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Friday, January 5, 2007
The Speaker throws a Laffer curve
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Macon Telegraph is out today with more of House Speaker Glenn Richardson’s thoughts on changing Georgia’s tax structure.
Richardson goes into a little bit more detail than he did last month.
Says the Telegraph: “Current school and property taxes would be replaced with a flat income tax of 5 percent to 5.5 percent and a ‘consumption tax’ or sales tax of about 5 percent, he said. The rates would apply to everyone, regardless of income.”
The news is that the House speaker said he’s hired as a consultant the economist Arthur Laffer, who introduced Ronald Reagan to the concept of cutting taxes to increase economic activity — and government revenue.
“What we’re doing is hiring Dr. Laffer to analyze every single governmental system in the state, every county, every school board, every city and say, ‘here’s how much money you generate right now, here’s how much money will be generated if you do this, and it will be more than you get right now.’ And we’ll have to guarantee that,” Richardson said.
We’ve been told Laffer will make at least one appearance in Atlanta during the coming session of the Legislature.
Don’t expect any tax reform legislation this year, though. House Republicans intend that to come in ‘08.
The link between politics, the arts and Regis Philbin
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The arts and politics may be about to mix in a very big way.
An obscure and dull little piece of legislation will make its debut before the General Assembly sometime next week, intended to help remake the way TV pictures come into your home.
Right now, as it was carefully explained to us, you have three ways to watch Oprah: Rabbit ears, cable and dish.
Bleeding traditional phone customers, AT&T (once known as BellSouth) wants to create a fourth path into your living room, by piping video through its phone lines.
Cable TV companies now must negotiate with each and every city and county in which they establish a franchise. That’s how public access channels are created.
AT&T wants to skip that time-consuming and expensive process by signing a single franchise agreement with the state of Georgia. Advocates say the new competition will bring cable TV companies and their prices to heel.
The legislation is modeled in part after what’s been done in Texas. And that’s where the ears of Atlanta’s underfunded arts community have pricked up.
In return for a statewide franchise, Texas levies a federally authorized fee of 1 percent per subscriber for education.
Leaders of Atlanta’s arts community are suggesting that Georgia do the same, but channel the money toward a state-controlled “arts in education” program. The money would be smaller: $1 per subscriber instead of 1 percent.
Even so, we’re talking about $12 million annually — an important amount in a state where a shrinking corporate profile has resulted in less money for big cultural projects.
“Georgia needs to be redefined as a great place for creative businesses — not just a place of great beauty with relatively cheap land and labor,” according to one memo floating around the Capitol.
And it couldn’t hurt Georgia’s low-ranking public schools either, the memo notes: “Georgia is last among the Southern states in state spending for the arts. For every 600 elementary school children Georgia provides a choice of one: an arts teacher, a music teacher or a PE teacher.”
