AUGUSTA, GA. - The Georgia Golf Hall of Fame Botanical Gardens in downtown Augusta will close this week because the governor has refused to provide a half-million dollars in operating funds. With $13 million in taxpayer-funded improvements now being flushed down the Savannah, there’s plenty of finger pointing to go around. But Billy Morris, Charles Walker and Paul Simon deserve special attention.

The Metro Spirit has been observing the problems at the hall of fame for years. Clyde Wells pointed out in 1999 that Morris’ Augusta Chronicle was a booster of the project. It editorialized, “How appropriate that Augusta, also known as the Garden City, will finally have a real public garden of its own.”

Wells predicted that the taxpayers would be asked to pay for the garden’s upkeep, and blamed the Morris paper for not telling people about it during the planning stages. Wells offered a solution. He suggested Morris could have created a $10 million perpetual-care trust fund to support the gardens. Now Wells looks prescient and Morris looks self-serving. Again.

 

As the Metro Spirit told you more than a year ago, Charles Walker earns his blame by diverting $4 million away from the project. That money could have helped construct a building for the hall of fame, something that might have helped attract enough visitors to keep it afloat. However, Walker convinced lawmakers to instead give the money to the Augusta Neighborhood Improvement Corporation.

Paul Simon, one of Morris’ lieutenants, pulled another fast one on the hall of fame. He convinced leaders to join with First Tee in a large fundraising effort. At that time, First Tee was going to be a $150,000 project, but dreams for First Tee grew. In the end, First Tee got the lion’s share of the money and the hall of fame ended up with a bunch of uncollectable pledges.

 

Of course, the board of directors for the Georgia Golf Hall of Fame look like goobers for repeatedly accepting bad deals, and there were many. When a top golf company executive suggested the hall of fame should accept winners of the Masters Tournament, the board maintained its parochial attitude and insisted that the hall was only for Georgia golfers.

Despite having people involved with the hall of fame who were also involved with Augusta National, the board was never able to capitalize on the relationship. As Wells suggested in 1999, the gardens could have been saved if it had the exclusive right to sell Master’s Tournament merchandise. Didn’t happen.

 

Now we have some people calling for giving the statues of Nicholas, Palmer, Hogan and others to the Augusta National. They want to take statues we paid for with taxpayer dollars and give them to a bunch of the richest people in the world so they can be placed where they’ll never be seen except by rich people, their friends and those who pay outrageous ticket prices.

 

I say if we’re giving out statues for helping screw over the hall of fame, we should at least give one to Morris, Simon, Walker and a few board members, too.