Governor involved in Jekyll debate in legislature

July 7, 2007
Brandon Larrabee | Morris News Service

ATLANTA - Patrice Hinton Oswalt had something on her mind.

After "many years absence," she wrote to Gov. Sonny Perdue in a late March e-mail, Oswalt and her husband had visited Jekyll Island. She was dismayed at what she heard about plans to revitalize the island's sagging tourist infrastructure, and unconvinced by arguments that traditional limits on how much of the island can be developed would protect "Georgia's Jewel."

"Surely there are other options to enhance island revenues without destroying the delicate ecosystem," Oswalt wrote. "Maintaining 65 percent of the island undeveloped while overdeveloping the remaining 35 percent is not a viable answer for the future of Jekyll Island, but rather a way to appease greed."

The e-mail is among hundreds of pages of documents on Jekyll Island reviewed by Morris News Service under the state's open records laws. In a session notable for how little public influence Perdue exerted on issues other than the state budget, the records show a governor's office at times intimately involved in the debate over legislation to extend the Jekyll Island Authority's lease in the hopes of luring private developers.

The documents also seem to run counter to Perdue's public distance on the Jekyll debate while it was going on. Instead, they point to ties between the governor's office and lobbyists for developers interested in Jekyll's profit-making potential.

At least some of those developers are expected to be major players in the redevelopment of the island, though Perdue's office insists he has no favorites.

House Bill 214, which Perdue signed in May, includes protections for the island's ecologically fragile south end and bars the state from selling any of the land on Jekyll.

But the original scope of the bill was different, excluding any of those safeguards which were proposed by legislators outside Perdue's camp.

While the governor didn't include the bill in his press releases or speeches, he did assign one of his key aides to keep an eye on it, Lonice Barrett, a former commissioner of natural resources who had just stepped down from overseeing implementation of a major administrative overhaul recommended by the Commission for a New Georgia, arguably one of Perdue's pet projects.

Barrett said the governor was intent on looking out for the best interests of Jekyll.

"That was the role that I was asked to play in (the process), among the other things that I was doing," he said. "It was a coordination role; it was a try to keep everybody in the information loop."

Others, though, see a governor trying to push the agenda of wealthy and politically connected developers who coveted Jekyll's natural beauty as a potential playground for the rich.

"This thing was being cooked all along," said Neill Herring, a lobbyist for the Sierra Club who was involved in the political battle over the island's future.

Years of interest, discussion

The documents show Perdue's office had taken an interest in redeveloping Jekyll Island long before the 2007 legislative session.

Drafts of the authority's plans, and memos referencing meetings between authority officials and Perdue, stretch back to 2004.

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And one of the refrains that was later used to push HB 214 - that Jekyll's hotels and other amenities were crumbling and needed to be revamped - was already making its way to the media, angering some employees.

"It is hard for employees on the Island to be cheerleaders when the director of the authority feeds such negativity to the press!" employee Amie McJay exclaimed in an August 2004 e-mail to Perdue's office.

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The authority's plans mentioned several possibilities for the island and pushed for a lease extension, more than two years before one would be offered in the General Assembly. And parts of the south end were targeted for development.

"The site that is currently occupied by the 4H center and the soccer fields offers a substantial opportunity to increase the residential base of Jekyll Island," a draft plan developed by the authority said. "The combined acreage of the two sites is +/- 19 acres. The proposed development would consist largely of single-family lots."

Herring said he was relieved after hearing about the documents that desires for developing the south end were thwarted in the final version of the lease-extension bill.

"They plainly were going to develop it, and I think they were going to develop it first," he said.

?lanket on redevel. issues'

Throughout 2005, meetings were taking place on a variety of fronts, including federal legislation removing parts of Jekyll from a list of protected areas on barrier islands where the government refused to underwrite flood insurance. Perdue's office was involved in lobbying for the change.

Parts of the island were later removed, though some land was also added to the protected areas as a swap.

One item, for example, suggests there might have been an effort to time public discussion of the politically touchy subject of Jekyll's future.

In meeting notes dated Sept. 29, 2005, Barrett wrote "blanket on redevel. issues till after re-elect." Barrett concedes the handwriting on the notes belong to him, but he says he can't remember what the meaning of the line was, though he said the meeting largely involved the federal issues.

"I'm trying to remember whether this was re-election in Georgia or whether, since this was federal legislation, whether there was something on that as well. ... I don't remember the context of that. I don't know why I would have written that down," Barrett said.

Herring said the possibility that the note had to do with federal elections stretches credibility. He adds that U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., who represents Jekyll, always easily wins re-election in a strongly Republican district.

