Senate President Pro Tem David Shafer, R-Duluth, took the reins of his chamber this year as part of a leadership change to unite a fractured Republican majority. Coming off a successful Crossover Day, Shafer sat down with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Friday to talk about how the change has worked so far, his long-term push to change the state’s tax laws and what to expect with historic ethics legislation proposed in the General Assembly this year.
On the session so far:
“I think things are moving along very well. We’ve had a lower volume of bills, but I think we’ve done a better job of perfecting legislation in committee. You always have situations when some bills are more important than others, but I think we’ve been able to focus on issues that are important to Georgians in their everyday lives.”
On ethics, the Senate’s self-imposed $100 gift cap and House Bill 142, which, despite a general ban on lobbyists’ gifts to lawmakers, has a number of loopholes and would also force volunteer advocates to register just like high-powered paid lobbyists:
“Among the most important things we did was on the very first day of the session, when (the Senate) enacted a rule to limit lobbyists’ gifts to $100. It’s cut lobbyists’ spending in half. It’s changed the culture here. It’s changed the culture of the Legislature.
“We’ve been focused on Senate bills, but now that Crossover Day is behind us, we’ll turn immediately to committee hearings on the House ethics bill. A zero limit is fine with me. I think we have to take a close look at their bill, but that’s why we have a committee process. I have some concern about how they have defined ‘lobbyist.’ In my mind, lobbyist regulations should capture the person who’s paid to engage in lobbying as their profession, as opposed to citizens expressing their views about issues before the General Assembly. I think we have to look carefully at the language of the House bill. We shouldn’t intentionally or unintentionally put up barriers to citizens expressing their views. The First Amendment guarantees every citizen a constitutional right to petition their government for redress of their grievances. I don’t know that we should make that subject to paying a fee. It’s clearly appropriate for us to regulate the activities of those whose job it is to influence the work of government.
“Sine Die (the last legislative day of this year’s session) is only a couple of weeks away. I would hope we could reach some agreement by the end of this session.”
On his push to eliminate Georgia’s income tax, including two proposed changes to the state constitution that may be on the ballot as soon as next year:
“One constitutional amendment puts a hard cap on the income tax rate at 6 percent — the General Assembly couldn’t raise it above 6 percent. The other constitutional amendment puts a soft cap on the sales tax, at 4 percent. And it would prevent the General Assembly from raising the sales tax above 4 percent except for infrastructure approved by referendum — so it would potentially allow another attempt at T-SPLOST (transportation funding via a sales tax, which failed last year in metro Atlanta) — or for income tax relief.
“It’s designed to clear a path for us to move from taxing productivity to taxing consumption and eventually phasing the income tax out of existence. Thirty-eight members of the Senate co-sponsored the income tax limitation. Almost that many sponsored the sales tax limitation. We could have passed it out of the Senate this year, but I think it’s more important that we have a conversation and build support for this idea. Because ultimately it’s going to have to be approved by the voters anyway. I would like to see it on the 2014 ballot.”
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