Lawsuit challenging Falcons stadium funding goes before Georgia Supreme Court

• Max Blau
• Rev. William L. Cottrell, a pastor emeritus at Beulah Baptist Church in Vine City, speaks with reporters outside the Georgia Supreme Court.

Over the past year, five English Avenue and Vine City residents collectively known as "the Intervenors" have attempted to block the use of hundreds of millions of public funds to help pay for the construction of the new Atlanta Falcons stadium.

The group — comprised of Rev. William L. Cottrell, Sr.; Mamie Lee "Mother" Moore; Tracy Bates; John Lewis III; and Joe Beasley — has called its legal challenge a last resort. According to Cottrell, they're continuing that fight because the English Avenue and Vine City residents have largely been excluded from discussions about the $1.3 billion stadium development and how it would affect struggling neighborhoods.

"We have been left out of the circle after all these years," says Cottrell, pastor emeritus at Beulah Baptist Church in Vine City. "We were promised that we would be helped because of the serious impact on these two communities. They have done nothing to help us."

The last-ditch legal challenge, which Fulton County Superior Court Judge Ural Glanville ruled against this past May, has now landed in the Georgia Supreme Court. If successful, the lawsuit could block $278 million in hotel-and motel-tax revenue bonds — and threaten to stall stadium's construction timeline.

Those bonds, which Glanville validated but have not yet been issued because of the appeal, could also result in hundreds of millions of dollars in additional taxpayer dollars being used for the football and soccer stadium's maintenance and operating costs. City officials recently estimated that the final cost to taxpayers would total more than $450 million, though other estimates have been higher.

Buckhead attorney John Woodham, who successfully contested the Atlanta Beltline's main funding source all the way to the Georgia Supreme Court, and former Fulton Superior Court Judge Thelma Wyatt Cummings Moore have represented the Intervenors through the group's courtroom battles. Inside the Georgia Supreme court this morning, Woodham argued that a 2010 state law extending the city's hotel and motel tax violated Georgia's Constitution. He says the law should have been a "general" law, which is a measure that can be applied statewide, but was instead turned into a "special law." He says that only pertains to one instance - in this case the Georgia Dome's replacement facility.

Woodham also said the Atlanta City Council approved its stadium funding legislation in March 2013 without receiving proper certification from the Georgia World Congress Center Authority, the state agency that would ultimately own the building.

"As it stands, the city resolution that was poorly adopted in March 2013 did not extend the hotel-and-motel tax because the law was void," Woodham said during his oral arguments. "Therefore, there is no security for those bonds, meaning that those bonds are unlawful. Validation can be and should be reversed on that issue alone."

Matthew Calvert, who represented the city and Invest Atlanta, the city's economic development arm, urged the justices to uphold the issuance of revenue bonds partially funding the new stadium. Contrary to Woodham's arguments, he said the General Assembly's extension of the hotel-and-motel tax did not violate constitutional law. Another lawyer, Thomas Curvin, also speaking on behalf of the city, told the justices that GWCCA certification must happen to approve the city's stadium financing, but said the paperwork wasn't necessarily required prior to Council's 2013 vote.

"We think the city went about it in exactly the right way," Curvin told the court. "In the way this deal was structured, there is no way the hotel-and-motel tax can be extended beyond its current expiration date unless this deal closes."

The court has until late March, when its January term ends, to rule in the Falcons stadium lawsuit. Calvert says stadium construction will continue during that time, but will not be funded with public money. That will only happen, he says, if the court rules in the city's favor.