Posted by mattshultz on December 7, 2007
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Posted by mattshultz on December 5, 2007
I want to respond to some points that were made by Speaker Richardson in an article he wrote in Bill Shipp’s Georgia Insider Advantage:
(My responses are in bold italic)
The GREAT Plan and the Truth about Local Control
By Rep. Glenn Richardson
(9/27/07) Those groups opposed to letting you, Georgia’s voters, decide whether you want to eliminate the current property tax system are out in full force across the state, and it’s time for a reality check on who they are and what their agenda is.
We all need to be cautious right from the beginning of this discussion because the Speaker has his own agenda as well. He has made no secret that he plans a run for Governor in 2010 and this legislation is about setting himself up for that race.
The first sentence in a recent story from the Bryan County News read, “While the majority of Georgia property owners have been happy to hear about HR 900, otherwise known as the GREAT Plan (Georgia’s Repeal of Every Ad Valorem Tax), government officials have not.” What a telling statement.
This is part of the problem that I have with how this whole process has been handled. If you ask anyone if they would like to see an end to property taxes they would probably say yes. Local officials have in many cases information the public does not and understand the TRUE results of this change. This has been a marketing and manipulation campaign on a statewide scale.
These “government officials” simply want to keep their power to raise your taxes regardless of whether you can pay them rather than doing what is in the best interest of you, their constituents. The GREAT plan does not take away their taxing ability but rather takes away their ability to continue to raise taxes with no oversight. Even if the officials who raised taxes are voted out of office, those tax increases will never be reversed.
The problem with this statement is that all of this is true for the GREAT plan as well. The difference is that people who do not live in your community will be deciding how much money your local governments recieve and they also will have the power to raise your taxes in Atlanta at some point in the future. How often has sending local authority to the State or Federal government ever turned out to be a positive?
Local officials like to claim we are taking away local control. They believe local control is allowing local governments, year after year, to raise taxes whether or not their constituents can afford it. It most certainly is not. There are few things more essential to the Republican philosophy than maintaining a government close to the people. Local officials are simply playing a word game. I believe local control is letting citizens decide, through a vote, when the system needs to change and letting them decide each and every day at the cash register how much they pay in taxes.
This is just a false premise from the beginning as it relates to both local control and voter power. The Speaker has confused voting with the concept of local accountability. If the community is dissatisfied with how city councils, school boards, and county governments are operating then they can address those concerns with people that live in their community. In the event that the concerns are not addressed then the local community can change policy through the power of the vote (Local control & accountability). Is essence this plan gives you a single opportunity to exercise local control and from that point you are subject to the desires of the state legislature. (controlled largely by the speaker’s office regardless of party)
Additionally, under the GREAT Plan, local governments will still have the authority to raise funds through a sales tax referendum. Taxpayers will have to go to the ballot box and agree that they are willing to pay more in taxes for a service or project. How much more local control can you have?
While this is technically true it becomes practically unpassable with the level of additional sales tax that this plan proposes. The amount of money that would come back to growing communities for capital projects will not be enough to sustain the kind of growth that will be needed.
The GREAT plan guarantees all counties, cities and school districts receive the same amount of revenue they received during fiscal year 2007, plus additions for growth and inflation in years to come. This plan does not mandate how one single penny is spent. I have always believed and still firmly do believe that decision is absolutely best left to the local governments, the governments closest to the people.
This is like the quote attributed to Henry Ford in the early days of the automobile when he said that “You can have any color car you want as long as it is black.” This has flaws all over it and violates a number of key Republican principles in my view. First this plan allows the state to take all of the revenue from cities and counties and hold it at the state level. They will then “decide” how much comes back to each local community. It may or may not be the actual amount of revenue generated by the local community in the first place. This redistribution of wealth has always been something that Republicans have been against and this is a classic example of why it can be so harmful. I think its interesting that he leaves out the likely possibility that what local authorities (especially in growing communities) would actually be doing is deciding who to lay off or what programs to cut while those that created the problem are in Atlanta insulated from the mess that this would create.
In fact, the GREAT Plan expands local governments’ flexibility in using their local SPLOST, LOST, and ELOST revenue by, for the first time, allowing them to spend that revenue on maintenance and operation rather than only on capital projects.
This is just pandering……If you can’t get a SPLOST, LOST or ELOST passed it does not matter.
The Georgia Municipal Association (GMA), Georgia School Board Association (GSBA), and other opponents have wrongly and sometimes purposely misled citizens about what the proposal does. They have been asked to come to the table to help us make this plan the best it can be, and yet they would rather misinform the public than work with the General Assembly to fix their perceived problems.
This plan has changed so many times that informing anyone about the specifics would be difficult at best. My suggestion would be to start with the source of money that the speaker is largely in charge of in the first place the State income tax. Look at the phased elimination of the State income tax which impacts many Georgians much more that property taxes.
Consider this. GMA and GSBA are funded by property taxes. Your city and school board pay dues, with property tax revenue, to these groups to represent them. In turn, GMA and GSBA are using your property tax dollars to lobby against giving you the chance to vote on whether to eliminate property taxes.
There was also a comprehensive Tax Reform study conducted by the State legislature that reccommended a lot of proposals….None of which were the GREAT plan.
Local officials seem not to understand that citizens are fed up and ready for a change. Maybe the real problem with property taxes is not just the tax, but the rate of spending increases by local governments. Since 1996, inflation has risen 28 percent. When adjusted for per capita spending, the state of Georgia’s spending has risen 26 percent. County spending has risen 40 percent, city spending 79 percent, and school board spending an astonishing 98 percent. That is why citizens are frustrated. Their incomes simply cannot keep up with local taxing and spending.
In reality the speaker just helped to defeat his plan in this paragraph alone. In looking at these numbers I am reminded about all of the unfunded mandates that have been placed on schools in particular during the time period outlined. Think about all of the things that counties have had to do as a result of September 11th, 2001. It is no accident that the states spending over that time period is smaller because they usually do not impose mandates on themselves instead they look to local communities for that. Can it really be a good idea for us to allow them to set our budget and dictate how we spend it?
Citizens currently have no control over what they pay in property taxes. Under the GREAT plan, they control what they spend and therefore they control the taxes they pay. It is time for GMA, GSBA and others to stop going around the state misrepresenting the facts and instead to come to the table and be a part of the process as they are elected to do.
The control that local citizens have is access! There are many more elected positions at the local level that determine how property tax money is spent. Voters can call, come to meetings and vote for the majority of the people who are making these decisions. How many times have you gone to Atlanta for a meeting or called to speak to your state legislator? One you lose your access to change then you truly have no LOCAL control.
You deserve a voice. If you don’t like the plan, then by all means, vote against it. If you do, vote for it. It does not get any more local than that.
Real local control comes in the form of access to decision makers and the ability to change them if necessary. Should this pass you will lose just about all access to those who actually set the budget and determine how the money is used in your local community. Local communities will never have enough representation in Atlanta to make up for lost accountability at home. You will lose the ability to vote out of office those who truly impact the bottom line about local taxation. In my view local control means that the people that live in my community for better or worse are more in tune with our needs and not politicians and bureaucrats in Atlanta. Early in our nation’s history we fought over “NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION” and I believe that it is time for everyday Georgians to remember their history and defeat HR 900 so that local communities continue to chart their own future.
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