AROUND TOWN: Of guns in schools and the great stadium debate

The Georgia Gang, a weekly Fox 5 politics show, weighed in on the Cobb County Board of Education’s Thursday decision to staff schools with armed security guards who are not police officers. 

Georgia Gang moderator Lori Geary observed that the guards would be trained and would not be teachers.

“I think the key word you just said is training,” said panelist Phil Kent, publisher of InsiderAdvantage Georgia.

With school starting soon, Kent said he didn’t know when the initiative would be implemented, yet, “I think it’s a good idea. We have got to have more security in the schools, and I think this is a good way to start,” Kent said, noting how Cobb is one of the largest school systems in the Georgia. “And so they’re trying to get ahead of some of the horrible shootings that we’ve seen in the past. So let’s make sure they’re trained, and I think it will give a measure for parents and students of calm and peace to know that someone is there, and of course we can have technology and other things to protect our students.”

Turning to the political left, Geary asked Tharon Johnson, founder and CEO of Paramount Consulting Group, if we'll see other school systems follow Cobb's lead. 

“I think we will, but to Phil’s point, I agree with him on the training, but also I think that we got to make sure that these security officers, that they go through an extensive background check themselves,” Johnson said.

One thing no one wants to see is an armed guard get into a verbal altercation with a teacher or student that escalates. 

Training is key and you can’t just rely on law enforcement, Johnson said, referring to what happened in Uvalde, Texas.

“I mean, seeing those horrific images of parents being tased and held back trying to go in and save their kids, and so having an armed security person who has the proper training, who’s gone through an extensive background check, and actually has a clear plan in place that if and when something happens, I think we can support it.”

That brought a compliment from Kent, who is usually on the opposite political end of Johnson. 

“You’re making sense!” Kent said.

Republican consultant Brian Robinson said if there’s anything that can be done to take out an active shooter, he’s for it.

“I don’t have all the answers. I think there are downsides no matter which way you go, but I want those people taken out,” Robinson said.

Yet there are parents who are uncomfortable with guns in schools that are not controlled by police officers, Geary said. 

“Well, that’s true,” Kent said, “but that’s why you have school boards, and that’s why you have elections. They’ve done this policy. I think it will be a model for other school systems. Let’s see how this works.”

Johnson had the last word. 

“Those parents, to Phil’s point, this is where Cobb County is a leader in this respect, but they’ve also got to be careful, because I’ve heard from some of those parents that don’t want any guns around their kids, period. And so while we do need the training, while we do need the supervision and the background checks, they got to make sure that the parents are fully onboard with someone having a gun in schools.”

John Zauner, executive director of the Georgia School Superintendents Association, tells the MDJ there are two other Georgia districts that already use armed guards who are not police to address school safety. Fannin and Laurens counties opted to move in this direction a year or so ago. 

ECON WARS: Call him what you want, but one tag you can’t pin on J.C. Bradbury is quitter.

The Kennesaw State University economist has, for years, been the most dedicated critic of the $300 million (and counting) public subsidy that brought the Atlanta Braves to Cobb. His dogged polemics culminated last year in the release of a study purporting to debunk the “economic home run” argument.

The Braves — an organization for whom no victory, it seems, is final — could not let Bradbury stand unchallenged.

Earlier this year, the organization commissioned a new study from Smith College economist Andrew Zimbalist. Zimbalist’s piece effectively split the difference between Bradbury’s work, and a rosy 2018 Georgia Tech analysis claiming the stadium was creating a $19 million per year economic “halo effect.”

The lead finding from Zimbalist’s study was that by 2046, the county is expected to see a return on its initial investment of between $19.6 million and $125.6 million.

Braves management clearly hoped this newfound middle ground would be the end of the debate. A press release issued within minutes of the study’s presentation to Cobb commissioners said Zimbalist’s work “should put to rest any questions on whether this project has been a win for Cobb County taxpayers.” A letter to season ticket holders touting the study was hot on its heels.

If a last word was what they’d hoped for, the C-suite hoped wrong.

The latest counterpunch comes from Bradbury, who on Monday dropped a 64-page rebuttal to Zimbalist’s study. Bradbury had been unsparing before — calling Zimbalist a “shill” who’d been hired to put together a “hatchet job” — and in his response, demands his counterpart formally retract the study.

The gist of his argument starts in part from the fact that Bradbury’s piece was a peer-reviewed academic work, where Zimbalist’s was commissioned by the Braves and faced no similar scrutiny from third parties.

Bradbury alleges in his rebuttal’s introduction that the lack of review results in an analysis that’s “deficient to the point of negligence, and his estimates based on dubious projections are not credible.”

Under Zimbalist’s model, Bradbury contends, only the most optimistic of assumptions makes the math work so that the stadium comes out looking good. Under any other scenario, it fails even under its own logic.

Bradbury told the MDJ, “He just flat-out ignores things that I said. He says I didn’t provide things, that I provide, that explains all this. He’s just deliberately ignoring it, or just — I don’t know what the word is — he’s just negligent. He didn’t read it.”

The academic and statistical dispute isn’t exactly easily translatable to plain English, but that, Bradbury says, should be the point. It’s economists who should be getting to the bottom of the issue, not layman's gestures to the glimmering towers of The Battery Atlanta as self-evident proof of its fiscal benefit.

“It doesn't mean you don't like the Atlanta Braves. It doesn't mean you don't like having the team in Cobb County. But we just need to be honest in that, there's not going to be a fiscal benefit to it,” Bradbury argues.

“When you look at the data — that Zimbalist has to bend over backwards to make all these caveats and unrealistic assumptions to make this work. It’s actually more evidence that it's not turning out very good,” he added. “…I guess what I ask people to do, is, it's not wrong to admit that perhaps it's not a big fiscal windfall to Cobb County.”

Just as offensive, he adds, is that Cobb County seemingly endorsed Zimbalist’s study by hosting the county meeting where it was rolled out. It now resides on the county’s website, alongside a “Myth vs. Fact” document about the stadium which bears the letterhead of the Braves and Actum, a consulting firm with offices as far-flung as Paris and Los Angeles.

“That is just blatant propaganda from the Atlanta Braves. I mean, that has no business being on the county website whatsoever,” he added.

(The county’s true sentiments in all this remain a mystery, but at this point, the ink is well-dried on the contract, and the stadium is built.)

Zimbalist, for his part, asked for some time to review Bradbury’s paper before issuing his own response. But he sent a note Tuesday saying, “I have begun to read Bradbury's reply and I will certainly have lots to say about it.”

FINED: Cobb school board Member Dr. Jaha Howard has been slapped with a fine from the state ethics commission for violating campaign finance law in his unsuccessful bid to be state school superintendent.

Howard agreed to pay $1,215 after the commission found he failed to file an enhanced Personal Financial Disclosure Statement within seven days of qualifying for office. In fact, Howard never filed the form, which details a statewide candidate’s income over the past five years, as well as assets such as real estate, cash and business interests.

Commission staff said at a meeting last week that they contacted Howard about the violation, and that Howard agreed he was in violation and would pay the fine.

Howard agreed to file the statement within 30 days of the order being finalized.