Our Opinion: Legislators snub public, do favors for business

The 2009 General Assembly began with pledges to help the people of Georgia struggling with a nearly 10 percent jobless rate, record foreclosures and plummeting home values.

Let’s review how lawmakers have helped Georgians thus far:

• The House and Senate — with lightning speed — passed Senate Bill 31, which raises utility rates for everyone except big business.

• Another bill — Senate Bill 130 — would quietly allow resumption of payday lending, a predatory practice banned five years ago. In its “lease-back” incarnation, payday lenders could make loans with triple-digit interest rates that were secured not by future paychecks but by refrigerators and stoves. (When the world ends, the only survivors will be cockroaches and payday lenders. They have demonstrated incredible adaptability and agility to reinvent themselves and coax legislators to carry their banner. The lenders, that is, not the cockroaches.)

• Lawmakers are dragging their feet about making a small change to the state insurance code that would help out-of-work Georgians extend their health coverage. The extensions are funded by the federal stimulus bill. However, before employees of small firms can take advantage of the subsidy, the Legislature must change the wording to the code. Without that change, former employees of small firms will be entitled to only three months of federally subsidized health care coverage instead of nine.

• No attempt is under way in the General Assembly to mandate that home foreclosures go before a judge. Because the state does not require judicial oversight of foreclosures, Georgia’s foreclosure process is the fastest in the country, leaving families little time to try to catch up on payments or find alternative living arrangements. A house can be sold on the courthouse steps in as few as 37 days. Georgia has the nation’s eighth highest foreclosure rate and a record number of metro Atlanta foreclosures sales —10,138 — are scheduled in April.

By taking no action to slow down that process, the Legislature is ignoring the thousands of Georgians now in foreclosure; the local governments dealing with vacant, abandoned properties and rapid neighborhood deterioration; and the next round of borrowers likely to go into foreclosure.

“In the worst economy in a generation, not only is the General Assembly turning its back on consumers, it’s actually passing legislation that adds to the financial burdens of voters and fighting legislation that would prevent this crisis from ever happening again,” says Allie Wall, executive director of Georgia Watch, an Atlanta consumer group.

To some degree, the Legislature’s indifference to the economic pain of Georgia citizens can be blamed on a political consensus at the Capitol to avoid controversy. Expecting a bruising governor’s race next year and a push by Democrats to reclaim lost ground, the GOP leadership — most of whom are seeking higher office — want tempers and profiles kept low.

They also don’t want to irk the politically powerful, which explains how Georgia Power succeeded in winning legislative approval to shift billions of dollars in costs for two new reactors to consumers. As a result of SB 31, Georgia citizens will soon start paying higher bills for reactors that won’t come online until 2016 at the earliest. In writing the bill, state Sen. Don Balfour (R-Snellville) neatly exempted some of the state’s biggest businesses from that premature rate increase, figuring that while he could shrug off complaints from consumers, he didn’t want to aggravate auto plants and big-box chains.

One decent consumer bill has advanced, although Senate Bill 57 could be diluted next week when it reaches the full House. Sponsored by state Sen. Bill Hamrick (R-Carrollton) and championed in the House by state Rep. Mike Jacobs (R-Atlanta), the bill outlaws yield spread premiums, a deceptively fancy name for kickbacks to mortgage brokers who steer consumers into higher-interest, riskier and higher-profit loans. It also bans prepayment fees.

At a hearing on the bill Thursday, state Rep. Edward Lindsey (R-Atlanta) voted for it, but cautioned colleagues against “overreacting … under the guise of consumer protections.”

Based on the General Assembly’s consumer protection record thus far, Lindsey should have no fears about overreactions.

• Maureen Downey, for the editorial board (mdowney@ajc.com)