Juvenile crime and the four-day school week. Economics of Education Review, 64, 31-39. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2018.03.010

12. Morton, E. (2023). Effects of four-day school weeks on adolescents: Examining impacts of the schedule on academic achievement, attendance, and behavior in high school. Economics of Education Review, 93, 102363. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2023.102363

13. Thompson, P. N., & Ward, J. (2022). Only a matter of time? The role of time in school on four-day school week achievement impacts. Economics of Education Review, 86, 102198. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2021.102198

14. Day, T., Golfen, J., Grant, A., & Trevino, Y. (2025). Four-day school week in the United States: Living review 2025. University of Oregon, HEDCO Institute. https://hedcoinstitute.uoregon.edu/4DSW

The most dangerous moments in government rarely arrive with shouting. They slip in quietly. They sit at the end of a meeting, ask for a few minutes, and offer “guidance” that sounds sensible until held up to the light. That is how bad governance gains a foothold. Not through force, but through the soft confidence of someone who sounds authoritative while steering elected officials away from the people they actually serve.

Walker County witnessed exactly that when one of their Board attorneys stood up and delivered a short guidance statement about executive session confidentiality. His guidance was clear, confident, and recorded in the official minutes for posterity.

It was also breathtakingly wrong.

At the close of the July 21, 2025 called session, one of the board’s attorneys stated he still had the floor and would like to address one more item. (Minutes linked here)

“ There are a couple of quick matters that I’ve been asked to briefly speak on by Mr. Womack, so I’m just going to quickly address those. Those are related to a couple of provisions in the Code of Ethics. The first one comes from GADOE Board Meetings provision number five and it states to maintain the confidentiality of all discussions and other matters pertaining to the Board and school system during the Executive Session of the Board. One provision of the Code of Ethics simply states that whatever is said in Executive Session stays in Executive Session. It is not to be divulged to anybody; regardless of who they are. Just keep that in mind. I know there has been some opinions that are floating around out there that somebody has in the public sector that there is nothing that prevents a school board member from divulging what is said in Executive Session and that is flat wrong. It is completely contrary to what the provision is in the Code of Ethics. The second is actually to go along with that; if you divulge what goes on in Executive Session, you waive the provision of confidentiality and action in Executive Session. So lawyers like me can then begin to compel you to divulge what was said in that Executive Session if somebody breached that confidentiality and we definitely don’t want that happening. The second provision is under the heading of Conduct as a Board Member and is number four: Take no private action that will compromise board or school system administration. I interpret that means to avoid the appearance of impropriety and don’t take any action that can either be construed to compromise your position as a Board member or be construed to compromise the order of the Board or for the school administration. Always remember the public is watching. You may not feel the public watching and maybe you do. I have never been in an elected position, so I wouldn’t know, but I’m sure you do feel the public watching. Always remember the public is watching and you want to avoid the appearance of impropriety. Whatever action you take is a reflection of the Board and the school administration and that those actions reflect the Board again. So, these Codes of Ethics are in place to protect first of all you. You are the elected official and the Code of Ethics is there to protect you so you can perform the duties you’ve been elected to do. So you can serve the people you’ve been elected to serve. So, if you will keep these in mind and always act in accordance thereof; everything will be just fine and you as members of the Board will be successful and this hopefully will be fulfilling. Those are just a couple of things I was asked to just briefly address and with that I am finished.”

The message from the attorney was simple. Executive session confidentiality is absolute. Forever sealed. Anyone who suggests otherwise is “flat wrong.” Anyone who reveals what happened behind closed doors waives privilege for the entire Board, exposing everyone to legal compulsion.

There’s just one problem. None of this resembles Georgia law or board ethics policy.

Start with his core claim. Executive sessions are not vaults. They’re temporary exceptions to Georgia’s Open Meetings Act, which begins from the opposite premise: openness is the default, secrecy is rare and regulated. The law punishes officials who hide public business unlawfully, not those who expose unlawful secrecy. The board attorney presented the framework totally backwards.

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Then came his warning about waiving privilege. If one member discloses executive session content, he claimed, lawyers can force the entire Board to reveal everything. This would be news to the Georgia courts. Privilege belongs to the Board collectively and can only be waived by majority vote. Judges—not attorneys—determine whether statements lose protection. If his version were true, every disgruntled official in Georgia would hold veto power over their colleagues. One rogue member could detonate confidentiality at will. The state would be ungovernable.

Next, the taxpayer funded board attorney instructed the School Board to avoid any “appearance of impropriety.” That language doesn’t exist in the Board’s ethics code. It comes from judicial ethics, where judges must maintain distance from parties in their cases. School board members have the opposite obligation. They must engage closely with parents and their communities. They must ask hard questions and challenge administrators and leadership when necessary. Under the board attorney interpretation, a board member who asks hard questions could be branded unethical for daring to scrutinize the administration. That is not ethics. That is institutional protectionism.

The pattern is in his guidance is unmistakable. Silence equals safety. Transparency invites danger. Questioning the administration suggests ethical problems. Loyalty should flows inward to the institution, not outward to the public that elected the board.

The finale was the most revealing part. He told the Board that ethics codes exist to protect them. Georgia’s Constitution says the opposite. Public office is a public trust. Officials are servants of the people. Ethics rules protect the public from officials, not officials from the public.

Now put yourself in the position of a Walker County school board member sitting in that room.

Your attorney just told you that revealing executive session content waives privilege for everyone. That asking tough questions creates an appearance of impropriety. That confidentiality is absolute. All three statements range from misleading to flatly false. But you don’t know that, because you’re not a lawyer—that’s why you hired him.

Now you know the truth.

How do you vote now? How do you deliberate going forward? How do you fulfill your oversight duties when your own counsel has given ample reason to question their every word?

This is not a theoretical problem.

The question isn’t whether counsel intended to mislead the Board. Intent is irrelevant. What matters is impact. When an attorney provides guidance this deeply at odds with established law, elected school board members cannot function. They cannot ask informed questions. They cannot know their rights, their duties, or be sure of their role. They cannot tell whether they’re being protected or controlled.

Once you realize your lawyer has egregiously misstated the law to you—in public, on the record, with complete confidence—trust is gone. Not damaged. Not strained. Gone. And attorneys who have forfeited trust cannot serve their clients, no matter how many clarifying statements or memos they might produce afterward.

Walker County’s Board should thank the firm of Womack, Rodham, and Ray for their years of service and immediately relieve them of their duties. Not because mistakes are unforgivable, but because governing while taking advice from attorneys you cannot trust is impossible.

Board members cannot do their jobs if they don’t know the law. They cannot know the law if their attorneys won’t tell them the truth. And they cannot serve the public if their lawyers serve the institution, administration and bureaucracy instead.

Walker County deserves better. So does every citizen who depends on their school board to govern an immensely important entity in their community. No one can govern well while taking advice from someone they cannot trust.

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There are two glaring ways your local government lies about taxes. One happens every few years. One happens every summer. Both use the same playbook: make a tax increase sound like anything but.

That SPLOST on your ballot? The one you’re being asked to “continue”? That’s the first con.

When these sales taxes sunset in Georgia, they vanish—your sales tax rate drops by a full penny per dollar. State law makes clear SPLOSTs are time-limited voter approvals that end completely and require brand new referendums to restart.

You’re not voting to preserve or continue something. You’re voting to impose a fresh six-year tax.

But “Vote Yes for a Brand New Tax” doesn’t test well with focus groups. “Vote Yes to Continue” does. So that’s the word officials use to explain why you really, truly need this.

It’s not technically false. It’s just deliberately designed to mislead you and distract from actual consideration of the merits of the proposed projects.

The annual property tax “rollback” rhetoric is the second scam and worse. Every summer, local governments hold hearings few attend. Then at the end of the process they announce they’re “rolling back millage rate(often to some historic low)”—seemingly showing restraint, demonstrating responsibility. Yet often, your tax bill goes up anyway.

Here’s what they don’t say: there are three options for setting millage rates. Raise taxes. Keep them flat. Or cut them.

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In five years across our area, exactly one government entity has actually cut taxes: Catoosa County Commission this year. One cut. Five years. Dozens of opportunities across multiple jurisdictions. Instead general property taxes across the area and state have risen steadily over the past few years. But try and find the explicit statements announcing the less than full rollbacks increase taxes.

A “rollback” that raises your bill isn’t a rollback. It’s a tax increase wearing a disguise. They’re just raising it slightly less year after year—then congratulating themselves for restraint while your payment climbs.

Call it what it is. When officials rename a new tax a “continuation,” that’s gaslighting. When they call a tax increase a “rollback,” that’s gaslighting. When the entire public communication strategy is designed to make you feel like you’re keeping something instead of authorizing something new—or getting relief when you’re getting a bill increase—that’s institutional gaslighting.

And it works. Because most people don’t read the fine print. Because “continuation” sounds responsible and “rollback” sounds like savings and nobody has time to decode bureaucratic doublespeak,

The disguise is the product. Remove it, and the sale gets harder.

Catoosa’s education SPLOST and Walker’s general SPLOST both fund legitimate worthy infrastructure and capital asset proposals. School roofs. Roads. Fire stations. Sales tax spreads the burden across everyone who shops here—including pass-through traffic—instead of crushing homeowners with property tax bombs.

