First off, congratulations to the newly sworn in Commissioner Tanya Barnhill-Turnley being appointed to replace the now (hopefully temporarily) retired Alvin Mason.
Barnhill-Turnley may be a new name to some, but to those actively following the Augusta political world, she has been one of those in the background stirring up positive change by working behind the scenes to attract young people to become more politically active and get involved in the process by running for office themselves.
When she says that she likes to view her glass as half-full, she means it, and her optimism is infectious.
Tanya has some real gifts when it comes to marketing and has a wall of awards attesting to her professional savvy. I have known for quite sometime that she would take off her black “set crew” tee-shirt and emerge on stage no longer the understudy, so I have very high hopes for her.
The timing was absolutely right, and the commission was wise to see that and appoint her to replace her statesman predecessor and political mentee, Mason.
Get on the bus or get run over…
The on-again, off-again, much hyped presentation by Commissioner Tony Lewis regarding the Charter Review Committee is officially off and on again.
Lewis had the item tabled on the July 29 agenda of the Administrative Committee until the committee meets again this month. This drew snickers from both the dais and the gallery as virtually everyone is beginning to see a pattern.
Poor Lewis can’t seem to catch a break; one week the committee couldn’t manage to achieve a quorum, another week Lewis couldn’t fit the meeting into his schedule and this has gone on for weeks.
Naturally, this now has people beginning to believe that Lewis doesn’t really have anything new to present to his colleagues and constituents, but rather, he is waiting for the committee to actually do something he disapproves with and keeping his name on the agenda in case that happens.
This is generally what happens to people who make a career out of being obstructionists. They run out of arguments, their “prophecies of doom’” don’t quite pan out, and yet their egos won’t allow them to concede they may have been wrong. Plus, for some of them, having George Eskola stick a microphone and camera in their face gives them the headrush feeling of self-importance.
Like the “music” performers we have today, instead of displaying real talent on-stage, they rely on Auto-Tune and prattle on about their “artistic integrity” while gyrating around like circus freaks, completely oblivious to how ridiculous they come across to an audience that wishes they never bought a ticket to the show.
One thing I am finding is that the electorate in Augusta has changed markedly over the past five years. I like to think that The Augusta Press has done its part over the past few years by educating the public and exposing the corruption that has long been this city’s Achilles Heel. The change happened rather quickly, too quickly for the “Old Guard” that has long depended on the public buying their rhetoric of racial division to keep them in positions of power where they can manipulate the system to the benefit of themselves and their friends.
We can finally say that the Cracker Party is officially dead and any supporters left are gently whiling their remaining days away nursing a sipee cup on the veranda of their care home waiting for their next round of vitamins and for The Price Is Right! to air another rerun on the Game Show Network.
Voters are becoming more vocal and less predictable, no longer satisfied with the status quo, the excuses, the corruption, the pandering and the constant use of the race card to sow division in one of the most colorblind communities in the nation.
I am seeing young people, professionals with children, showing up at community meetings, town hall meetings and candidate forums. These are folks that, five years ago, would not have carved out the time in their busy week full of work stress and laundry woes to go and juggle their tots on their laps to listen to a candidate for sheriff or the commission speak to the crowd.
These are the people driving the “renaissance of political awareness” in Augusta, they are showing up for community clean-ups, standing in line to give blood and donating money to underdog candidates like Garnett Johnson and Gino “Rock” Brantley. Instead of becoming jaded into thinking Augusta is destined to always be run by a selfish elite, they have a vision of what they want their city to be and they are determined to achieve that vision, one vote at a time.
Most importantly, Black or White, they are as oblivious to what the race card is as they are the Q-Card, which once sat firmly ensconced in the wallet of everyone living here. Naturally, they have some selfish motivations. They want their kids to choose to remain in Augusta when they grow up and start families of their own.
They want to spoil their future grandkids in person, not on FaceTime.
Lewis and his few supporters are slow to beginning to realize is that without providing substance, their arguments only steel the resolve of taxpayers who want to continue opening the doors of prosperity and leave the past where it belongs, in the past.
Based on the comments I hear from this new and vocal bloc, Lewis may want to go ahead and give that presentation before these voters make good on their promise to unseat him in the next election.
Parents beware!
The pitfall of any first-time elected official is to be seen as charging in like a bull, making drastic changes and buying into their own hype rather than taking a more pragmatic approach and working with the tools they already have at their avail.
Usually, the result is that the newbie elected leader finds themselves in the wilderness or they turn into the finger-pointing obstructionist that I have just described.
Sheriff Brantley has very wisely avoided going and begging the commission for money he knows is not there or going on a blame tour pointing out the already known faults of his predecessor for not being able to raise the morale among his staff.
Instead, Brantley has gone about using the arrows already in his quiver and, after a short seven full months in office, the results are beginning to show.
Those paying attention will have noted that, for the first time in years, there is a notable law enforcement presence in traffic from Riverwatch Parkway to Peach Orchard Road. Even with the staffing shortage still affecting law enforcement agencies nationwide, Brantley is managing to keep a comfortable number of deputies on the streets. This is a sure sign, in my opinion, that morale has improved by lightyears within the department.
Each week, I receive a rundown of every perp arrested and photographed at the jail. Instead of seeing a pop-up here and there on The Jail Reports FaceBook page, I see the entire list.
DUI arrests are up.
Now, I do not believe that the number of people who like to put others in peril by driving drunk suddenly doubled overnight. Nope, these people are now, finally, being taken off the streets by an alert and purpose-driven law enforcement presence.
If you pay attention to the charges listed against the accused drunk drivers, what you do not see most often is “alcohol less-safe,” which means the person likely had two glasses of wine for dinner and barely edged up to the limit and still got arrested.
No, what I am noticing is that the people are being charged with DUI as well as a host of other charges like failure to maintain lane, no headlights after dark, suspended license, no proof of insurance or, goodness forbid, drug possession. These are people who deserve to get yanked off the streets and forced to spend their weekend a guest of that pitiful jail.
Brantley’s rationale is that the county gave him a badge, a set of handcuffs and a marked police cruiser full of gas, so he might as well put them to use.
Therefore, if you get pulled over and realize that it is the sheriff himself conducting the stop, then just get ready to sign your citation, he is not there filming his weekly feel-good youTube video.
Last week, Brantley announced that his officers will be enforcing the curfew in place limiting when teenagers can be roaming the streets unsupervised.
Take note that Brantley did not ask the commission to change any ordinances or proclaim some kind of emergency situation requiring his officers to check the ages of the average youth they come across. He is merely enforcing the curfew that is already on the books.
Brantley also sent the message that parents can no longer duck any responsibility when their precious underage offspring errs and places public safety at risk. Parents might still pitch a tantrum and display their own absence of good role models growing up, but I can almost guarantee that when these folks have their Saturday mornings interrupted by having to pick up trash on the roadways alongside their snotnosed brats, we will see less of the roving gangs of teens causing mayhem on weekend nights downtown.
Let’s hope our District Attorney Jared “Training Wheels” Williams follows suit and holds these parents’ feet to the fire when they and Junior arrive in court.
Scott Hudson is the Senior Investigative Reporter, Editorial Page Editor and weekly columnist for The Augusta Press. Reach him at scott@theaugustapress.com
