Georgia public school systems have not been treated well for the past several years, and the governor’s budget for this year and next promise to finish compromising what is left of the state’s Quality Basic Education (QBE) law. What started as “austerity” cuts years ago has ballooned into draconian cuts, teacher furloughs and constant threats of more reductions. Not only has public education been targeted, but practically all state agencies that serve the public have been put on the chopping block. As a state, we have been set back at least a generation in the commitment we have made through the years to make Georgia a better place to live and raise families.
I am aware of the 2008 economic meltdown and the struggle we are now in to come back. However, the governor and legislature’s answer to this comeback is simply cut, cut, cut until there is nothing left. Some cuts are always part of government budgets as programs are evaluated constantly, but the real answer to our current problem is the identification of revenue to fill the budget holes. We should start with a large scale effort to make Georgia’s tax laws better. Now we have a mishmash of income tax without graduated rates for wealthy taxpayers, a regressive (and unreliable) sales tax with too many exemptions, inadequate taxes on alcohol and tobacco, and local property taxes full of exemptions that are completely insane. And to top all this, we heard lately what a sloppy job the Georgia Revenue Department does in collecting taxes- — perhaps missing collections of $1 billion or more over time.
A good recent example of our crazy tax laws is Amendment 1, ratified in the 2008 general election after approval in the legislature by HR1276 and HB1211. This amendment was driven by powerful timber interests and sets aside for conservation purposes large tracts of forest, taxed at significantly lower values, with the primary beneficiaries those who own tracts of more than 2,000 acres. HB1211 included language to compensate school systems and local governments for most of their property tax revenue lost from these partial exemptions. However, the governor has put nothing in his FY2010 and 2011 budgets for this reimbursement, so at this time school systems and local governments will receive zero from the state for their losses. At this time, the legislature should find a way to mitigate some of this damage by modifying the law to value these tracts as close as possible to fair market value, and our lawmakers should do this now. Amendment 1 was put forth by powerful lobbying interests in 2008 as a good thing for the state, and it has turned out to be a disaster.
Georgia is ripe for a rewrite of tax laws. If we had better tax laws today, our state leaders would be facing smaller budget problems because our revenue would not be in such scarce supply. I urge the governor and legislature to stop cutting and start evaluating our tax code — quickly.
Grant Plymel
Thomasville