Between a penny sales tax and a millage increase, the penny is the lesser evil.

Both measures will probably pass. I think they should.

But there’s a reckoning coming.

There will be a referendum—maybe this cycle or next—when the answer is no. Not because the need isn’t valid or doesn’t matter. But because voters eventually have to remind officials who actually works for whom.

To avoid that and the difficult times that would follow, officials today would be wise to do the following: Stop calling new taxes “continuations.” Stop calling tax increases “rollbacks.” Show itemized project lists and audited results from last time. Show fund ledgers with detailed spending reports.

Promise less. Deliver more. Just give it to citizens straight. Treat taxpayers like adults. But for God’s sake, stop with the propaganda, spin, and doublespeak.

I never set out to be Chairwoman Teems’ critic. Truth be told, I tried to offer input and help her sharpen her ideas for governing. Last year, when “Citizens First” (the term I coined to describe how she hoped to govern and transform local government) didn’t yet exist, we talked about past governments and how to fix things—how a county government could earn trust through candor and sunlight instead of empty slogans. She wanted to change the culture, to prove that local government could be both transparent and efficient.

That’s why it’s been painful to watch the same woman who campaigned on “Truth, Transparency, Accountability” preside over activities that would make even the most compromised good ol’ boy say “that’s not a good look.”

It’s been deeply disappointing to watch someone go from championing transformative change and empowering citizens and taxpayers to now refusing and frustrating simple public records requests, charging nearly $10,000 to see standard financial reports and engineering the quietest $12 million transfer in Walker County history.

She promised transparency so often she made it sound like a sacrament. “I will always be open and honest with you,” Angie Teems declared, smiling straight into the camera as if transparency itself were a pose you could strike and hold.

That was before the $12 million was yanked from the local economic ecosystem.

The Vanishing Act

In June, Walker County commissioners took up a line item labeled “establish a secondary banking relationship.” It sounded harmless, bureaucratic—something about diversifying cash management, maybe signing a new certificate of deposit. What it didn’t say was that millions in public funds would leave the Bank of LaFayette, a 118-year-old local institution, and land at Regions Bank, a regional behemoth headquartered out of state with no branch or ATM in Walker County.

No Request for Proposals. No competitive bids.

No public notice that millions were to be moved.

No documents laying out interest rates, collateral terms, or service fees.

No economic impact analysis. No record that the economic effects were even considered.

Just minimal information for the public or the commissioners, some closed door meetings, no proof of claims made.

Then a vote.

A few months passed. My column published on October 4th, stirring widespread public interest. Citizens asked questions. Then came the first “clarification” on October 6th, drafted in the language of damage control: the move was “fiducially responsible,” the decision “forward-looking,” the savings “significant.” It mentioned fraud protection, technological modernization, even payroll integration. The one thing it didn’t mention and was totally lacking was proof.

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By last Friday, the backlash had become widespread. So the chairwoman, true to her campaign slogan, issued a second statement—one meant to calm the pitchforks but written like a press release from a company already lawyered up. She assured residents that the county’s “main operating account remains at the Bank of LaFayette,” that Regions merely provides “additional services,” and that in the future, yes, there will be open RFPs for similar services.

Read that again: in the future.

That single phrase was an accidental confession. You don’t promise to fix a process you didn’t break. You promise it because you know you skipped the safeguard everyone else uses. When governments bypass competitive bidding, they aren’t saving time, they’re cutting the public out of its own finances. The RFP is the citizen’s only seat at the table. Our guard and shield.

The Math That Doesn’t Add Up

The county’s justification leans on a modest increase in revenue. Regions pays roughly $444,000 a year in interest versus $240,000 from the Bank of LaFayette. That’s a difference of $204,000—a tidy number that sounds like good management until you understand what that money was doing while it sat in a local bank.

This is where the math stops being abstract and starts costing people their futures.

Deposits in community banks don’t gather dust. They circulate through the local economy like oxygen through blood. A dollar deposited at the Bank of LaFayette or any other community bank or credit union doesn’t just earn interest… it becomes working capital for the county itself. It’s loaned to the young couple buying their first home on Straight Street. It finances the HVAC company expanding into a second truck. It backs the line of credit that keeps the hardware store open through a slow winter, the one that employs six people and sponsors the softball team.

Community banks, according to Federal Reserve data, provide roughly two-thirds of all small-business loans in America despite holding barely one-tenth of total banking assets. In rural counties especially, they are often the only institutions willing to underwrite local risk … the family farm needing equipment financing, the small local retailer nobody else will touch, the church building a fellowship hall on faith and a 20-year loam.

Pull $12 million out of that system and you don’t just move money. You shrink the pool of available credit. You raise the cost of borrowing. You turn viable loans into maybes and maybes into nos.

The FDIC has been sounding this alarm for years: when local deposits migrate to regional or national banks, they rarely come back as local loans. Instead, they get swept into centralized investment portfolios, deployed wherever algorithms and risk models dictate. A deposit made in Walker County ends up financing a condo tower in Atlanta or a strip mall in Huntsville …. places that don’t know LaFayette, Georgia from Lafayette, Louisiana.

Meanwhile, back home, the loan officer at a community bank has $12 million less to work with. That’s not a rounding error. For a community bank, that’s dozens of loans it can’t make, dozens of families and businesses it can’t back. The county commissioners might see a $204,000 gain in interest revenue, but what they won’t see—what they’ll never be able to measure—is the loan that didn’t happen, the business that didn’t expand, the job that was never created.

The Hidden Tax

And here’s the cruelest irony: Teems is quick to boast about rolling back the county’s millage rate(to the calculated rollback rate—not below it), saving SOME homeowners $17.34 here, $37.44 there. She presents it as proof of fiscal stewardship, evidence that she’s maximizing taxpayer value.

But you can’t protect taxpayers by undermining the economy that employs them. That $17 means nothing to the HVAC technician whose boss couldn’t get financing for the second truck, the one that would have created his promotion.It’s a bitter joke to the couple whose mortgage application gets declined because the community bank no longer has the liquidity to compete with out-of-state lenders demanding higher down payments and charging premium rates.

This is the hidden tax nobody voted for: the slow, silent strangling of local credit that makes everything harder and more expensive for the people who actually live here.

Teems wants credit for earning the county $204,000 more a year in interest. Fine. But what’s the multiplier effect of $12 million in lost local lending capacity? What’s the cost when a county government prioritizes its own returns over the economic ecosystem that sustains its tax base?

Those questions won’t show up on a balance sheet, which is precisely why they need to be asked.

And that “payroll savings” she touts? Paycor’s own materials make clear that clients qualify for discounted pricing with nothing more than a checking account at Regions. The county could have opened one account, left the $12 million local, and still enjoyed every “modern” function she trumpets. So the question remains: why move it all?

What Transparency Actually Looks Like

If there’s a document showing the math, she hasn’t released it. If there’s a memo weighing the economic impact on local lending capacity, it hasn’t been produced. If there’s a single email showing five banks competing on terms, nobody’s seen it.

After two official statements in less than five days, Walker County citizens still have zero records or documents to prove any of Chairwoman Teems’ claims…

Leadership isn’t about being flawless—it’s about being accountable. And accountability begins with disclosure. The Citizens First that Teems talked about was supposed to bring citizens into the conversation and the process. It was supposed to treat taxpayers as partners, not obstacles.

It wasn’t just a tagline—it was a philosophy and mindset for government itself. For how it should approach everything government does and how the employees should think about their roles.

Now, watching propaganda press releases replace that principle feels like watching your own blueprint used to build a façade. Every time the county could have produced evidence, it has produced spin instead. “Aggressive interest.” “Modernization.” “Fraud protection.” The language of marketing, not open governance.

I still don’t believe Angie started out wanting to mislead anyone or govern in the opposite from how she stated in the beginning and last year. I think she wanted to prove what she promised. But somewhere along the line, she started confusing control with competence, started believing that sounding transparent was the same as being transparent.

Because truth without evidence is merely assertion. Transparency without records is merely spectacle. And accountability without acknowledgment? That’s not governance—that’s gaslighting.

The Way Forward

This isn’t about banking services. It’s about trust. It’s about whether a county government understands that it exists within an economy, not above it—that its decisions ripple through every business loan, every mortgage application, every family trying to build something in the place they call home.

If Chairwoman Teems wants to prove that Citizens First still means something, she can start with something simpler than another press release: release the documents and records. Show the bids, the terms, the correspondence, the interest calculations, the collateral agreements.

And while she’s at it, show us the economic impact analysis. Show us the cost-benefit study that weighed $204,000 in county interest earnings against millions in lost community lending capacity. Show us the memo that considered what pulling this money would do to local businesses and families. Show us the information provided to district commissioners to properly educate them of what this would do long term.

Show us that this wasn’t just another back-room decision sold as “trust me”, but a choice made with eyes wide open to its full consequences.

Until then, the gap between what she promised and and her actual performance and actions speak louder than any statement(devoid of any records) her press shop can push out. Right now, the only thing that’s open is the county’s new account at Regions. While honesty, transparency and accountability are still missing, along with $12 million that used to work and multiply for Walker County and its people.

