A resolution that would let voters decide whether Georgia should cap state spending at any previous year’s highest budget passed the state Senate 42-7 Thursday.
Two attempts at similar legislation in previous years by Senate Majority Leader Chip Rogers, R-Woodstock, died in the House, which controls budgeting.
"This helps us to budget better in the lean years," Rogers said about his Senate Resolution 20.
"If given a chance to vote on this, the voters will vote in the affirmative, I'm certain of that," he said.
He said he has talked to counterparts in the House and believes he will get support there given the economic atmosphere.
The resolution would require voters to approve a constitutional amendment, limiting Georgia's spending to its previous high budget of about $21 billion. Surplus state taxes over the cap would have to be spent in schools with increased enrollment or put in the state shortfall fund. If the shortfall fund reaches 15 percent of the yearly budget, state taxes would be ratcheted down one-quarter percent.
If the bill became law, the issue would go to voters in 2012.
Sen. Nan Orrock, D-Atlanta, spoke against the resolution, noting Colorado enacted a similar law in 2002, but voters led by a Republican governor chose to suspend it in 2005.
Proponents claim it helped Colorado become one of the faster growing and economically viable states in the country in the early 2000s.
But according to one study of the law's effects, Colorado's spending on education, higher education, roads and services dropped, causing the state to fall in categories such as number of children who got their vaccinations from 24th in the nation to 50th.
Orrock noted that Georgia is already one of the lowest in the nation in state taxes collected per capita.
In 2008, Georgia ranked 45th lowest in the nation in state taxes collected, according to the 2010 Special Council on Tax Reform and Fairness for Georgia.
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