Volunteers Clean Tire Dumps This Summer, Georgia Voters Can Add Heft This Fall

From the Georgia Recorder:

By Stanley Dunlap

August 27 2020

Last week, helpers from a high school football team helped the Chattahoochee River Keeper haul away 640 tires dumped along a Gwinnett County road near the river.
The plant overgrowth around the tires indicated a tire shop owner probably tossed them there years ago, said Kevin Jeselnik, the environmental group’s general counsel.
It’s a recurring mess that Georgia voters will get a chance to help set aside money to clean up in perpetuity when they go to the polls in November. The discarded tires are breeding grounds for mosquitoes and can ooze hazardous waste.

When you buy a new tire in Georgia the seller tacks on a $1 fee that’s supposed to be used to clean up piles of tires that get tossed along the sides of the state’s backroads and to prevent other environmental hazards. But instead the money is often swept into the state’s general fund for lawmakers to spend on all kinds of things.

November’s election ballot will give Georgians a choice of presidential candidates, two U.S. Senate races and a healthy selection of federal and state officials to choose from. It will also offer the chance to signal to state lawmakers Georgians want fees the state collects for hazardous and solid waste trust funds to be actually spent on those things.

“This will allow (lawmakers) to come together and pass a bill, saying, ‘OK, for the next 10 years, we’re going to dedicate this fee, and it won’t be up for debate,'” said Kathleen Bowen, associate legislative director of Association County Commissioners of Georgia. “Every year we have to make the case that these fees should go to their intended purposes, there’s a need out there for scrap tire cleanups or to close old landfills, to clean up hazardous sites.”

Environmental organizations, the association representing Georgia’s 159 county governments and a bipartisan collection of state lawmakers fought for the past decade to change the law that has allowed $153 million of the fees collected for environmental cleanup programs to instead get added to the state’s general fund.

While other versions of the so-called anti-bait and switch legislation passed the House in previous years, the bills would usually stall in a Senate committee that steers the state budget process each year. The late state Rep. Jay Powell annually championed bills to connect the money to the supposed purpose until he died suddenly late last year.

State Rep. Andy Welch, a McDonough Republican, picked up the baton this year and this time found success.

“This measure has been one that we’ve worked on for many, many years,” Welch said as he pitched the legislation in early March on the House floor. “It would bring a level of accountability back to those fees, and it would bring back truth in taxation and truth in fee dedication.”

If the amendment passes, Georgia legislators still need to pass legislation next year to make the fee dedication a state law.

The state Department of Natural Resources plans to spend $1.1 million to reimburse local governments that clean up illegal tire dumps.

The trashing of tires is all too common, said Jennette Gayer, director of Environment Georgia.

“It’s a huge problem,” she said, “I don’t think there is a single Georgian who has not experienced in one way or another, maybe it’s on the side of the road or maybe you’re familiar with giant tire dumps.”

House Minority Leader Bob Trammell, a Luthersville Democrat, said it’s long overdue for ensuring the fee revenue is spent the way lawmakers intended when they created the cleanup fund in 1993.

“This is about truth in government, and now when we say we’re going to earmark funds for a purpose, now we’re creating a mechanism where that actually happens,” Trammell said.

This story was originally published by the Georgia Recorder. For more stories from the Georgia Recorder, visit GeorgiaRecorder.com.