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There’s a new banker in town for Walker County’s government, and you’ll never guess where their office is. Because it isn’t here. Not in LaFayette. Not in Chickamauga or Rossville. In fact, the financial institution our Chairwoman, Angie Teems, has apparently decided is best suited to handle our public funds doesn’t have a single branch, or even a lonely ATM, within the entire physical bounds of Walker County.

Let that sink in. The county government has started moving millions of our tax dollars to Regions Bank, a cold, corporate leviathan headquartered—not in Georgia but in Alabama and which has zero physical or human investment in the community.

Now, you might wonder how this happens. Normally, a governing body puts out what’s called a Request for Proposal, or an RFP for vendors on most things. Banking is no different. It’s a beautifully simple, transparent process. You announce what you need (in this case, banking services) and let qualified vendors submit bids and then selection is done in the open to give the taxpayers the absolute best deal on fees, interest, and service. It’s the gold standard for avoiding backroom deals and ensuring good stewardship of public money.

I know all this because the process used by Chairwoman Teems and really the whole situation made me curious. So that meant research. Lots of it. I went looking at RFPs from other Georgia cities and counties from the past five years.

From the one city to the next and with county after county, I found a fascinating and predictable pattern. First they all used an RFP for procurement of a banking provider. And every single one had a baseline requirement before a bank could even submit a bid: they had to have a full-service branch within the county, or at the very least, within a few miles of the county seat. Or city limits. It’s a common-sense rule. And it’s also a best practice recommended by government accounting organizations.

And right there, is at least one likely reason why Chairwoman Teems didn’t bother with an RFP or any other competitive bidding or public selection process. Had she followed the standard, transparent, taxpayer-first best practice, Regions Bank wouldn’t have even been allowed to apply. They would have been disqualified on page one.

So, instead of an open competition, we got what appears to be a private placement, a decision made in the shadows with no public record and no justification open to scrutiny. That’s not just odd; IT IS WILD.

This secretive process has reportedly resulted in transfers totaling $12 million thus far—out of our local economy(yes local economy, see the infographic at the end) and into the coffers of an megacorporation. Make no mistake, this move by Teems will have negative downstream impacts no one can predict.

Community banks turn deposits into mortgages for young families, loans for small businesses and entrepreneurs, and lines of credit for farmers. Pull the money out and lending dries up. That means higher rates, fewer approvals, and tougher odds for our neighbors we know and businesses we frequent.

Whatever flashy interest rate or digital service the county may have been promised by Regions to induce the move, the trade-off is brutal.

This brings us to the part of this saga that struck a nerve with me. The bank the county government just jilted or is in the process of jilting is The Bank of LaFayette. You don’t have to be a customer (I’m not) to know its story. It’s a cornerstone of this county, run by the same local family, the Gilberts, for generations. It has stood here for more than 125 years.

They offer up their own buildings as free community meeting rooms in LaFayette and Rock Spring, a direct investment in our civic life. And I could fill an entire column simply by listing the events and activities and entities that have been sponsored or promoted by the Bank of LaFayette.

But their loyalty goes much, much deeper than buildings or sponsorships. Oh—and that’s not even mentioning the land donations. Gilbert Elementary is called that for a reason.

If the Hutcheson family were the community pillars of the northern half of the county through much of the 20th century, then the Gilbert family—and the Bank of LaFayette they continue to manage—have been the equivalent for the entire county for just as long, and still are today.

Do you remember 2017? When Walker County was teetering on the edge of insolvency and a state takeover? When newly-elected Commissioner Shannon Whitfield was desperately searching for a lender to keep the lights on? No one would touch the county government. The risk was too great. No one, that is, except The Bank of LaFayette.

It wasn’t a simple call for a community bank. A dozen or more their size—and bigger—go under every year from one risky bet too many. But this one stepped up, put its own neck on the line, and handed over a $5 million lifeline to save the county from state takeover and the crippling property tax hikes that would follow. They took the gamble when no one else would. Certainly not banks in Birmingham Alabama.

Yet here we are in the year of our lord 2025 and our new leadership’s response is to yank millions of dollars out of their able management in a deal with a bank headquartered in another state whose nearest branch is in another county—to say this is shrouded in controversial elements and red flags is an understatement.

So now, we are left with questions. What was the justification for this move? Was a “better deal” really secured? If so, where is the documentation? Were local banks offered the chance to match? Why was standard transparent, competitive process for procurement ignored here?

Why betray a pillar of the community? Why flush a relationship with a solid local partner that literally saved this county and its taxpayers from severe financial hardship just a few years ago?

This isn’t just about banking. It’s about transparency, loyalty, and common sense.

Citizens are owed answers. Until we get them, every taxpayer in Walker County should be questioning the judgment of those who engineered this baffling saga.

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Property tax, n.: A government device by which you pay rent on land you allegedly own; a recurring proof that “private property” is a crappy time-share with the county government.

Milton Friedman once observed that property taxes inspire more rage than income taxes for a simple reason: you have to write the check yourself. Income tax vanishes before you ever see it, a magic trick of withholding that makes the government's hand in your pocket feel like a gentle breeze. But property tax? That's a punch to the gut twice a year, a bill that arrives with all the subtlety of a debt collection call at dinnertime.

This helps explain why the conservative tax-cutting wishlist might be on the verge of a rewrite. The classic Republican crusade against the income tax is losing ground to a fiercer, populist battle cry: get rid of the property tax.

For years, Georgia Republicans have sung from the same hymnal: abolish the state income tax. Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones has made income tax repeal his signature crusade, positioning himself as the heir to a decades-old conservative orthodoxy. It's a fine policy position—one that appeals to the Club for Growth crowd and sounds appropriately Reagan-esque in Republican primary debates.

But down in Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis has been singing a different tune entirely. The firebrand governor who never met a culture war he couldn't win has pivoted to something far more tangible and immediate: abolishing property taxes altogether. Not reforming them. Not capping them. Abolishing them. It's a promise that resonates in every kitchen in America, where families sit around tables calculating whether they can afford to stay in their homes as assessments skyrocket.

The contrast is telling. While Jones offers Georgia voters relief from a tax that's already withheld from their paychecks—invisible money they never held in their hands. Governor DeSantis promises Floridians they'll never again have to write that check to the county tax commissioner, never again face the annual ritual of watching their property tax bill climb while their income stays flat.

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Why Democrats Could Steal Populist Energy

Property-tax abolition isn’t just a rightwing fantasy. Framed properly, it could be the progressive dream ticket as well. It’s not an either or thing. Here’s why.

Georgia funds schools with a patchwork: part state, part local property taxes. The local part is where the problem hides. Wealthy areas and districts raise millions at low rates. Struggling rural or urban districts raise peanuts at higher rates. The formula that governs the state side—the Quality Basic Education Act of 1985, still unchanged—never included a “poverty weight.” It doesn’t give extra dollars for kids who grow up in poorest areas.

That means a kid in Buford and a kid in LaFayette are technically “equal” under the formula, but in reality, the Buford kid is sitting in a brand-new STEM lab while the LaFayette kid is sitting at a desks used by his parents when they were in school.

Republicans know this. Three GOP governors—Sonny Perdue, Nathan Deal, Brian Kemp—tried to modernize or replace QBE. None succeeded. Task forces, hearings, blue-ribbon everythings—no durable reform. That seemingly intractable failure and no GOP moves to abolish school property taxes leaves a mile-wide lane for a credible, non-shrill Democrat to say: end the school levy, force the state to fund schools fairly, and build a fair simpler QBE 2.0. You can hear the pitch already: equal opportunity, same promise for every kid, and—by the way—your property tax is slashed by 70%+.

Republicans should be losing sleep over a question: What if Democrats figure this out first?

This unique combination creates an extraordinary opening for a Democrat willing to think beyond progressive orthodoxy. A nightmare scenario for the GOP is that it is proposed by someone like recently announced candidate for governor Michael Thurmond—former DeKalb Schools superintendent, three-term labor commissioner, former DeKalb County CEO. Unlike most prominent Democrat politicians these days who sound like they recently broke out of the asylum or slick enough to sell you beachfront property in Nebraska, Thurmond speaks plainly and makes sense. He understands budgets. He knows education. Most importantly, he could credibly propose something revolutionary: abolish the local school district portion of your property tax bill entirely while reforming QBE to actually help kids who need it.

The beauty no matter who proposes it? It appeals to the widest swath of the electorate. Progressives get equity reform for education. Conservatives get a tax cut. Homeowners could save $500 to $1,500+ (60-80% of property taxes bill) annually. And if it’s Thurmond, suddenly, improbably…the Democrats could own a populist tax revolt.

The Republican Trap

Now picture the 2026 governor’s debate.

The moderator turns to the Republican candidate and asks:

“Do you support abolishing the school district portion of local property taxes, as your opponent proposes?”

There are only two answers, and both are bad.

• Say yes, and you admit the Democrat beat you to the punch. You look like you’re playing catch-up or following.

• Say no, and you’ve just declared yourself the defender of property taxes. That’s like volunteering to be the mascot for mosquitoes.

Republicans would scramble for talking points in the aftermath:

• It’s not realistic—it’ll bankrupt schools.

• It’s redistribution—your money will go to Atlanta kids.

• We have responsible relief—bigger homestead exemptions, caps, circuit breakers.

None of that matters.

