Georgia’s support of golf doesn’t stop at the Golf Hall of Fame:

Golfers pay about $40 to play at Hard Labor Creek, a state park about an hour east of Atlanta. Taxpayers chip in another $5 per round at the money-losing golf course.

That’s a bargain compared with a round of golf at Brazzell’s Creek in Reidsville. Taxpayers subsidize players at the South Georgia course to the tune of $29 per round. And the little-used golf course is undergoing a $3 million upgrade, trading nine holes for 18, paid for by, yup, taxpayers.

Georgia’s seven state-run golf courses lost $1 million in fiscal year 2006. Since 2002, losses have averaged $941,000 a year.

“It’s pretty ridiculous, isn’t it?” said former state Sen. Robert Lamutt, an east Cobb Republican who railed against golf course spending while serving in the General Assembly. “Is that government’s job? To take [tax money] from me, by force of law, to give to somebody down in South Georgia so they can have a golf course?”

Of course supporters of this type of pork spending say it’s “economic development” and one Republican State Senator defends it:

Supporters say the links serve as economic development tools that attract duffers to rural, economically stunted areas of the state. They note that state parks and historic sites are also subsidized by taxpayers. And, they add, all Georgians deserve the same quality-of-life amenities available to their more urbanized brethren.

“A decision has been made that recreation is a thing of merit for tax dollars,” said Sen. Jack Hill, the Reidsville Republican whose district includes Brazzell’s Creek. Or “we can let the marketplace provide all recreation and we can have private state parks. You can’t separate state parks and golf courses, in my mind.”

Surprise…Sen. Jack Hill is Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Hill was originally elected as a Democrat in 1990. He switched parties a few years ago when it was no longer politically convenient to be a Democrat.

Why are taxpayers subsiding golf courses? The private sector can likely run it more efficiently and for a profit and if the course goes under, there wasn’t a market for it. That doesn’t give the state an excuse to step in. It means that the golf lovers of that area will have to find somewhere else to play.

And…Alan Essig, a left-leaning economist with the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute (of course they are labeled as “nonpartisan” article, nothing could be further from the truth), who seems to believe that Georgians aren’t already overtaxed and that our government doesn’t spend enough money as it is, believes that there is “nothing fundamentally wrong with having publicly funded parks or golf courses.” Alan Essig has never seen a spending program that he didn’t believe was “fundamentally wrong.” Essig represents everything that is wrong with the current view of government.

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