NEWS - Local Breaking News

1/11/2010 - Landing Firth Rixson Limited was a great way to start 2010 for the Liberty County Development Authority (LCDA), the culmination of just a few months of work, according to Ron Tolley, CEcD, CEO of the authority. “It was a fast-moving project,” he said in an interview last week.

The LCDA has a somewhat unusual board structure, according to Tolley, which he believes is part of the reason the county continues to land major projects.

The authority is led by a seven-member board of directors including automatic seats for the chairman of the Liberty County Board of Commissioners and the mayor of Hinesville – the county seat.

“These two automatic seats ensure well-informed political representation and foster expeditious processing of development projects or permits,” according to Tolley.

“There are occasions, in getting through the regular regulatory maze, where you have to go to the full Liberty County Commissioners for an approval. We find it beneficial that instead of having to fully inform the commissioners. They have an increased comfort level, that this isn’t just a totally outside body of appointed people coming before them, having to explain everything.  They themselves can turn to their own chairman, and know that they are getting the ‘up and up’ on it, because he’s one of them,” Tolley explained.

The LCDA is operated by a six-member staff consisting of a CEO, director of Marketing & Research, director of Administration & Finance, project manager, finance assistant, and receptionist/office assistant.

The staff also works closely with an "extended staff" consisting of development professionals in other allied organizations such as the Georgia Power Company, Coastal Electric Membership Cooperative, Canoochee EMC, Savannah Technical College, Georgia Department of Economic Development, Georgia Department of Community Affairs and the OneGeorgia Authority, Tolley added.