Voters won’t compare policy or position papers. They’ll compare tax bills and numbers. Democrats would be the ones promising to kill the most hated bill in your mailbox. Or the largest part of it.

Republicans would be the ones explaining why it’s complicated. When your opponent promises to eliminate a tax, offering to explain or at best to reduce it makes you the candidate of the status quo. In politics, “it’s complicated” loses to “here’s your money” every time.

Worse for Republicans, if Democrats seize the property tax issue, all the "woke politics" and culture issue attacks (that are effective and relevant) start to lose their sting. Hard to paint someone or a party as a radical leftist when they're promising working families the most conservative thing imaginable: keeping more of their own money. A Thurmond-type Democrat would sound less like AOC and more like Bill Clinton circa 1992—before he discovered what "is" means.

The Math Actually Works

Regardless of whether a Republican or Democrat seizes the issue, there will be skeptics who decry the idea to be impossible. Except it's not. Georgia's robust growth generates new revenue annually. A broadened sales tax—still lower than many states—could fill gaps. Phase it in over a few years. Guarantee no district loses funding through a reformed QBE 2.0 that includes poverty weights. Create a constitutionally protected education fund.

The revenue replacement challenge for eliminating school property taxes presents no greater complexity than Jones's income tax repeal proposal. The amounts are comparable. The difference is political and real world impact: income tax cuts feel abstract, while property tax elimination—even if it’s just the local school district portion of property taxes—hits every homeowner's bottom line directly and immediately.

Think about it. A young couple in a poor district with small children sees their annual property tax bill drop by 800 to 1,200+ while their kids' schools finally receive adequate, stable funding. A senior citizen on fixed income saves $1,100+ annually while knowing education funding won't depend on neighborhood wealth. And that PTA parent who saw the multi-million-dollar jumbotron in a suburban Atlanta school gym realizes poor districts might finally get fair treatment.

Down-Ballot Devastation

The implications extend far beyond the governor's mansion. The governor’s race is an open contest in Georgia next year. Also on the ballot will be a federal Senate race where Democrat Jon Ossoff sits under 50 percent approval and looks vulnerable. A Democrat running for Governor who seizes the property tax issue with a bold popular proposal could boost Ossoff's reelection chances while providing down-ballot candidates with a new populist economic message that transcends traditional partisan divides.

Republicans would find themselves defending an unpopular tax while Democrats promise relief. In a purple state like Georgia, that's electoral suicide.

Republicans should own this issue. It's a conservative dream: cutting taxes, empowering parents, forcing government efficiency. The fact that they've let it sit there like an unclaimed lottery ticket while Democrats are still looking at it like it’s an unclaimed bag at the airport they might recognize is political malpractice of the highest order. A quick look at its history reveals the Georgia GOP seems uniquely gifted at snatching defeat from the jaws of certain victory, but letting the left swipe this issue would be their masterpiece.

The clock is ticking. Every month Republicans spend debating income tax rates that most voters barely understand is another month Democrats have to recognize the gift sitting out in the open for the taking.

Property tax, n.: In Georgia, a line item begging for a political obituary, waiting for whichever party possesses sufficient nerve to write it.

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The party that writes that obituary first will be in the driver's seat in Georgia politics for the next decade. Republicans have the natural advantage, policy credentials, and philosophical foundation to own this issue. Whether they'll seize the moment or gift it to Democrats shrewd enough to steal their thunder remains to be seen.

Lt. Governor Jones has made clear his commitment to income tax repeal. Attorney General Chris Carr and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger both have a golden opportunity to seize rare populist power by proposing elimination of the local school district portion of property taxes. Will it happen?

I don't usually write about national politics or the endless deluge of cultural outrage. My focus and comfort zone is closer to home: state and local issues, grassroots politics, school boards, county commissions, tax rates, local battles for accountability, all the everyday but consequential decisions that actually shape lives more than people ever realize. But the events of September 10, 2025, demands a pause to say something more.

Charlie Kirk was shot and killed while speaking to students at a University in Utah on September 10th 2025. A man set out for him and decided that bullets, not arguments, would win the day. The immediate results are obvious: a man dead, a family broken, an audience and many across the nation traumatized saddened and devastated. The longer results are harder to determine but easier to feel, and this feels like a significant but yet another fracture in a country that more often feels like its coming apart at the seams.

It’s been hard to think about, for me at least.

But I keep thinking about Robert Kennedy in 1968. He stood on the back of a flatbed truck in Indianapolis and told a stunned crowd that Martin Luther King Jr. had been murdered. He didn't give them platitudes or a polished statement vetted by speech writers. He told them the truth and what he felt: that grief, if left unchecked, can turn into violence. He begged them not to answer killing with more killing. That moment of raw honesty may have kept Indianapolis from burning like so many other cities that night.

But here's where we are now: the United States of 2025 is a place where leadership like that is not just rare, it's practically extinct. Our politics are hollowed out. Our institutions at all levels are brittle or broken. And our national conversation is built less on persuasion than performance, less on truth than manipulation.

The rot isn't just in the violence we see, it's in the lies we all silently ignore.

We live in a country where falsehood and dishonesty are no longer embarrassments but are tactics and strategy. Where leaders on both sides will say whatever serves the moment, and the people cheering them on don't even demand consistency, much less honesty. A lie told boldly or with enough bravado is treated as good politics. A lie told often enough becomes a tribal chant for our side. And every time we shrug at it, or laugh at it, or excuse it because "the other side is worse," the center gets a little weaker.

You've seen it clearly: president after president of the United States has looked straight at the camera and lied, and millions chose to believe him anyway. The lies about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, which dragged the country into decades of war. Lies about the Patriot Act, or the NSA spying, or the financial system and the bailouts that followed. More recently, lies about election results, lies about public health, lies about inflation, lies about education. Lies dressed up as optimism, lies disguised as outrage, lies so constant that truth itself feels unattainable at times.

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And it isn't just Washington or national politics. The same pattern plays out in every corner of the country. Local governments hold meetings behind closed doors and insist nothing is being hidden. School boards and superintendents bend the rules for inflated stats or to claim it's not nepotism if you change a few job titles. County and city governments promise limited government then spend year after year or feign their belief in transparency and then frustrate any attempt to obtain the public's records. And the “public comment” periods where citizens are treated as nuisances, not owners. Each one of these examples is its own proof that we aren’t immune here or in any quiet corner of America.

We all know these things happen, and yet too often the individually and the public shrugs, because we've grown accustomed to lies, from leaders and from the people “just doing their job” down below.

This is the corrosion and rot that sets the stage for days like September 10. Violence is shocking, but it doesn't emerge from nowhere. It emerges from a culture where honesty is optional, where deception is rewarded, and where something called a “widening gyre” or expanding vortex of chaos was first written as a metaphor for a world of uncertainty and chaos.

In 1919, the poet William Butler Yeats wrote about the world after the First World War. After the great war had gutted Europe's faith in order, Yeats wrote:

"Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world."

The metaphor is simple and stark: the falcon circles further and further until it no longer hears the voice that calls it home. That’s us. Citizens tuning out their leaders. Leaders deaf to citizens. Neighbors losing the ability to hear one another at all. That falcon spinning out of earshot, like us. Citizens circling further from the truth, further from one another, further from any kind of accountability. And the falconer (any voice of honesty, of restraint, of reason) can barely be heard above the noise

.Yeats went on: "The ceremony of innocence is drowned."

Is that not what you see if you Look around after tragedy now? Even the way we process tragedy have been corrupted. A man is shot and killed, and within hours the story is turned into hashtags, fundraising emails, partisan talking points, and another round of outrage dujour. Innocence, dignity, and honesty are drowned out by the scramble to…do what?

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If you want to understand how we got here, you can't just look at the gunman or the other side you dislike. You have to look at the rest of us—all of us: the people who have allowed dishonesty to become the default language of public life. We tolerate lies because they comfort us. We defend lies because they come from "our side." We normalize lies because calling them out means we might lose friends, jobs, or status. And so the center rots from neglect.

Yeats continued his poem with a line that has outlived a century of chaos:

"The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity."

If that doesn't describe America today, nothing does. The people who value honesty often retreat in exhaustion, afraid to speak or convinced it won't matter. Meanwhile, the loudest liars drown out everything with their passionate intensity. We've reached the point where sincerity is mocked as weakness, and deception and blatant lying is praised as what it takes to win or survive. Dishonesty made normal.

That isn’t by chance and it isn't random. Not by design but it's the model of our institutions, our politics, our society. And every time we accept it, excuse it, or normalize it, we march one step further into Yeats' prophecy.

So no, the center isn't holding. Every dishonest quote and press release, every manipulative post or headline, every elected official or cog in the machine employee who knows better but says or does otherwise:, every lie each of us accept despite knowing them to be untrue, these are all little tears in the fabric. Left unchecked, they add up to days and nights like September 10, when someone decides even the most fantastic lies aren't enough anymore.

Another American is dead. A hero to many, a villian to others. Another line has been crossed. This one feels different (especially if you ask a person under 30). In any event, we are left with Yeats' words, which sound less and less like poetry and more like a dark prophecy for our republic:

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.

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They say necessity is the mother of invention. What more people are starting to realize is that governments are the mother of extortion. Don’t think so? Let’s take a moment to honor the sheer genius of local government.

Not the pothole-filling, good governance kind. No, I mean the bold, visionary kind—the kind that dreams up brand-new ways to charge you for things. Even things you didn’t do.

Enter, the non-user fee.

It’s a real thing. A real fee. For real people. Who really didn’t use anything.

You see, in the scenic North Georgia city of Ringgold, someone had a brilliant idea years ago. The city extended sewer lines to neighborhoods where many folks were already happily using their own septic systems. So far, so good.

But then came a problem: some people didn’t connect. They declined the offer. Refused the generous opportunity to dig up their yard, pay thousands of dollars, and enjoy monthly sewer bills forever.

Ingrates and monsters they are, really.

So the city did what any reasonable group of elected men and women clothed in the immense statist power of a governing body would do:

They sent the freeloaders not using the sewer a bill anyway.

Not for service. Not for connection. Not even for maintenance. Just for having the opportunity to use the service. A proximity tax. A fine for saying, “No thanks.”

This wasn’t just a bad policy. This was government breaking into new territory—an exciting frontier where not using something is now billable. You didn’t use the sewer? You still owe. Because you could have.

The genius is undeniable, traditional business models foolishly depend on customer satisfaction and actual service delivery. Local governments like Ringgold have discovered they could skip those tedious steps entirely. Money for nothing!

Imagine the possibilities.

Didn’t use the public tennis courts? That’s a no-serve access surcharge. Skipped the town Christmas parade? Shame, that’ll be $1.99 still, it was great! Didn’t park downtown this month? Too bad. You had access. That’s a non-parking availability fee.

This is where local government becomes less about essential service delivery and more about revenue extraction and theft. The non-user fee abandons the quaint notion that payment should correlate with service received. Why should citizens only pay for what they get when they could pay for what they don't get instead? Once the logic shifts from “pay for what you use” to “pay because it exists,” there’s no limit to how many little charges they can invent.

But recently something rare happened: someone with a gavel said, “Hold on.”

At the August 5th Catoosa County Commission meeting, Chairman Steven Henry made a motion to put an end to this nonsense—at least where county SPLOST dollars (sales tax revenue) are concerned. He proposed a requirement: if Ringgold wants county help funding a sewer rejuvenation/repair project, it needs to meet two conditions:

1. Eliminate the non-user fee, and

2. Implement a uniform rate structure for everyone using the system.

That motion came alongside pointed questions and discussion led by District 3 Commissioner Richard Tharpe, who called out the absurdity of charging people for not connecting to a service they didn’t want and didn’t use.

They nailed it. Because this fee isn’t just ridiculous and obnoxious…it is quite simply an illegal tax.

In Georgia, local governments aren’t allowed to impose taxes by stealth. If you want to raise revenue, you have to do it out in the open: a uniform tax, passed through the proper processes. That’s why essential public services are funded with taxes, not random arbitrary fees slapped on homeowners who say no to a city sewer hook-up.

The idea is simple: if it benefits the whole community, the whole community pays in. And yes, while we could debate whether property taxes are a just or efficient system (spoiler: they’re not), at least they’re applied evenly and transparently.

But the non-user fee? That’s not a tax. That’s a workaround. That’s local government saying, “We didn’t get enough voluntary customers, so we’re going to invoice the holdouts until they submit. Because we can.”

And this is exactly why you don’t want governments to have multiple attempts to access your wallet.

Every separate fee, surcharge, or “contribution” is another opportunity to justify, market, spin, and guilt you into compliance. First it’s sewer. Then stormwater. Then broadband. Then parks. Every department with a deficit and a compelling story gets a new “fee.”

Government should get one shot at your wallets and pocketbooks, through one clean mechanism. And then it should be forced to prioritize like the rest of us. Budget. Adjust. Make choices. Instead, the trend is to carve up the funding pie into a thousand little bills, each sold as necessary, each small enough to avoid resistance ….until you’re paying more in “fees” than you ever would have paid in taxes.

And yes, I’ll say it: we should eliminate property taxes altogether. They penalize ownership, punish retirees on fixed incomes, and tie your tax bill to real estate speculation you can’t control. But that’s a bigger battle for another day.

For now, we need to stop local governments from disguising illegal taxation as “service fees,” especially when the service was declined, unused, and unwanted.

So here we are: the county has drawn a line. Chairman Henry made the motion. Commissioner Tharpe made the case. The commission made the right call. Now the question is: Will Ringgold do the right thing…or cling to a petty nonsensical fee that should’ve never existed in the first place?

Because the non-user fee isn’t about infrastructure. It’s about obedience. And if your local government is charging you for saying no, it’s not managing a voluntary compact or even a utility. It’s managing you.

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Abraham Lincoln sits in hallowed stone silence on the National Mall, revered as the savior of the Union and the liberator of the enslaved. Schoolchildren recite the soft spoken words of the 16th president year after year, reading carefully chosen quotations that reinforce a singular narrative that is meant to subtly deify the man. What they’re not told—what most Americans never learn—is that this version of Lincoln was built for veneration, not understanding.

The real Lincoln, as painstakingly documented by acclaimed (and often wrongly derided) economist Thomas DiLorenzo in The Real Lincoln, Lincoln Unmasked, and The Problem with Lincoln, was not a secular saint. He was a shrewd politician who exploited racial prejudices, expanded executive power to dangerous extremes, and ignited a war that left over 620,000 dead. His legacy is less about emancipation and more about centralization—of power, money, and myth.

Begin with Lincoln’s racial views, which have been almost entirely scrubbed from the popular public narrative. In multiple public speeches, Lincoln affirmed that he did not support political or social equality for Black Americans. “I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes,” he told a crowd in Charleston, Illinois, in 1858. “There is a physical difference between the white and black races,” he added, “which will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.” These weren’t offhand remarks. They were campaign lines, crafted to secure the votes of Northern whites who opposed slavery but also opposed Black citizenship.

Lincoln wasn’t an abolitionist. As DiLorenzo shows, he fought against slavery’s expansion only to protect white labor and preserve the Union—not because he believed in racial justice. In Illinois, he supported laws that banned Black migration and endorsed the deportation of freed slaves. He managed the Illinois Colonization Society, which used taxpayer money to remove free Black residents from the state. Even as president, Lincoln pushed for colonization schemes in Central America, the Caribbean and Africa. He supported the idea of voluntary exile. His vision of “freedom” was one that removed Black people from American society altogether.

Then there’s the Emancipation Proclamation….the document most cited as proof of Lincoln’s moral greatness. But as DiLorenzo argues, it was a military tactic, not a humanitarian act. Lincoln admitted this fact in private. It freed only those slaves in areas under Confederate control, where Lincoln had no authority, and it specifically exempted slave-holding areas loyal to the Union like Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri. Secretary of State William Seward quipped that it freed those “where we cannot reach them” and left them enslaved where the Union army could have liberated them. Even Lincoln admitted the proclamation lacked legal basis outside of military necessity.

While the public was sold a crusade for liberty, the administration waged a brutal assault on civil liberties. Lincoln suspended habeas corpus nationwide, arrested thousands without trial, and shut down hundreds of newspapers that criticized his policies. He even ordered the military arrest and deportation of Ohio Congressman Clement Vallandigham, a vocal critic of conscription and the newly imposed income tax. In Lincoln Unmasked, DiLorenzo reminds readers that these actions weren’t necessary for wartime security—they were intended to silence dissent and consolidate control.

When immigrants in New York City protested the draft, angry that they were being conscripted into a war they didn’t support, Lincoln sent troops to suppress the uprising. Over one hundred civilians were killed. This was not an isolated incident, but part of a pattern. Lincoln wielded power with authoritarian confidence, and mainstream academic historians have often praised him for it. Historian Clinton Rossiter, writing decades later, called him “a great dictator” who demonstrated “amazing disregard for the Constitution.” That was meant as a compliment. Countless popular historians and curricula have followed in the same verse.

One of my favorite historical figures and acclaimed abolitionist Lysander Spooner wrote of Lincoln after the war, "All these cries of having 'abolished slavery,'... 'saved the country,'... are all gross, shameless, transparent cheats..."

The war also served as a vehicle for Lincoln’s long-standing economic agenda. For years, he had backed Whig policies that Southern opposition had blocked—high tariffs, federal subsidies, a national bank, and infrastructure programs favoring Northern industries. Once the Southern states seceded and their congressional representatives were gone, Lincoln implemented his entire wish list. The Morrill Tariff nearly doubled import duties. The National Banking Acts centralized monetary power. The Pacific Railway Acts handed vast sums and land to railroad corporations with political connections. None of this was new. These were the same policies Lincoln had championed since the 1830s. War gave him the pretext to enact them.

Outside the United States, slavery ended without civil war pr mass bloodshed. Britain, Denmark, Sweden, France, Mexico, and much of Latin America all abolished slavery through compensation or gradual emancipation. Even Northern states, including New York, phased out slavery over decades. DiLorenzo points out that the South could have followed the same path. But peaceful emancipation would not have allowed Lincoln to restructure the Union on federalist terms or to ram through a new economic order.

