Home > Political Insider > Archives > 2008 > February > 17
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Taxes and Republicans: The pressure of real life on the Georgia GOP
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In 2003, the first move of a newly elected Sonny Perdue was to propose a package of tax hikes on booze and tobacco, to cope with a downturn in state revenue.
The move roiled newly empowered Republicans in the Legislature, and many called the governor everything but a child of God.
Five years later, we are finally getting down to business in the current session at the state Capitol. And no fewer than four measures that will be construed as tax hikes in someone’s election-year propaganda — all backed by Republican lawmakers — are on the table.
There’s the $1 per pack increase in the state tax on tobacco. And House Speaker Glenn Richardson’s $10 car tag fee to pay for a state trauma network. And two proposals, one launched in the House and the other in the Senate, would use a new sales tax to address, in part, metro Atlanta’s massive traffic congestion.
(We’re not even counting the 174 services that would be subject to a new sales tax, if Richardson’s effort to eliminate school property taxes succeeds.)
Sponsors of the first two measures point to offsets that negate the impact of the increases. Both transportation plans would merely give voters permission, through referendums, to tax themselves.
But that hasn’t prevented rumblings within GOP ranks, and not a little maneuvering among Democrats. It’s the burden that a political party inherits when it is tasked with not only winning elections, but actually running a government.
Competency costs.
Earlier this month, an explosion at a sugar refinery near Savannah killed nine and injured dozens. Only days later, Senate President pro tem Eric Johnson announced his support for Richardson’s $10 car tag fee, which would raise $73 million to support emergency treatment available in hospitals across the state.
Richardson has paired the tag fee with the elimination of the property tax on vehicles. To Johnson, semantics don’t matter.
“I don’t run from the tag fee being a tax. It would be a tax. But I have been a budget hawk on health-care spending, and on spending in general,” Johnson said. “On trauma, that is a legitimate duty for the state to participate in. No individual, no insurance policy can pay to have the helicopters on the ready and the patient system set up.”
The car tag measure was presented to the House Governmental Affairs Committee last week by state Rep. Ron Stephens (R-Garden City). The body of Tony Thomas, one of Stephens’ best friends dating back to high school football days, was the last recovered from that sugar plant.
“We’re at the brink of the trauma system collapsing,” Stephens said.
The committee approved the bill, but without the help of an unmoved state Rep. Mark Hatfield (R-Waycross). “I’ll vote against every tax increase that comes along,” he said. “It doesn’t matter whether its for transportation or trauma care. We need to work within the resources we have.”
Democrats are likely to support the car tag hike, for much of the cash raised would go toward Grady Memorial Hospital — although state lawmakers have been careful not to say how much.
Stephens, incidentally, is also a sponsor of the $1 hike in the state cigarette tax. “I don’t view it as a tax increase,” the lawmaker said.
Raising the price of a pack of cigarettes would reduce the number of people smoking. That, in turn, would lower the amount of money the state pays in Medicaid bills. And some of the $500 million raised could go toward tax credits to encourage Georgians to purchase health insurance.
House Republican leaders aren’t buying the argument, and H.B. 1197 is unlikely to move very far.
The House and Senate transportation plans are the most vulnerable to anti-tax sentiments, for each requires a two-thirds approval of the Legislature to win placement on the November ballot.
The House plan would impose a one-cent tax for transportation statewide. The Senate plan would permit single counties, or groups of counties, to impose the tax.
On Tuesday, House Democrats will propose a third way. The state current levies a 4 percent sales tax on motor fuel in Georgia. Three pennies on the dollar go to the state Department of Transportation. A fourth penny, worth $200 million a year, goes to the general fund.
House Democrats will argue that the fourth penny be permanently shifted toward transportation — not just for the repair and construction of roads and bridges, but for mass transit as well.
“This way, the money comes from current resources,” said House Minority Leader DuBose Porter of Dublin. “What we have here are tax-and-spend Republicans in Georgia.”
Somewhere on the second floor of the state Capitol, a governor has just allowed himself a small smile.