Perdue, at the time, faced the possibility of a tough 2006 campaign against either the proficient fundraiser, Lt. Gov. Mark Taylor, or popular Secretary of State Cathy Cox. Taylor would win the Democratic primary but was defeated by Perdue.

"He's talking about the governor's race," Herring said of Barrett. "He's trying to keep the issue out of Mark Taylor's hands."

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Selling Jekyll?

Some of the documents also raise the possibility of selling some or all of the island, though only in the context of a discussion about several options for Jekyll's future.

"Make every effort to sell the existing real estate and commercial operations to private operators in an effort to dissolve the Authority and persuade Glynn County to take over the municipal services and the private sector to operate the commercial activities leaving the remainder as a natural area and state park," a document reads.

That document was apparently part of the authority's internal deliberations on the future of Jekyll.

Barrett maintains selling the island was never a viable solution. In a packet presented to him by the authority in December 2006, there is a handwritten "X" - indicating disapproval - next to "Conversion to Fee Simple," a reference to private ownership.

"Frankly, I think selling one square foot of Jekyll Island would be absolutely the wrong thing to do," he said. "And I know there had been some discussion about that here and there. We would hear rumors of that. But I never engaged in any of that discussion, except to say to somebody I didn't think it was the right thing to do."

A check mark appears by "Select Private Sector Master Revitalization Partner," an idea the report backs and that has since been followed by the authority.

The General Assembly would vote to strip the language allowing the sale of some parts of the island from state law when it passed HB 214. Another provision also blocked any development on the south end.

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Ties to Tanner

The documents also show Barrett and other officials from the governor's office involved in some of the legislative mechanics that led to the passage of HB 214 and, in some cases, serving as an apparent point of contact for developers interested in the island.

A target of some environmentalists' ire, lobbyist and former Natural Resources Commissioner Joe Tanner, also pops up in the e-mails. Tanner monitored the Jekyll legislation from the beginning and later registered as a lobbyist for the politically connected owners of Reynolds Plantation, a posh resort on Lake Oconee.

Barrett said the extent of Tanner's involvement was occasional conversations about Jekyll between two people who had known each other for decades. Barrett said he backed away after Tanner registered on April 10 as a lobbyist for Southeast Landco, a company owned by the Reynolds group.

James and Harold Reynolds, two officials of Linger Longer, the company that owns the plantation, each contributed to Perdue's re-election campaign. Harold Reynolds gave a total of $7,000 in 2003 and 2006, while James Reynolds gave $5,000 in 2003 and picked up nearly $1,400 in expenses for a campaign event last year.

"Once that happened, I just, that pretty much I tried to be sure I distanced myself ... for the very reasons that you might suspect," Barrett said.

Documents show he corresponded with Tanner through e-mail on April 13, asking the lobbyist whether he could forward a letter to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Tanner had shared with Barrett.

"Really well written," he wrote in the brief message.

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Herring said the only reason Barrett would say he backed away from Tanner was "a guilty conscience" for working with the lobbyist in the first place.

"There's no reason not to talk to a lobbyist who's registered," Herring said.

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There are documents that indicate a willingness on the part of the governor's office to rebuff at least some concerns raised by developers. Former state Sen. Earl Patton e-mailed the governor's chief operating officer, Jim Lientz, raising "DEEP concern" about the length of the lease provided for in one version of the bill.

Patton was worried a developer might pull out of a deal on Jekyll.

"I guess we will see if they are bluffing," Lientz wrote to Barrett and Ed Holcombe, Perdue's chief of staff.

?o preconceived ideas'

And Barrett said Perdue gave a clear message to the Jekyll Island Authority when he met with them at a signing ceremony for HB 214 in May.

"?ou need to understand, I have absolutely no preconceived ideas of where we need to go,'" Barrett recalls the governor saying. "?ou need to hear me loud and clear,' and I'm quoting him almost verbatim, ? want you to do what's best for Georgia. I want it to stand up to scrutiny. I want you to make a good business deal. I want you to protect Jekyll Island. I want to see Jekyll Island realize its potential. I have no preconceived ideas of who to go with, who to do business with down there.'"

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That signing came on the last day where Perdue could approve bills after a wait that made environmentalists and island residents jittery about whether the lease extension and environmental protections would be approved.

"I think he just simply wanted to be sure that in his mind he was doing the right thing," Barrett said. "And I think he finally got comfortable with the fact that this was a bill he was willing to sign, and I think it was a terrific step he took to sign the legislation and set the stage for Jekyll to, we hope, to be all that it can be."