Another dark chapter ignored in textbooks and media is Lincoln’s role in the largest mass execution in American history. In 1862, after the U.S. government defaulted on treaty obligations to the Santee Sioux, who faced starvation, a violent uprising ensued. Lincoln reviewed the cases of hundreds of Native Americans sentenced to death and approved 39 executions. The trials had been a joke. Some lasted under ten minutes. In return for his supposed clemency and mercy—he had been originally urged to execute hundreds—Lincoln promised Minnesota officials he would remove all Native Americans from the state and send millions in federal funds to its treasury. These events are rarely taught, but they speak volumes.

Why does this matter now? Because the Lincoln myth teaches Americans to revere concentrated power when it is cloaked in righteous language or serves the ends of the side you are on, Every modern president seeking unchecked authority invokes Lincoln. Woodrow Wilson jailed war critics and cited Lincoln. Franklin Roosevelt interned Japanese Americans and pointed to Lincoln throughout his New Deal expansion of federal power. George W. Bush’s legal team cited Lincoln to justify indefinite detention among other atrocities. Barack Obama named Lincoln as inspiration for drone strike policy. President Trump and his legal team now likewise turn to Lincoln to justify the unilateral actions that would appall the founding generation. Trump to his credit has not yet invoked Lincoln to justify mindless foreign policies that have plagued America and led to forever wars and widespread corruption since the end of the second world war. When power expands under the cover of moral emergency and crisis, Lincoln is the go-to precedent.

This column isn’t about re-litigating the Civil War. It’s about recognizing how myth distorts our understanding of liberty, power, and government. DiLorenzo’s work doesn’t aim to lionize the Confederacy….it aims to dismantle the falsehood that Lincoln preserved the founding principles. In truth, he rewrote the rules of the game. He built the imperial presidency. He Paved the way for the modern administrative leviathan now 35 trillion dollars in debt. He conditioned Americans to cheer for executive decrees if they were wrapped in noble rhetoric or they serve the side they happen to be on.

The republic was not built on myths. It was built on checks and balances, on distributed power and individual rights. That republic died in 1861 for the most part and was replaced by an empire that persists today with a facade of justice and veneer of founding principles. A citizenry that worships power rather than restrains it is one step from servitude. Lincoln’s legacy, when examined in full, does not strengthen our institutions. It weakens the very constitutional principles he claimed to defend.

History should illuminate, not indoctrinate. Until Americans are willing to confront the uncomfortable truths about Lincoln(and other myths they’ve been taught), they will remain vulnerable to the same arguments that dismantled liberty the first time—next time, without even realizing it’s happening.

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The flags have been folded. The parades are over. The echoes of fireworks have faded into the summer wind. Across Georgia, county commissioners and other elected officials are back at the grind (such as it is)—facing budgets, complaints, requests, and millage rate decisions. In six months, legislators will return to session, hundreds of new bills and competing priorities in hand.

But before ay decision is made before any vote is cast, before a single line item is adjusted or another budget hearing begins, I want to ask a simple question—one that has nothing to do with party or politics and everything to do with perspective:

What would you do if…?

If your child were wrongly accused of a serious crime tomorrow, would you trust the system as it stands today to defend their rights? Would you believe Georgia’s constitutional promise to “insure Justice to all” would truly be kept?

Would you feel secure knowing their public defender is juggling a frightening number of open cases, with little support and even less time? Would you feel peace in your heart trusting that the charges filed were all carefully and fairly investigated—rather than stacked to compel a plea, precisely to avoid the chance of trial? Would you let the process play out? Or would you call in every contact, exhaust every favor, drain your savings to ensure they were protected?

Now imagine another scenario—one no parent, sibling, or spouse ever wants to face: you lose a loved one in a car crash caused by a drunk driver. The only hope for justice rests with the local district attorney. Would you feel reassured, knowing their office is stretched thin, their attorneys exhausted and underpaid, drowning beneath caseloads no human could reasonably carry?

Would you understand if a plea deal with minimal consequences was offered—not because it was just, but because there simply weren’t enough resources to take the case to trial?

These aren’t hypotheticals. They are real, lived experiences for thousands of Georgia families every year. And the painful truth is: our government-run justice system is broken and it fails them. Not because people in power don’t care. Not because anyone is neglecting their duties. But because we’ve quietly let other priorities rise above the most foundational one of all.

Justice.

Securing justice is why government exists in the first place. That’s not good writing—it’s right there in our founding documents. The Declaration of Independence tells us: governments are instituted to secure our rights. Not just to provide comfort. Not to entertain or feed us. Not to put out fires or rescue us from danger. But to secure liberty. Life. Property. The pursuit of happiness.

Everything else—every park, every recreation program, every mowing crew or new tractor to manicure the medians, every feel-good initiative—is secondary to that. Worthwhile, yes. But secondary.

That word—secure—carries weight. It’s more than sentiment. It is obligation.

We shouldn’t ask much of our governments. But what we do ask is sacred. When someone is accused, when a victim needs justice, when rights are on the line . . . there is no substitute for a justice system that is fully resourced, fully staffed, and prepared to function as intended. And right now, we are not there.

Across Georgia and the country, roughly 90 to 95 percent of criminal cases end in plea bargains. Not trials. Not evidence being heard. Not guilt or innocence being fully tested. Just an agreement—often reached under pressure—because the system simply doesn’t have the people, time, or money to do anything else.

And while that may sound efficient, it is not justice.

The result? People waive their rights to avoid sitting in jail for months awaiting trial, or to escape the threat of a crushing sentence if they lose. Prosecutors, lacking resources and overwhelmed by heavy caseloads, offer lesser pleas—effectively choosing which victims matter more. Public defenders and prosecutors do their best with impossible workloads and ever-shrinking resources. It’s not the fault of the people in the system; it’s the fault of the system itself.

But here’s the good news: this isn’t irreversible.

No law says we must underfund these core institutions. No constitution requires a public defender to carry dozens too many felony cases, or a prosecutor to do the job of three. No principle of good governance demands we delay justice for victims because a courtroom lacks staff. These are decisions—decisions shaped by budgets, and ultimately, by our values.

Budgets are moral documents. They don’t just list expenditures; they tell the story of what a community believes matters most. And right now, county commissioners across Georgia have the chance to re-center that story.

This is not a criticism of any elected official past or present. It’s a reminder—a nudge, a call to reflect on our republic’s foundational promises and to ask, gently but earnestly: are we keeping them?

Because justice—real, meaningful justice available to all—isn’t something we can take for granted. It’s something we must build, protect, and invest in.

So whether you’re a commissioner facing tough funding decisions or a legislator preparing for next session looking at state funding and structural reforms, I ask: look at the numbers not just as officials, but as citizens. As parents. As neighbors. Imagine, for a moment, that the accused is your child. Or the victim is your sister. Then ask yourself, honestly—would you want this system, as it stands now, to carry the burden of ensuring justice?

If the answer is no, then perhaps it’s time to make justice not just one of many line items—but the priority it was always meant to be.

Fund the District Attorney’s office.
Fund the Public Defender’s office.
Fund the courts.
Fully. Generously.
Above what they asked for—because I guarantee, they didn’t ask for enough. Resolve to put Justice above something flashier or more popular, if you must.

Because if your child’s future was on the line, or your loved one’s death demanded answers, you’d want the system to work as it was meant to.

Here’s the bottom line: Justice can’t just be a Fourth of July or election season talking point. It must be a daily commitment.

So resolve to change, maybe not all at once, but to get back to where we should be. Let this year’s budget say: We remember why we’re here. We protect the rights of citizens. We choose justice first.

Well, I tuned in for what I thought would be a routine Catoosa County budget work session—you know, the kind where 99% of the audience seats are empty and yawns are contagious. But instead of the usual lullaby of nodding heads and predictable pitches, what we got was a surprising twist. Imagine expecting a routine nap and getting a front-row seat to a second-rate roast (maybe third-rate, this is still government).

Let me set the stage: Budget meetings are typically government at its most boring and mind-numbing. These sessions are designed less for discovery and more for the ceremonial public unveiling of numbers already circulated, debated, and quietly agreed upon via emails and informal processes. Most times, these gatherings serve as a formality—an annual review that, yes, indeed, government continues to function and your tax dollars are hard at work funding, well, everything.

So, Catoosa County’s first budget work session of the year kicked off as expected: calm, cordial, and filled with department heads and constitutional officers ready to present their requests. District Attorney Clay Fuller was first up. Full disclosure: I am a Clay Fuller fan. He’s brilliant, experienced, and not one to break a sweat. His budget request was persuasive, concise, and reasonable. You could feel the room settling in for the familiar rhythm.

Then, enter the freshman county commissioner from District Three, Richard Tharpe. It was his first-ever budget season rodeo, his first time sitting at the dais for the annual “Here’s What We Want” tour. He listened politely, nodded, and then calmly asked a question that signaled this was different.

It wasn't a hostile "gotcha" moment, but it was direct. He effectively said,

That isn’t what he said, of course. His actual question (and one he would repeat some version of to every presenter on the agenda) was more along the lines of:

Now imagine you're the DA. You’ve just made your case. You’ve presented your numbers. You’ve done this before; it’s usually easy sailing. And here comes this new commissioner asking you to start throwing things overboard from your own funding request. For a moment, Fuller looked like someone had handed him a hacksaw and ordered him to choose his least favorite limb.

