Archive for the ‘Georgia Legislature’ Category

Around 6 p.m. Thursday, the final day of this year’s legislative session, Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle had to make a phone call.

He wasn’t phoning the speaker of the House so they could gavel the session adjourned, sine die. Rather, Cagle was asking his chief legal counsel about an amendment to a bill.

I know, I know: Government-jargon-blah-blah-blah alerts are sounding all across metro Atlanta right about now. But this story isn’t about Gold Dome process. It’s about money, power and how the two intersect in ways that can be hard to see.

For a seasoned presiding officer who wastes little time assigning bills to committees and making various other rulings from the rostrum, Cagle’s pause was unusual. Then again, the amendment was unusually delicate: Sen. Jason Carter, an Atlanta Democrat, was proposing a $100 limit on lobbyist gifts to legislators. It was the same limit proposed by Republicans and — until then — snuffed out by higher-ranking Republicans in both the Senate and the House …

Continue reading From Sine Die, a look at how ethics gets squeezed out of the sausage »

The AJC’s Capitol correspondents compiled a list of some of the most prominent bills yet to be settled in this year’s legislative session, which will end by midnight today. I haven’t written about most of them but, for the record, here’s where I stand on each (I’m not going to link to each one, but you can search for the text of any bill that interests you here):

• SB 469 (outlawing picketing outside private residences): The changes proposed by the House, which broaden the bill to cover anyone’s residence rather than just those of business leaders dealing with labor unions, strike me as constitutional and desirable — a protest outside one’s home isn’t a negotiation tactic, just pure intimidation. I support it as amended by the House Judiciary Committee.
• HB 954 (limiting elective abortions to the first 20 weeks of a pregnancy, rather than the current 26): Anti-abortion activists say the bill has been gutted; pro-abortion-rights activists still oppose it anyway. What’s the point …

Continue reading Where I stand on key bills as the 2012 session wraps up »

UPDATE March 26 at 12:15 p.m.: The problem appears to be fixed, as the option for 2012 lobbyist reports is available once again

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ORIGINAL POST from March 22:

Not in Georgia, at least not right now. As the 2012 session winds down and a number of important, far-reaching bills are being passed or defeated, lobbyist expenditure reports for this calendar year are not available on the website of the Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commission. See this screen shot I took this afternoon:

This problem cropped up just this week: Last week, while researching a column about ethics reform and the proposed $100 gift limit, the 2012 reports appeared to work fine. The outage apparently began after a problem Friday with the state’s data servers (I’ve placed a call to the responsible state agency to confirm that and will update this post when I hear back). In the meantime, only reports through 2011 are available.

One doesn’t have to suspect any nefarious activity to see …

Continue reading Transparency just a click of the mouse away? (Updated) »

If all goes according to plan, sometime today the state Senate will pass a bill tinkering with Georgia’s tax code. Thus will two years of ambitious thinking about tax reform end not with a bang, but with a whimper.

The way to think about this tax package, HB 386, is not whether it’s bad on its face. Some parts of it are clearly good; others elicit more of a “meh.” It’s more good than bad.

Rather, the real problem is this bill makes it harder to achieve the very bold tax reforms discussed since 2010.

I’m talking about lowering the personal and corporate income tax rates as low as a flat 3 percent from today’s top rate of 6 percent. That’s a worthy goal for a state sandwiched between two rival states, Florida and Tennessee, with personal income tax rates of zero. A third, South Carolina, is currently moving toward halving its own income tax rate to 3 percent.

A special council created in 2010 to study tax reform recommended just such a reduction to help Georgia remain …

Continue reading The tax reform Georgia won’t get if this tax bill passes »

We saw this movie last year: Georgia’s legislative leaders wait until late in the session to try to make changes to the tax code, even as questions remain about elements of the package, their projected impact on the state budget, and the assumptions underlying that projected impact. Only, this year the action is happening later, after less public discussion, with less time to review the projections. The House reportedly will vote on the bill later today, and the Senate before the end of the week.

It was a bad idea last year, and it’s a bad idea this year.

Despite protests to the contrary by legislators, this year’s tax bill — in no way can it be considered a real tax “reform,” much less a “comprehensive” one — does not comprise only changes that have been thoroughly vetted in public. The “E-Fairness” element, a.k.a. the “Amazon tax,” was not part of the mix last year. It’s a tax that, in most of the states in which it’s been passed to date, has succeeding less in “leveling the …

Continue reading No good reason to rush a vote on mediocre tax package »

After attending yesterday’s legislative hearing about the new tax-reform bill, I had to go home and tend to some unexpected family business. (Not to worry, everyone’s OK.) But even if I’d been free all yesterday afternoon to write about the bill, I’m not sure I’d have known exactly what to say. I still don’t.

