State budget finds room for fishing ponds, football stadiums

Having already subsidized a fishing museum in former Gov. H. Dumpty’s backyard the state of Georgia is now helping fund a unnecessary new football stadium for the Falcons and its billionaire owner.

This month, [Gov. Nathan] Deal included $15 million in his proposed 2012 budget for the GWCC Authority to purchase the old Herndon Homes property next to the potential stadium site from the Atlanta Housing Authority.  GWCC spokesman Mark Geiger said the property could be used for a marshaling yard, for GWCC expansion or parking, or for a stadium.

Last March AJC columnist Kyle Wingfield detailed what the $400 million the state is expected to kick in towards constructing an open-air stadium could go to instead:

With $400 million, the city could erase more than a quarter of its $1.5 billion pension funds deficit. Or it could pay for a big chunk of its continuing, $4 billion water and sewer infrastructure repairs. Those costs are inescapable. Why pass them on to unborn Atlantans when visitors could help us pay them down now?

Just to get a full grasp of what $400 million will buy, let’s look outside the city limits. For that money, we could pay the rest of the cost of deepening the Savannah port, which would benefit the entire state. It would also fund a large part of an outer perimeter or new north-south expressway allowing cargo trucks to bypass Atlanta.

Or we could hedge our bets in the water wars by building new reservoirs to fulfill our water needs in the event we lose access to Lake Lanier.