As anyone who knows District Attorney Fuller knows, he handled it with grace. But it wouldn’t be a surprise if other department heads in the hallway started Googling “believable excuses to reschedule your budget presentation.” Not because the questions were unfair, but because they were unexpected. It’s not every day someone asks you to carve up your own request right out of the gate.

If I were one of the department heads still waiting in the hallway? I’d have developed a sudden limp. Sprained ankle. Unexplained dental emergency. Anything to buy a day’s reprieve.

Now, let me be clear: this wasn’t some staged ambush, and Tharpe wasn’t alone in taking the process seriously. The other commissioners—veterans who’ve been through their share of budget rounds—were measured, thoughtful, and attentive throughout. There’s no doubt they care about being good stewards of public funds. And frankly, the whole board deserves credit for allowing real and sometimes tough questions to surface and be explored in public, not squashed behind the scenes.

But Tharpe did bring something new to the table—a laser focus on the taxpayer and a desire for proactive scrutiny. He brought a different energy. It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t rude. It was something even rare in government: curious and unsatisfied. It was very much like he set out with a mission to relentlessly avoid a term coined by Milton Friedman, The Tyranny of the Status Quo. If he keeps this up, he will.

Catoosa County didn’t get a budget brawl. It got a budget awakening.

If you missed it, I think I can sum it up with a succinct mental image. Picture this: Tharpe rolls in with aviators on and some Top Gun theme song playing in the background, adjusts his mic, and (at least in spirit) says,

But, let’s not get carried away. Tharpe didn’t single-handedly revolutionize local government in one meeting. He didn’t flip tables or propose slashing budgets with reckless abandon.

And here’s where we pull back from the fun hyperbole: No one should think Tharpe is going to be like a local government version of Gordon Ramsay on an episode of Kitchen Nightmares. Frankly, that would be entertaining but not what Catoosa County needs.

What it needs—and what Tharpe seems to be aiming for—is something more like fine-tuning. As I wrote earlier this year when the commissioners first took office, they’re driving a Ferrari. The county is in solid shape. All they have to do is avoid burning out the clutch and keep it in gear. But if Tharpe’s approach at this budget work session is any indication, he’s interested in more than just keeping the car on the road. He’s looking under the hood, identifying inefficiencies, and figuring out how to make this thing perform at its absolute best.

For taxpayers, that’s something to take note of. Whether this was a one-off moment or the start of a new normal remains to be seen. There are more budget work sessions ahead, and the official hearings in August will provide ample opportunity for Tharpe—and perhaps others—to continue this approach or explore greater accountability. But even if this was just a glimpse, it’s a promising one. Might be worth tuning in.

An aside: Have you ever seen a ledger for local government?

While we’re on the subject of oversight, let’s talk about something almost no one—elected officials or residents—gets to see: a ledger with transaction-level details of how public funds are spent. That’s right. Not a single commissioner or taxpayer has access to a full, itemized breakdown of where the money goes.

Think about that for a second. In a world where you can track every penny of your own bank account from your phone, the public can’t access their government’s spending at the same level of transparency. It’s not just a Catoosa problem—it’s true across the state, as I wrote in this article recently. And it’s as wild as it sounds.

Imagine trying to run a business—or your household—without being able to look at your own receipts. That’s essentially what’s happening here. If we’re serious about accountability, then asking tough questions at budget work sessions is a step in the right direction. But until officials and the public can see those transaction-level details, the process will always be missing a critical piece.

Read my article discussing this and what to do about it below.

That line from Mad Men kept running through my head as I watched Superintendent Damon Raines address the Walker County school board last week. Because, in that moment, Raines told everyone exactly who he is. The real question: Was anyone listening? Was the school board?

Imagine you own a small business—maybe a local restaurant, a toy store, or a boutique downtown. You notice problems: declining sales, complaints piling up, employees growing frustrated. So you call your manager in for a meeting, expecting answers and accountability.

But instead of explanations or solutions, the manager calmly looks you in the eye and says: “You may think you control my paycheck, but you don’t control my destiny.”

Then, rather than address your concerns about mismanagement, lost customers, or unhappy staff, this employee flips the script, declaring that the real problem is you—your insistence on asking tough questions, your unreasonable demands for transparency. In fact, they're “disappointed” in your leadership. Imagine they rally support against you for “attacking” them by scrutinizing outcomes

Would you nod politely, apologize, and say, “You know what? You're right. Let’s forget this ever happened”?

Of course not. You’d show them the door.

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Yet, unbelievably, that’s nearly the scenario in Walker County—except it wasn't a small business manager. It was Superintendent Raines talking directly to the Walker County School Board. His employers. The elected officials entrusted to oversee him, on behalf of parents, students, and taxpayers.

It was arrogance wrapped in authority, defiance masquerading as leadership. Instead of putting any concerns to rest, Raines made one thing crystal clear: He doesn’t believe he owes anyone an explanation.

Let's quickly recap how we got here. Last August, concerns emerged about Raines' leadership decisions. Like responsible employers, the school board launched an investigation, hiring outside counsel to thoroughly vet the issues.

Now, months later, Superintendent Raines has something to say.

Raines began his statement by complaining about “open records requests.” Pause there: He didn’t address the original problems or allegations. Instead, his issue was that people dared to ask for public documents.

Translation: “The problem here is that you folks won't stop asking questions.”

But here's the thing about public records—they exist because sunlight is the best disinfectant. When public officials start complaining about scrutiny, it usually means they’re afraid of what we might find.

Next, Raines attempted a clever diversion, proudly stating that the Georgia Professional Standards Commission (GaPSC) had not revoked his certification—as if that cleared up everything. So let's clarify something important: The PSC does not rule on employment matters that are obviously in the purview of school boards. The PSC rules only whether to take action against a professional certificate. He falsely conflates two separate reviews, one by the Board (his employer), and one by the PSC (a licensing body). The PSC reviews whether to discipline or revoke a certificate, not whether a leader is fit to lead. That distinction matters.

And before anyone assumes the GaPSC is some pristine, impartial guardian, consider this interesting tidbit: The Commission is essentially educators policing other educators. Even more intriguing, the new executive secretary of the GaPSC just happens to be the former president and former director of the Georgia School Superintendents Association. And guess what? Raines’ precious vindication from the GaPSC conveniently arrived shortly after this guy took charge. Coincidence? Maybe—but it’s certainly relevant context.

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Next was Raines' breathtaking display of victimhood. According to him, he's the wronged party. He's "deeply disappointed" in board members who investigated him. He's suffered "vicious attacks." His family has been affected.

What's missing from all this self-pity? Any concern for students, staff, or families affected by the original issues. Any acknowledgment that public officials must sometimes face hard questions. Any recognition that accountability might be appropriate. Any hint of humility or contrition.

The best part came when Raines, still addressing his own employers directly, delivered this stunner: "You may attempt to control my employment, but you do not control my destiny."

Let that sink in. A public employee, paid with tax dollars, telling his supervisors they don't really control him. Not in private frustration, but deliberately, publicly, in a prepared statement.

Then, as if that weren’t audacious enough, Raines invoked his faith and the implication was clear: Questioning him isn't merely misguided; it's practically immoral. Raines' personal religious convictions are entirely his own, and worthy of respect. But injecting them into an official statement on professional accountability and public scrutiny felt like a calculated play—less about genuine humility and more about using religion as a shield against criticism.

When public officials, confronted with tough questions, resort to invoking God rather than referencing policy, facts, or law, it's typically because they're fresh out of credible arguments.

Finally, he ended with astonishing gall—a demand: "I trust the board will accept this and officially close this matter."

Translation: “I’ve said all I plan to say. Now kindly stop asking questions.”

But that's not how accountability works. You don’t get to declare an investigation over just because you’d prefer it to be. You don’t get to demand silence from those who oversee you. And you certainly don’t get to wrap defiance in piety and call it virtue.

Raines’ performance wasn't a defense—it was an exposé. He showed us exactly how he views accountability (as persecution), how he responds to pressure (with deflection), and how he sees his relationship with this community (he’s the victim, concerned citizens are the villains).

Now, the Walker County School Board faces a defining moment. They can be intimidated by Raines’ theatrics and swayed by applause from his loyal supporters, or they can remember their duty isn’t to protect one superintendent’s reputation—it’s to safeguard the integrity of our schools and the trust of our community.

Raines showed us exactly who he is. The school board would be wise to believe him.

Visit RainesIndex.com to learn more about and read all the documents from the investigation in question.

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Remember back in June last year when I told you Walker County Schools had flushed $117,585 down the public relations toilet, courtesy of a boutique video firm called Sparrow Cinema? Back then, we thought we’d hit the bottom.

We were wrong.

Since June, the district has quietly burned through another $77,000, bringing the total to $194,585. That’s right—just shy of $200,000. All for promotional videos no one asked for, no one needed, and almost no one watched.

To put that in context:

• That’s more than four starting teachers’ salaries.

• It’s more than the total budget for classroom supplies at some entire schools.

Instead? We funded vanity reels starring Superintendent Damon Raines and a cast of district administrators telling us how great they are at... well, marketing.

The Sequel Nobody Wanted

This PR saga began in early 2023 with small, itemized invoices. But by August 2023, the district tossed the line-item ledger out the window and put Sparrow on a $7,000-a-month retainer—with no scope of work, no deliverables, and no oversight.

