Cagle tells Senate Republicans that tax ethics bill was a mistake

Shortly after that raucous debate in the Senate floor on Thursday, over Eric Johnson’s attempt to make it easier to out lawmakers who don’t pay their taxes, Republican members gathered in a single room on the third floor of the state Capitol.

In front of GOP caucus members, and with Johnson in the company, Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle took responsibility for permitting S.R. 452 to come to a floor vote. It shouldn’t have happened, he said.

Cagle sent an emissary bearing the same message to Senate Democrats, we’re told.

The vote for S.R. 452 failed to achieve the necessary two-thirds vote, and so did not pass. But the vote was almost entirely along partisan lines, with every Republican in the chamber voting for it. Because they were afraid not to.

Some of those who were in that GOP caucus meeting said privately on Friday that they felt rushed. The first public discussion of the bill had occurred a day before, during a committee hearing filled with TV cameras.

The mid-year change in Senate rules would have permitted the state revenue commissioner to bring a complaint against a legislator who failed to pay federal, state or local taxes — before that failure became a matter of public record.

Many of the Republicans who voted for it quietly agreed with Democratic criticism expressed during the Thursday floor debate — that the measure could have politicized the revenue department, and would have robbed lawmakers of due process rights afforded other citizens. For instance, disputes with local property tax assessments would have been covered by the measure.

Perhaps most importantly, there appears to be a widespread recognition among Republican lawmakers that — economic times being what they are — a number of the 236 members of the Legislature are in the same pickle that many Americans are, and barely able to keep their heads above water.

Johnson, who hails from Savannah, is in a tight race for the GOP nomination for lieutenant governor with senatorial colleague David Shafer of Duluth. Such races are highly dependent on networking within the Capitol. Which makes the reaction to Johnson’s effort significant. Also, remember that Cagle is running for governor, and will be relying on Senate Republicans for support.

For the record, Cagle also reportedly told Republican senators that he had asked Senate Majority Leader Robert Brown, in his response to Johnson’s introduction of the measure, not to use that big-screen photo of the Savannah lawmaker in a St. Patrick’s Day parade, holding aloft the former state flag and its Confederate battle emblem.

But Brown told the lieutenant governor that he felt obliged to do so, because of language that Johnson had used in TV interviews, discussing lawmakers who failed to pay taxes.

During the Thursday debate, Brown admitted to being one of them, because of several months he spent in a hospital in 2007.

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