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AJC.com > Legislature > Blog > Archives > 2007 > April > 26 > Entry
DEL.ICIO.USSenate won’t seek veto override
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgia Senate leaders are signaling they won’t seek to override Gov. Sonny Perdue’s budget veto during the upcoming special session, setting up another possible confrontation with House Republicans who have vowed to oppose the governor.
In a statement released this morning, Republican Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle said continuing the debate on overriding the governor’s veto of the midyear budget “will only perpetuate confrontation and conflict, which doesn’t help the citizens we were elected to serve.”
“Over the next several days, my focus will be on working cooperatively with the governor and the speaker to develop a formula of reserve savings and tax relief that we can all agree on,” Cagle said in a prepared statement.
“We owe the people of Georgia real solutions, not political posturing. I am committed to achieving that goal through a short, cooperative, and effective special session.”
House Republican leaders say, meanwhile, they will either seek to override Perdue’s budget veto to preserve a proposed $142 million property tax cut or draft a new budget that would include the tax cut — a move that could force a Senate vote on cutting taxes.
Cagle made his position public one day after Senate President Pro Tem Eric Johnson (R-Savannah) declared he would not seek a veto override. Johnson called the House’s proposed tax cut “a logistical nightmare.”
“While the General Assembly hoped to use the surplus to provide a one-time property tax cut of about $100 per homeowner, it turned out to be a logistical nightmare that would result in about half that amount getting to the taxpayer,” Johnson said in a statement Wednesday. “I believe that the next best thing to do is place any funds beyond the short-term critical emergency needs into the state’s reserve or savings account.
“It always has been the Republican philosophy that surplus funds in the budget should be used to fully fund our reserves and then used to reduce debt or returned to the taxpayers,” Johnson continued. “They should not be used to grow government.”
During a speech to GOP activists in west Cobb County on Saturday, House Speaker Glenn Richardson (R-Hiram) vowed to not back off the tax cut, declaring the governor “is wrong, wrong, wrong.”
“If he can figure out a way to successfully call us into session,” Richardson said of Perdue, “we are going to override the veto again and again and again.”
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By Ben
April 27, 2007 9:19 AM | Link to this
The central argument is and always has been: whose money is it? It’s not the Governor’s, it not Casey Cagle’s, it’s not legislator’s, it’s the people’s money and it doesn’t matter if it’s $50 or $65 or $100 - what matters is if the money is not needed in the budget (and that’s the other central argument); then the surplus money rightfully should go back to it’s owners —- the taxpayers.
The House is saying and has clearly said, the $142 million belongs to taxpayers - The Governor and Casey Cagle are now saying the $142 million needs to be spent elsewhere; so now the first argument that should be decided by the Governor and General Assembly is: How much money does Georgia really need to function? If and when that question is answered and $142 million remains, then the taxpayers should be reduned the surplus!