Mark Lastinger
THOMASVILLE — Republican gubernatorial candidate Eric Johnson said a steady stream of jobs is the key to restoring the flow of state tax revenue that has slowed precipitously in recent months.
Johnson shared his four-point plan to revive Georgia’s economy during a Friday stop at the Times-Enterprise. The state’s unemployment rate is 10.4 percent
“The budget situation we face — whether it be (in) education, higher education or health care — will only be resolved when people are working again,” said Johnson, an architect and former state senator from Savannah.
According to the Georgia Department of Revenue, the amount of money the state took in through various taxes in February was down by $62.2 million from a year ago.
“Putting people back to work is what I focus on when I wake up in the morning until I go to bed at night,” Johnson said
The first leg of Johnson’s jobs platform is centered on building roads and sewage treatment plants.
“We’ve got to get the hard hats back to work,” he said.
Secondly, Johnson said Georgia’s entrepreneurs and small business owners need a boost.
“We’ve got to get some of the regulations out of the way and make it easier for people to start their own company, and provide capital,” he said.
Energy is the third component of Johnson’s jobs plan.
“I want to make Georgia the Southeast energy capital of America. It’s nuclear (power) and drilling (for oil) offshore, but it’s also biomass fuels — using pine trees to make ethanol. We’re already exporting wood pellets to Europe to replace coal,” he said.
Education reform is the final piece of the jobs puzzle, Johnson added.
“Good schools equal good jobs,” he said.
Despite its importance, education can’t be spared from budget cuts Johnson said.
“Education represents 55 percent of the budget,” he explained.
Johnson’s budget knife would point at administrators.
“I want to cut out administrative bureaucracy and focus those resources on the core function, which is the classroom — the teachers and equipment that are needed in higher education and K-12 education,” he said, adding he thinks the number of teacher furlough days could be reduced.
Johnson said all Georgia government departments will get back to the basics if he is elected governor.
“Just like families and businesses do, governments have got to cut back,” he said. “We are not going to raise taxes, so we have to make tough decisions. It’s not easy and it will take wisdom, experience and compassion to figure out the core functions of government. We have to make sure they are funded, then move away from programs and areas that government shouldn’t have gotten into but did — with good intentions — when the money was there.”
Johnson espoused using zero-based budgeting and a “back to basics” commission.
“Zero-based budgeting makes every department go back and start from scratch,” Johnson said. “You begin to stack from the ground up what the department’s purposes are. It’s a procedure to force the bureaucracy to go back to ground zero.
“People may criticize the commission, but I think tapping into business leadership that has experienced down-sizing is a good way to do it.”
Johnson predicted that Georgia’s budget problems are going to linger, especially since the stimulus funds the state received last year will soon be gone. He said there is already a gap of close to $3 billion.
“This isn’t the bottom,” he said. “Next year is going to be worse. The good news is that will probably be the bottom, but it will get worse before it gets better.”
As a result, Johnson is especially worried about public safety and higher education in Georgia.
“Everybody can tighten their belts for a couple of years, but at some point you can cause long-term damage,” he said. “Getting resources back to public safety and higher education are two of my priorities.”