Fast forward to today. The district has continued funneling tax dollars into this contract without:

• A communications plan

• A performance evaluation

• Or even a justification beyond, “We think it’s important to tell our story.”

And what is the return on this $194,585 investment?
A few Facebook videos. Some of them with fewer than 200 views. That's $11 per view, if you’re keeping score.

Propaganda Over Performance

Let’s not forget the backdrop here: nearly half of Walker County students in grades 3–8 read below grade level. Teachers are buying their own classroom supplies. Parents are fundraising just to keep basic programs alive.

Yet the district found nearly $200,000 to pay a video company to produce puff pieces and promo clips where officials congratulate themselves—including one bizarre ad that appears to endorse the vendor itself.

And yes, that’s still likely a violation of state ethics rules, given that a sitting board member appeared in it without board approval.

But hey—PR first. Literacy later.

The Questions That Need Asking

At this point, any board member worth their salt should be lighting up the next public meeting with uncomfortable questions. Here are ten to get them started:

1. What measurable student outcome improved as a result of this $194,585 in promotional spending?

2. Who approved these continued payments, and where is that approval recorded?

3. What specific deliverables have we received for this money?

4. Why was no competitive bidding process used for this ongoing contract?

5. Where is the communications plan that justified this expenditure in the first place?

6. Can the superintendent cite one tangible benefit to students, parents, or teachers from these videos?

7. Why are we spending thousands to ‘tell our story’ instead of rewriting the one where our kids can’t read?

8. Why weren’t these videos targeted to any specific audience with actual paid distribution?

9. If the board cuts this contract and redirects the funds to student support, will the superintendent support that—or fight to keep the cameras rolling?

There are only two kinds of leaders in public education: those who do what’s right when no one is watching—and those who hire a film crew so no one notices what they’re doing.

Walker County has had plenty of the latter. The question now is whether anyone on the board has the courage to be the former.

Because $194,585 is enough for a blockbuster. What we got was a blooper reel.

Sparrow Cinema Open Records 05142025

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You know an idea has legs when it jumps from fringe experiment to national movement in less than a year—and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), brainchild of Elon Musk, has done just that. Equal parts disruption and branding genius, DOGE has captivated(or enraged) a public fed up with bureaucratic bloat and addicted to transparency.

And now, it’s spreading. At least six states have launched DOGE-style initiatives, and local officials across the country—from county commissions to statehouses—are asking if they, too, can sniff out waste, fraud, and abuse in their own backyards.

Here in Georgia, the calls are growing louder. Some attempted to rebrand the Lieutenant Governor’s “Red Tape Rollback Act” as a DOGE-inspired measure—though that bill, despite its Senate success, mysteriously flatlined in the House. Meanwhile, various counties and municipalities are pondering how they might build their own versions of a government watchdog.

It’s a promising conversation—but also one at risk of skipping a critical step.

Because before we go all in on DOGE-inspired efforts here in Georgia, we have to talk about the thing that makes DOGE work: the data.

The Real DOGE Breakthrough

The most headline-grabbing moment in the DOGE saga—the USAID expose— didn’t actually come from inside the agency itself. It came from an adjacent figure on X.com known as Data Republican. She took the raw files from USAspending.gov—a chaotic swamp of federal financial data—and Made them searchable by keyword.

That single improvement allowed thousands of independent watchdogs to begin tracing government spending in a way no audit or oversight committee ever had. They uncovered questionable grants, fishy contracts, and redundancies in federal programs that had escaped detection for years.

It was a citizen-led efficiency revolution made possible by one thing: usable data.

That’s the part Georgia isn’t ready for—yet.

Georgia’s Data Problem: Garbage In, Garbage Out

In Georgia, barely a handful of counties or municipalities publish transaction-level spending data. The state itself publishes some basic expenditure data for school districts and state agencies, but the quality is so bad, it might as well be written in crayon.

Take FY2024 school board expenditure data. The report shows nearly 150,000 separate payments made by Georgia’s 180+ school districts. Sounds good, right?

Until you look at the vendors: more than 100,000 unique vendor entries—which sounds impossible until you realize that textbook supplier Houghton Mifflin Harcourt appears under over 60 different names. “HMH.” “Houghton-Mifflin.” “HMHCO.” You get the picture. There is no standardized naming convention, no vendor registry, and no reliable way to analyze trends without first spending days—or weeks—just cleaning the dataset.

Even worse, each record typically contains just few fields: government entity, vendor name, number of payments, and amount paid.

No memo. No department. No funding source. No description of what was purchased. No contract reference. No vendor address. No EIN. You get the idea.

That’s not transparency. That’s useless noise masquerading as transparency.

But We Have Budgets and Audits

Legislators and local officials will rightly point out: we already require balanced budgets that meet standards. We already mandate audits. And that’s true. But let’s not confuse compliance with clarity.

Budgets are promises, not proof. They tell us what agencies plan to spend, not what they actually do. And by the time a budget is printed, it’s already out of date. Adjustments, reallocations, emergencies—none of that gets reflected in real-time.

Audits? They’re better than nothing, but let’s not romanticize them. Georgia requires annual audits for school districts and local governments, but these audits are built around compliance, not scrutiny. Most rely on sampling. They don’t examine every transaction. They don’t match vendors to contracts. They don’t follow the money—they just verify the books add up.

Which means…

How Easy Is It to Hide a Fake Vendor?

Too easy.

Picture this: a local official sets up a shell company—“Peach State Technology Services.” They begin billing the school system for “consulting support.” Each invoice is under $5,000 to avoid board approval. No contract is ever brought to a meeting. The payments continue monthly for a year.

Under current systems, no one would know. The vendor name might appear once on a spreadsheet—with no further details.

But imagine if that data were published every month, fully standardized, searchable, and complete with memo lines, quantities, and funding sources. It wouldn’t take a forensic accountant to notice the pattern. Any watchdog, reporter, or attentive citizen could see that something didn’t add up.

This isn’t about assuming corruption—it’s about building systems that prevent it, rather than relying on luck, whistleblowers, or post-scandal forensic audits.

This kind of fraud isn’t hypothetical—Just look at the real-life Long Island school district scandal depicted in the 2019 film Bad Education, starring Hugh Jackman. The movie dramatized the largest public school embezzlement in American history, where Roslyn School District officials, including the beloved superintendent, siphoned off more than $11 million through fake vendors, personal credit card charges, and doctored invoices.

And it didn’t happen in some underfunded, chaotic system. Roslyn was consistently ranked one of the top districts in the state. It had auditors. It had board meetings. It had glowing press. What it didn’t have was meaningful transaction-level transparency that allowed outsiders—or even insiders—to track and question where the money was actually going.

It took a student journalist and stubbornness to unravel it all.

That’s the point. Without clear, detailed, regularly updated financial data, even the most blatant fraud can sit in plain sight. And it doesn’t take a criminal mastermind—it just takes a system that isn’t designed to notice.

A Real Solution: Georgia’s Own Version of the Ledger Act

If Georgia truly wants to embrace a DOGE-style approach, the first step isn’t a committee, new agency or task force. It’s a modern, state-managed data infrastructure—something smaller governments can actually participate in.

Most counties, cities, and school districts in Georgia don’t have the IT resources or budgets to build their own transparency platforms. And they shouldn’t have to. That’s where the state can and should step in.

Let’s establish the Georgia Open Ledger—a centralized public platform where:

• State agencies, school systems, cities, counties, and authorities all publish their transaction-level spending;

• Data is standardized, with memo line explanation for every transaction, clear vendor naming, EIN or license ID, payment descriptions, funding sources, departments, and contract references;

• Updates happen at least monthly, with API access so watchdogs and developers can build tools on top of the data;

• And no gimmicks—no flashy dashboards or stylized graphs. Just clean, exportable, searchable information.

  

This would be Georgia’s adaptation of the LEDGER Act, a federal transparency bill proposed by Senator Rick Scott. And it would do something that no audit, committee, or annual report ever could: create live visibility into the real flow of public money.

Centralization doesn’t just make the data more accessible—it creates value:

• Cross-agency analysis becomes possible.

• Vendor behavior can be tracked across jurisdictions.

• Waste and redundancy become visible.

• And even elected officials themselves are better equipped to ask the right questions and better serve the public.

A Clear Path Forward

If Georgia is serious about improving government efficiency—at the state and local level—it needs to start with one foundational move:

Build the Georgia Open Ledger.

This centralized, state-managed platform would allow every city, county, school district, and state agency to publish detailed, standardized transaction-level spending data. No more siloed data. No more missing details. No more inconsistent vendor names or missing payment descriptions.

Instead, we’d have one clear system that shows the public exactly where the money is going, who is getting paid, what it’s for, and how often it happens. That is how trust is restored.

And here’s the good news: the legislature has the power to make it happen. The technology exists. The demand is there. What’s needed now is leadership.

Let’s stop talking about abstract waste and actually build the system that would let us find it.

Let’s stop expecting every local government to do this on their own—and instead give them the tools to do it right.

Let’s stop waiting for the next scandal—and make Georgia a national model for accountability, transparency, and trust.

Because real efficiency doesn’t start with a catchy bill name or a headline.

It starts with the good data.