Part of every issue will be money

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Budget

The state’s troubled finances will dominate the 2010 session as lawmakers try to figure out how to get by with less of the federal stimulus money that helped them balance the books this year.

State officials have reduced the budget about $3 billion over the past year.

Most recently, Gov. Sonny Perdue ordered $900 million in spending cuts. With tax collections off 15.4 percent over the first five months of the fiscal year, another $300 million to $400 million will have to go.

And that’s in a fiscal 2010 budget balanced with $1.4 billion in federal stimulus money.

Some of that stimulus money — $300 million to $400 million — goes away in fiscal 2011, which begins June 30. While the economy and tax collections are expected to improve, legislators will still be hard-pressed to balance the books.

Since this is an election year, there won’t be any serious consideration of raising taxes or fees to make up the shortfall. However, continuing cuts to University System funding will almost certainly mean a big tuition hike for college students.

In general, this will be a bad year for anyone asking lawmakers for money.

Taxes

Senate leaders will push changes in the property tax appraisal and assessment system after the Atlanta Journal-Constitution detailed how property values used in setting taxes remained much higher than sales prices.

House leaders are expected to once again push a package of tax incentives for businesses to hire and retain employees.

Transportation

For transportation, the big issue remains funding.

And it’s déjà vu all over again: Transportation advocates say the region and the state must have new funding for roads and transit, or else choke in congestion and watch economic development die.

State leaders say they’ve seen the light and will work together to make it happen, early. MARTA chimes in that it is in jeopardy of severe service cuts if the state doesn’t find a way to help fund it, too.

Similar hope and hoopla brought few visible results last year, or the year before. But maybe the third time’s a charm. If so, it will be a hard row to hoe in an election year and a terrible economy.

House Majority Leader Jerry Keen recently announced a consensus between House and Senate leaders on long-running sticking points of the transportation funding concept. But two days later Keen’s own leader, Speaker Glenn Richardson, resigned, leaving all deals in question.

Keen spoke of allowing a region’s voters to approve a tax for projects in their region, and of a separate, less well defined source of money — without new taxes — that could fund the whole state. He would not be specific but it sounded consistent with making the whole gas tax rise with inflation, so that it would raise new funds over time that could go to projects statewide.

A proposal that legislative leaders said this fall was gaining traction, to put half of a penny tax toward regional needs and the other half-penny toward state needs, was shelved.

Education

The state continues to cut its financial support of public education. Local taxpayers are in no mood to raise their own. And state leaders want to change how local governments handle property taxes, which in turn may affect the economic engine of neighborhood schools.

The state has cut more than $2 billion from its k-12 funding since Perdue implemented what he called “austerity reductions” – his response to the massive budget shortfall he faced after he won office in 2002. More cuts are on the way because of the recession.

Educators and their advocates, already wearied from furloughs, bigger classes and a bigger workload, are preparing to try to fend off more of the same. Ancillary spending, such as on school nurses, could also be threatened.

The state education department, meanwhile, wants to waive class size requirements altogether. Officials also suggest letting local systems use funds normally set aside for school construction projects to supplement operational expenses instead.

That money comes from voter-approved local 1-cent-on-the-dollar sales taxes — called special purpose local option sales taxes, or SPLOST — that fuel many systems’ school construction and technology projects. The law currently bars systems from using the money for anything else, such as paying for teaching positions.

Other education-related topics are likely to include a proposal from the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement to make it a crime to alter student test results. It would follow a test cheating scandal this year that led to state sanctions against 13 educators.

Crime and punishment

Georgia’s sex offender registry, its public defender system and teacher-student sex are among the issues lawmakers are expected to scrutinize.

House Bill 571 would revise the sex-offender law and deal with court rulings that have struck down a number of its provisions. Those includes a Georgia Supreme Court ruling that a section of the law criticized for making homelessness a crime is unconstitutional.

House Judiciary Non-Civil Committee Chairman Rich Golick (R-Smyrna) said his panel will consider removing a legal defense for those charged under a law forbidding teachers to have sex with students. This would address a state Supreme Court ruling in June that overturned the sexual assault conviction of a 28-year-old schoolteacher who was involved with one of her 16-year-old students. The ruling said the teacher should have been allowed to present a defense argument that the girl had been at least 16 years old and had consented.

Senate Bill 42 is expected to be used to reorganize the Georgia Public Defender Standards Council. Golick said lawmakers also will consider changes to the state’s anti-gang statute and increased penalties for teenagers found guilty of committing smash-and-grab thefts.

Ethics

Former House Speaker Glenn Richardson (R-Hiram) didn’t like ethics legislation. Thanks to his career flameout this fall, however, you can expect ethics to be high on the Legislature’s agenda. Already the new speaker, David Ralston (R-Blue Ridge), and the chairmen of the House judiciary and the House ethics committees have said they are committed to an ethics package passing this session. They can call it the “Clean up your” act. Ideas being considered include severe limits on how much lobbyists can spend on gifts, food and trips for legislators; permanent funding and greater powers for the State Ethics Commission; and expanding the Open Records Act to include the Legislature.

The moves follow a wild fall, in which the once-powerful Richardson announced in November that he had attempted suicide because he was depressed over his failed marriage. Weeks later, Richardson’s ex-wife went on television and said he’d had an affair with a lobbyist.

Richardson announced his resignation within days of the television broadcast.

Other

• Sunday liquor sales: Opposition from the Religious Right, Gov. Sonny Perdue and a prominent Gwinnett County liquor store owner with strong pull in the Senate all but guarantee that legislation to allow Sunday beer, wine and liquor sales at grocery and convenience stores will be stalled again this year.

• Banking: Legislators also aren’t likely to consider any major revisions of the state’s banking laws or regulatory system, even though the state led the nation in bank failures last year.

• Industry experts say Georgia lawmakers may step aside while most of the financial reform efforts are focused in Washington, D.C., for now. Georgia’s lawmakers won’t be completely silent this year on the financial industry, some predicted. Bankers want to see a change in state law that would allow them to renew large loans that are now barred if past losses have eroded their capital beyond certain limits.

• Guns: Legislation allowing Georgians to carry guns in more places will again be debated. One bill would eliminate almost all of Georgia’s public assembly restrictions for places such as churches and college campuses.

• Exceptions would keep guns out of courthouses, prisons and other facilities that house criminals.

In 2008, lawmakers approved a law change that allows Georgians who have the proper permits to carry guns in state parks, on mass transit and in restaurants where alcohol is served.