Golden Sleaze Awards - The Scorched Earth Award

After winning the influential job of speaker pro tem, Jones promptly appointed herself as hater-in-chief where Atlanta and Fulton County were concerned. Even though no corner of north Fulton has been left unincorporated, she continued to push her bill to rip her home county in half in order to re-create the old Milton County on the more affluent north side, a move that would result in severe financial hardship for Georgia’s capital city.

When that effort failed, Jones turned her guns toward MARTA, amending the state transportation bill so as to restrict how the transit agency can spend future cash generated by a potential new penny sales tax. Even as the clock ticked away the final hours of the 2010 General Assembly, Jones was still trying to slip in the dagger with a brazen measure to shift the power to appoint MARTA board members away from Fulton County, which pays to support the agency, to the north Fulton cities, which have no stake in the system.

Next year, we predict Jones will propose using MARTA’s budget to construct a massive stone wall along the Chattahoochee River to keep out people who don’t look like her.