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Sunday, March 25, 2007
If the Legislature’s budget fight is about principle, Republicans could be in trouble
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
There are signs that this budget stand-off between Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle and House Speaker Glenn Richardson could be more serious than it looks.
Meltdowns over how to divvy up the millions and billions in budget bills are common, nearly annual events in the Legislature. Yet because they involve mere dollars, most of these disputes can be resolved with Solomon-like precision. Put the baby on the table and split the difference.
But the current crisis is rapidly developing into a dangerous matter of Republican principle. There is no baby to chop in two. And there are the voters of the GOP base to worry about. Principle makes it hard to back down in front of them.
Each year, the governor of Georgia estimates how much money tax revenues will bring in the next year. Because our constitution prohibits a deficit, state spending is usually a notch or so below that.
Which means that each year, the state usually gathers in excess revenue. This year the amount is about $700 million. Most of it will go to local schools, to help pay for each year’s unpredicatable increase in the number of students.
When Democrats controlled the Capitol the remainder would be divided among the state’s most powerful lawmakers, and sent to their districts — to pay for anything from museums to libraries to high school band uniforms.
Republicans were appalled. In 2002, candidate Sonny Perdue and nearly every other Republican on the ballot called for the abolition of the supplemental budget. This year, Governor Perdue included in the “little budget” a healthy portion of his “Go Fish Georgia” program.
House Republicans have followed Perdue’s lead with projects of their own, but were stopped in their tracks this week when Cagle, the new kid on the block, announced that he wanted to do what he’d promised while campaigning. Cagle wanted all excess spending stripped from the supplemental budget.
On Friday, Cagle told reporters he wouldn’t back down.
You can say that the newbie lieutenant governor is engaging in holier-than-thou grandstanding, that he’s making an early bid for the 2010 race for the big house on West Paces Ferry. And all of that is probably true. Even so, the grandstanding is resonating with the anti-tax base of the state GOP.
“I think the lieutenant governor absolutely has his priorities in line,” said Jared Thomas, Georgia director of Americans for Prosperity. Thomas has declared that excess spending in the supplemental budget will be a “graded vote.” In other words, come the ’08 election, his group will be scoring Republican lawmakers on the issue.
“We take in more money than we say we need, and then we look for new ways to spend it. I don’t think that that’s being a good steward of Georgia’s tax dollars,” Thomas said.
Americans for Prosperity is a new group in the state, and its clout hasn’t been proven. Thomas is more important because of his immediate past. He was the campaign manager for Ralph Reed, the Republican icon whom Cagle roughly pushed aside last summer to get where he is now.
That’s how much the spending issue matters to some Republicans.
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Voters like Sunday beer and wine sales, says Casey Cagle’s own pollster
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The bill to allow grocery stores to sell beer and wine on Sunday is in dire straits, clogged in the Senate Rules Committee. Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle has issued strong hints that the measure will still be there when the session ends.
To help squeeze the bill out onto the Senate floor for a vote, the forces in support of Sunday sales released yet another poll late last week, showing that Georgians like the idea of local choice in the matter.
This survey tapped 300 likely voters — scattered in the districts of three influential Republican senators: Renee Unterman of Buford; Ronnie Chance of Tyron; and Lee Hawkins of Gainesville. Hawkins is a newcomer, but the district is the one Cagle represented.
In each district, S.B. 137 received the support of more than 60 percent of voters — even when just Republicans were counted, said Jim Tudor, president of the Georgia Association of Convenience Stores.
Not only did the group poll the lieutenant governor’s former district, but it used Cagle’s pollster, Jim McLaughlin — the one who helped him Cagle into his current office at the Capitol.
“We thought it would lend credibility,” Tudor said.
But note that he’s not asking for any black helicopters
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Anti-tax Republicans in the state Capitol are looking askance at a bill backed by the Department of Revenue that would give Commissioner Bart Graham — for the first time — authority to create a force of eight law enforcement officers to go after tax evaders.
H.B.385 is an agency bill backed by Gov. Sonny Perdue. The legislation passed out of the House Ways and Means Committee last week. We presume it’ll hit the House floor on Tuesday.
The Department of Revenue already has agents with arrest powers when it comes to alcohol and tobacco regulation — revenooers of moonshine fame.
The new force would investigate cases relating to “income, withholding, sales and use, excise, and property taxes.”
Given that many Republicans would like to see the Internal Revenue Service abolished, Graham knew that the legislation would raise eyebrows, and was quick to respond personally to an inquiry. In essence, he said, Georgia’s been giving a pass to tax cheats.
“Nobody has been prosecuted criminally for [state] tax evasion in this state for 20 years,” the commissioner said. Fraudulent returns have merely been blocked.
The legislation would require no new hires. The people are already there, but only as investigators without the power to arrest or obtain search warrants. Outside agencies such as the GBI can’t be brought in, Graham said, because of restricted access to the 9 million tax returns the state receives each year.
“It’s not about becoming a police-oriented state. I’m not interested in pushing anybody around,” Graham said.
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