In an effort to grab headlines and create ear-catching sound bites, some politicians spun the Truth-O-Meter with dubious claims in 2014.
The fact-checking scribes at PolitiFact Georgia found some of these claims had elements of truth but left out critical details.
That’s our definition of Mostly False, and we’ve collected a few of our 2014 favorites below.
A footnote: These were a minority of the some 250 fact checks that PolitiFact Georga undertook in an election year dominated by hard-fought races for governor and an open seat in the U.S. Senate.
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Full versions of our fact checks can be found at www.politifact.com/georgia/.
Michelle Nunn in a television ad Aug. 7: Points of Light is “the world’s largest volunteer organization.”
A reader challenged a claim in a television ad from Michelle Nunn, the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate, that Points of Light is “the world’s largest volunteer organization.”
Nunn took a leave of absence as CEO of the organization started by former President George H. W. Bush to run for the Senate seat ultimately won by Republican David Perdue.
Points of Light mobilizes volunteers through a network of 250 volunteer action centers worldwide, through its programs for youth and national service alumni, and through its partnerships with thousands of companies and nonprofits.
On its website, Points of Light says it had 4 million volunteers worldwide in 2012.
By contrast, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies shows a volunteer force worldwide of about 17 million, including 501,208 in North America. (We got that data by adding up country-by-country data we found on its website.)
In the U.S., the American Heart Association has reported 22 million volunteers, and Muscular Dystrophy Association Inc. has reported 15 million.
Points of Light routinely provides a much more nuanced description of its work, calling itself “the largest organization in the world dedicated to volunteer service.”
We rate the claim as Mostly False.
Nathan Deal in a campaign flier March 5: A “real result” of his first term as governor is Georgia having “the lowest taxes per capita of any state.”
Gov. Nathan Deal took credit in his re-election campaign for Georgia having the “lowest taxes per capita” in the nation based on the latest report from the nonpartisan, Washington-based Tax Foundation. The report put Georgia at 50th out of 50 states, with tax collections averaging $1,639 per person, well below the national average of $2,441 and far below No. 1 Alaska at $7,708 per person.
But the rankings were based on state tax collections for the fiscal year that runs from July 1, 2010, to June 30, 2011. And Deal only became governor Jan. 10, 2011, meaning he was in office less than six months during the period that was the basis for the rankings.
Jen Talaber, a spokeswoman for Deal’s campaign, said the governor deserved the credit for three reasons: One of of his early executive orders put a freeze on the gas tax; he could have adjusted the tax rate or allowed agencies to implement something like a tobacco tax, but did not; and he controlled his revenue estimate in the amended budget for fiscal 2011 to limit state spending and rebuild the state’s reserves, or savings.
“We don’t’ take credit for anything we haven’t done,” Talaber said in an email.
But Norton Francis, a senior research associate with the nonpartisan Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, and Alan Essig, executive director of the left-leaning Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, said Georgia’s ranking as 50th in state tax collections per capita is the result of the tough economy more than anything.
“It had nothing to do with anything the governor did or the General Assembly did,” Essig said. Tax Foundation officials confirmed that Georgia would be ranked 49th with the release of their 2014 report, which is based on data from 2012, Deal’s first full year in office.
The campaign’s overarching point was that Georgia had low per capita taxes under Deal. That is true. But it also had low per capita taxes under his predecessors.
We rated the claim Mostly False.
Truth in Accounting in a report Aug. 4: Each Georgia taxpayer would have to send $5,000 to the treasury to cover the state’s debt.
The nonpartisan think tank Truth in Accounting in Chicago released a study blasting Georgia for carrying a nearly $16 billion debt burden, mostly from unfunded pension and retiree health care liabilities.
It ranked Georgia’s financial condition as the 28th-worst among all states.
“In order to fill this financial hole, each Georgia taxpayer would have to send $5,000 to the state’s treasury,” according to a summary of the study.
Sheila Weinberg, the certified public accountant who founded TIA, thinks the problem lies with Georgia and other states not including long-term pension and retiree health care compensation in the annual budget.
Georgia’s audited financial report shows $2 billion in retirement benefits. But Weinberg claims by adding in those other compensations, the state has more than $14 billion of unfunded retirement programs over the next three decades.
As of 2013, Georgia also adds extra cash to that minimum, amortized over 25 years, to fill the gap.
The state sets aside that money first, before determining the rest of the budget.
It has never failed to do so. The Employees’ Retirement System of Georgia — which covers 60,000 active members and 45,000 retirees — was 71.4 percent funded in 2013.
That puts it just shy of the 72 percent average for the nation’s largest pension funds and among those funds considered well-funded for the future, according to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.
Georgia has been thoughtful about its looming obligations and positioned itself to pay down those debts over time.
For that reason, we rated the claim by Truth in Accounting as Mostly False.
The National Republican Congressional Committee in a campaign ad Sept. 8: “John Barrow voted with Obama 85 percent of the time.”
In this year’s elections, the National Republican Congressional Committee — the House Republicans’ campaign arm — developed ads that emphasized the degree to which vulnerable Democratic incumbents have voted with President Barack Obama.
One of their ads attacked Democratic U.S. Rep. John Barrow of Georgia, who wound up losing to Republican businessman Rick Allen.
The ad said Barrow voted with Obama 85 percent of the time. A footnote said it was based on a “Congressional Quarterly 2009 vote analysis.”
We had a hunch that the NRCC might have ignored a couple of years with lower percentages. It turns out we were right.
In 2010, according to the same CQ study, Barrow voted with Obama 83 percent of the time. But that dropped to 59 percent in 2011 and fell even further to 28 percent in 2012 and 35 percent in 2013.
The committee statement contains some element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression, so we rated it Mostly False.
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