Savage v. State of Ga.

Appellants Larry Savage, Richard Pellegrino, and Tucker Hobgood challenge the trial court’s validation of revenue bonds that will be used to help finance a new stadium in Cobb County for the Atlanta Braves major league baseball team. The bonds for the stadium project are to be issued pursuant to an intergovernmental agreement between Cobb County and the Cobb-Marietta Coliseum and Exhibit Hall Authority, under which the Authority agrees to issue bonds to cover much of the cost of constructing the stadium and the County agrees to pay the Authority amounts sufficient to cover the bond payments not covered by the licensing fees paid by the Braves. In these consolidated appeals, we conclude that the intergovernmental contract is valid; that the issuance of the bonds will not violate the Georgia Constitution’s debt limitation clause, gratuities clause, or lending clause or Georgia’s revenue bond laws; and that the process used to validate the bonds was not deficient. We therefore affirm the trial court’s judgment validating the stadium project bonds.

1. The Cobb-Marietta Coliseum and Exhibit Hall Authority was created in 1980 as “an instrumentality and a subordinate public corporation of the State of Georgia” for the purpose of “development and promotion in this state of the cultural growth, public welfare, education, and recreation of the people of this state.” Ga. L. 1980, p. 4093, § 2. Since its creation, the Authority has overseen the construction of the Cobb Galleria Centre, Galleria Specialty Mall, and Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre, and it continues to oversee the management of those complexes. In 2013, representatives from the Authority, Cobb County, and the Atlanta National League Baseball Club, Inc. the Club began to discuss building a new 41,500-seat stadium for the Braves in Cobb County.1 Those discussions resulted in a Memorandum of Understanding, which was presented to and approved by the Authority on November 25, 2013. Based on that memorandum, the County, the Authority, and the Braves parties executed a number of documents on May 27, 2014, which form the basis of the stadium project.2 The five main agreements are as follows: