Cobb County Residents Oust Sneaky Politician Who Secretly Spent $400M on a Stadium for the Braves

Say this for Tim Lee: He is an audacious man.

Say also that he is an un-repentantly sneaky and unscrupulous man who spent $400 million in taxpayer money on a baseball stadium for the Atlanta Braves without the consent of the taxpayers, and has now been jettisoned right out of the public seat he so contemptuously occupied: Cobb County (Ga.) Commission chair.

"“I think voters are expressing a dissatisfaction with what they believe to be true,” Lee said. He called the Braves deal possibly “the most beneficial economic project for decades to come” for Cobb."

The economic impact of stadium financing projects is always overstated by the parties who agree to them, but for the sake of argument we’ll just accept that Lee is correct, and that for decades to come the residents of Cobb County will be thankful to have a nearby ballpark supplying numerous seasonal part-time jobs and all the other transformative effects such an arrangement is supposed to cause.

It would still not justify an alleged public servant secretly and unilaterally negotiating a multi-million-dollar expenditure of money that belongs to the public. The guy even had a code name for the deal: Operation Intrepid.

In another move of astounding audacity, Lee’s people privately tried to blame his ouster on some sort of vague Trumpian sentiment floating around in the ether, and not the plain fact that he betrayed the public trust.

"There was much grumbling about the “Trump effect” that propelled the brash businessman to the top of the Republican presidential ticket at the expense of establishment politicians. Many seemed to attribute Lee’s defeat to a general hostility toward incumbents."

Yeah, that must be it.

Funny thing is, had Lee put the stadium deal to a vote, it probably would have passed.

"Matt Booth, who works for a real estate research firm and lives within two miles of the new ballpark, said he would have voted for the stadium deal if given a chance. “Lee likes to spend our tax dollars without asking us … so he doesn’t get my vote,” Booth said."

The stadium is scheduled to open next season.