On Saturday, at the state Democratic convention, we fell into a discussion with Kip Carr, the state party treasurer, about the roles that candidates for lieutenant governor would play in the general election.
Carr noted that, given that Republican gubernatorial nominee Brian Kemp was now portraying himself as a friendly Ronald Reagan-type, Geoff Duncan, that party’s candidate for lieutenant governor, would have to become the attack dog.
Sure enough, on Monday morning, the Duncan campaign accused Democratic gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams of attempting to subvert Duncan’s 2016 legislation to allow businesses tax credits for donations to rural hospitals.
From the press release:
"Stacey told me she liked my bill, that it would be effective but that its success could undermine her push for a Medicaid expansion which, I guess, polled well in the Democratic primary," Duncan said. "She offered an amendment to cut the size of the program, then voted against the bill. Weeks later, she disappeared before the vote on final passage."
Abrams voted no on a version of the legislation, but she did not vote on the final Senate version that passed in the final stretch of the legislative session. She indicated she would have opposed it, saying that expanding the Medicaid program is the first step to boosting rural health.
A 2017 Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll showed roughly three-quarters of Georgians support that expansion, which Kemp and other GOP leaders say is too costly in the long run.
From her response:
"This false attack is an attempt to distract from a simple truth: half measures haven't been enough to save our rural hospitals. An overwhelming majority of Georgians support bringing their tax dollars back home by expanding Medicaid, which has a far greater return on investment and will actually support rural communities. It is time for our leaders to choose common sense over ideology to give our hospitals the resources they desperately need to stay open."
The rural hospital tax credit advocated by Duncan and other Republicans could be undercut by changes to the tax code made last year by Congress – changes that were aimed at high-tax, Democratic states like California and New York. From our AJC colleague James Salzer:
A proposed federal rule could discourage donations to two highly popular Georgia tax credit programs that support struggling rural hospitals and parents who want to send their children to private schools.
The proposed rule by the U.S. Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service would limit or eliminate the federal tax break donors get for giving to such state programs.
The rule comes at a crucial time for the two Georgia programs.
The General Assembly this year raised the annual tax credit limit for donors to the private school scholarship program from $58 million to $100 million. And advocates for rural hospitals were planning to push the General Assembly in 2019 to increase the dollar-for-dollar state tax credit for donating to their program from $60 million a year to $100 million.