I will have more to say about the individual components of the package at a later date. For now, I’ll stick to my broad impression of it.

From the yeoman’s work of the members of a special council created two years ago to modernize a state tax code that had been appended and patched up with little more than duct tape over the years, we stand to get what amounts to this:

• No change in the personal income tax rate, brackets or deductions — just a partial reduction of the “marriage penalty” and a hard cap on the investment income retirees can exclude.
• No change in the corporate income tax (despite a campaign promise by Gov. Nathan Deal).
• No flattening or lowering of the tax …

Continue reading Unsure of the new tax reform package? Join the club »

The General Assembly wasn’t in session yesterday, but there was big news anyway. From the AJC’s Kristina Torres:

The GOP-controlled General Assembly came within reach Thursday of asking voters to revive the state’s ability to sponsor charter schools, when one of the Senate’s most venerable statesmen said he would buck his party and vote yes — as two others suggested they would strongly consider it.

State Sen. George Hooks, D-Americus, said he made his decision to vote for the measure on behalf of local parents stung by accreditation concerns involving the leadership of Sumter County Schools.

Sen. Curt Thompson, D-Tucker, said a yes vote would be consistent with his past support of charter schools. Sen. Hardie Davis, D-Augusta, said he would give the measure “strong consideration.” A vote on the measure is expected Monday in the Senate.

Republicans reportedly believed Davis was one of the Democrats on board with the amendment when they brought it to the floor two weeks ago, …

Continue reading Big news for charter schools amendment »

Today is the first full day of action in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. It puts me in the mind of the Georgia Legislature — and not because they call the tournament “March Madness.”

Two years ago, when a $100 limit on lobbyist gifts was proposed, I asked a House committee chairman to explain why he opposed it. He recounted this story:

The last time the Final Four was in Atlanta (2007), by late March he’d worked a lot of late hours away from the family. As he walked toward the exit one night, a lobbyist passing by held out a pair of tickets and suggested he take his son to a game.

As one might expect, they had a grand time. Looking back, he told me, he wouldn’t have wanted to deprive his son of that experience they had together. A $100 gift limit, you see, would have left father and son to watch the game at home or pay their own way.

Remember: This was his defense of $100-plus gifts.

Lest you think this was a one-off scenario, the online records of the agency once known …

Continue reading Transparency alone is not the ticket for Georgia legislators and ethics »

For a group so certain of public support for their social-issue stances, Democrats sure are resorting to some trickeration to paint the right as extremist.

Yasmin Neal, a freshman state legislator from Jonesboro, got a lot of laughs last week for proposing to limit vasectomies to cases where a man could face death or “impairment of a major bodily function.” Neal’s legislation is a parody of an anti-abortion bill, HB 954, moving through the House. And hers would be laughable indeed, if it didn’t reflect such a serious distortion of what animates abortion opponents.

In a press release, Neal explained herself thus:

Thousands of children are deprived of birth in this state every year because of the lack of state regulation over vasectomies. It is patently unfair that men can avoid unwanted fatherhood by presuming that their judgment over such matters is more valid than the judgment of the General Assembly, while women’s ability to decide is constantly up for debate throughout the …

Continue reading If social issues favor the left, why the deceit about the right’s stances? »

One way to gauge a government program’s popularity is by how far politicians are willing to stretch the truth to argue they are that program’s strongest defenders. By that measure, the HOPE scholarship must be the most beloved program in all of Georgia.

A year after a broad reform of HOPE — one that accepted lottery revenues had plateaued while tuition levels soared — the scholarship suddenly is being hotly debated again. The apparent impetus is a state agency’s report forecasting falling HOPE award levels during the next several years.

Given that such forecasts accompanied last year’s reform, however, one can’t help but sense political opportunism. And some truth-stretching.

Democrats in the state Senate are agitating to re-revamp HOPE. (House Democrats have little leg to stand on here, because they were very public participants in crafting last year’s legislation.) Their pitch is that the “old” HOPE — covering 100 percent of tuition costs — could be restored, if only the …

Continue reading Claims of a painless HOPE fix with income caps don’t hold up »