Deal to face many thorny issues as governor

Governor-elect Nathan Deal will have no shortage of challenges to tackle when he takes office in January.

He will be moving into the Governor’s Mansion amid persistent job losses, furloughs for public school teachers, traffic gridlock, a decades-old water war with Alabama and Florida, and concerns about illegal immigration.

Here are some of the top issues that will confront him as governor:

Jobs: Georgia’s unemployment rate is stuck at a painful 10 percent. Tens of thousands of Georgians are applying for unemployment benefits monthly.

Deal has said Georgia needs to grow its way out of this problem. He campaigned on making Georgia more attractive to businesses by cutting the state’s corporate income tax rate. He also wants to exempt small-business startups from paying any corporate income taxes their first 10 years in business. His goal: give Georgia a competitive edge over other states.

But Georgia is now facing a projected budget shortfall for the next fiscal year that could reach $1.8 billion and make it difficult for Deal to do everything he wants.

Education: Georgia’s public schools have suffered from deep funding cuts amid the struggling economy. Those cuts have put teachers out of work, furloughed others and boosted class sizes. Georgia's SAT scores, meanwhile, rank 48th out of 50 states and the District of Columbia.

“The education of Georgians is the ‘seed corn’ for the future economic viability of our state and the source of its attractiveness to businesses that would consider relocating here,” said Tim Callahan, spokesman for the Professional Association of Georgia Educators. “To continue to ignore education -- the engine of our future economy – will prolong our economic decline.”

Deal has said he will review the state’s education funding formula for public schools and concentrate on preserving teacher positions. He also supports offering vocational education and greater flexibility for school systems, saying charter schools and career academics have proven effective.

Transportation: The Atlanta area’s traffic congestion ranks the third-worst in the nation, according to the Texas Transportation Institute. That congestion is not only making life rotten for commuters. It is choking the region’s economy, according to experts.

“Transportation has continually been one of the most important issues facing Georgia and the Atlanta region, both to the public and to the business community,” said Michael Meyer, a civil engineering professor and director of the Georgia Transportation Institute at Georgia Tech. “Transportation needs to be at or near the top of the list of the incoming governor.”

Deal has said he supports a 2012 referendum that will ask voters to raise the sales tax they pay to help fund specific transportation projects. He wants to improve the state’s east-west corridors. And he has talked about some possible rail projects.

Water: The clock is ticking in Georgia’s long-running dispute with Alabama and Florida. A federal judge ruled last year that Georgia has little right to Lake Lanier, a federal reservoir that is the main source of the Atlanta region's drinking water. The judge has given the states and Congress until July of 2012 to reach a compromise before restricting access to the lake to levels from the mid-1970s.

"Given the looming 2012 deadline imposed by a federal judge for the states to reach a water sharing agreement, resolution of the tri-state water conflict should be the highest priority for Gov. Deal during his first months in office," said Sally Bethea, executive director of the Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, a Georgia water protection group.

Deal has said Georgia should be given credit for passing legislation to conserve more water. And on Wednesday, he told reporters he would reach out to his counterparts in Alabama in Florida so they could work at a resolution.

“Fortunately, we are going to have two Republican governors to work with in those two states,” he said, “and that ought to be a little bit of advantage, quite frankly.”

Illegal Immigration: This has long been a big issue under the Gold Dome. But it is poised to become an even bigger deal next year, when the General Assembly session starts. A Republican-controlled legislative panel is studying Arizona’s recent crackdown on illegal immigration and hopes to produce its own comprehensive immigration bill by January.