Richardson Lays Out Proposals To Fund Trauma Care System, Create Separate Indigent Defense System In Capital Cases

By Dick Pettys
InsiderAdvantage Georgia

(12/7/07) You’ll be free from the ad valorem tax on your car if Speaker Glenn Richardson’s GREAT plan passes the Legislature and wins voter approval - but you could pick up a new $10 tag renewal fee to pay for trauma care.

That’s the word from the Speaker Thursday as he unveiled a new statewide trauma care funding formula he said he’s discussed with the governor and believes he will support.

Also during an extended sit-down with reporters, he said:

* Cash-strapped Grady hospital will be a key beneficiary of the trauma money, but he wants to see the hospital convert to nonprofit governance. Will the Legislature pull the trigger on a bill to force them into that position? “They’ve got a little bit more time,” he said.

* He wants to split capital cases out of the public defenders office and create a new entity to handle them. That would be coupled with limits on how much the state is willing to spend to defend poor people accused of crimes for which the death penalty could be imposed.

* He’s not certain whether the latest changes to his GREAT plan have won him new allies among cities and counties or not, but likely they haven’t. Entrenched interests always oppose change, he said.

* There is one new wrinkle to the GREAT plan. Only the state's 4 percent sales tax would be applied to consumer services and lottery ticket sales if the proposal clears the Legislature and wins voter approval. Local option sales taxes would not be applied.

* He sees no reason to enact new hate crime legislation to replace the law overturned by the Georgia Supreme Court.

* He still believes a statewide fix is the best approach to addressing the state’s transportation needs. “I have not yet subscribed to a regional approach.”

Richardson, who earlier proposed an extra fee on 911 calls to fund a statewide trauma network, said he met with Perdue earlier this week. “We had a very good conversation where we talked about combining some of his efforts and my efforts together to include a funding mechanism that would be an annual registration fee on a car of about $10 per car and a combination with what he has proposed - an extra $100 add-on for speeds over - I think it’s 85 mph - and 75 mph on two-lanes.”

“We had a good, healthy conversation about that and I intend to go forward ... Grady Hospital will get a huge part of that to fund trauma care in this state. The other divisions of the money, I’m going to let the trauma care commission give the suggestions of how that goes out ... but I anticipate that we will have an annual funding mechanism for that.”

The tag fee would generate about $85 million, he said. The add-on fines would be another $8 to $10 million. A statewide trauma network has been estimated to require upwards of $100 million.

As far as adding a new fee while eliminating the tag tax, Richardson said his plan never did away with annual car registration and emissions checks. “You’ll still have to go get your tag on your birthday. It just won’t be $200, $300, $400, $500 bill - it’ll be whatever the tag fee is plus the registration fee plus $10.”

He said most trauma originates on the highways. “We’ve been looking for a source that made sense ... I think that one makes the most sense to just attach it to the car ...”

q. Does Grady get the money whether or not it converts to a nonprofit status?
a. “Well, I would prefer they have a different governance at that hospital that focused on health care and I believe that a nonprofit-based system would be a really good step in that direction to get it done.”

q. Are you going to put in legislation that would do this - the Grady stuff - or is that going to be separate?
a. Let’s give them a chance to help themselves. They’ve got a little bit more time to help themselves before we have to start putting it out on pieces of paper here from the Gold Dome.”

Richardson, asked about funding problems for public defenders, said, “We’re going to do something about public defenders but I don’t think it’s as easy as just putting more money in there. We had a knee-jerk reaction when we put that in, and we’ve proven that there were problems with the old system and there’s problems with the new system ...

“One of the things we need to address very quickly - I’ll have legislation introduced by someone that will propose to take capital crimes out of the indigent defense system and treat them as a separate class with a separate funding mechanism by the state, with local participation and caps on the amounts the state will pay; with rules that elected judges will be deciding whether or not to expend money and limiting the amount of attorneys that are put into a particular case that the state will pay for.”

That, of course, is a reaction to the amount of money the state has been required to spend for the defense of accused courthouse shooter Brian Nichols by a retired superior court judge.

There’s been some speculation on the blogs and elsewhere that the Speaker’s latest revision to his GREAT plan may help him divide and perhaps conquer the array of public entities that have been massed against it.

His initial proposal was to eliminate all property taxes and replace them with an expanded sales tax on services.

The new plan calls for eliminating just the school portion of the property tax on homesteads, replacing it with an expanded sales tax on consumer sales and lottery ticket sales and re-establishing the statewide sales tax on groceries. Coupled with that is a second constitutional amendment to prevent property tax assessments from increasing by more than 1 percent a year, and restricting the growth of local government spending to the rate of inflation plus one percent. Subsequent steps to replace the property taxes levied by cities and counties could come later, he has said.

“I have no idea,” he said. “I really wish I knew. I hope, but no, I don’t think so. I think anytime you propose something, I think they see the beginning of the end - those that invest heavily in this property tax system. I can only imagine what it was like when the gas-powered engine started coming out - the people who manufactured wagons and how badly they did not want those automobiles on the road. ‘My God, it will put us out of business. What will we do with all those employees that we’ve got that make those wagons and wagon wheels?” And that’s the mentality that’s present right now with the property tax - what in the world will we do if we don’t charge property taxes.”

But Richardson did reveal one new detail of the plan. The sales tax on consumer services and lottery ticket sales will only be applied at the 4 percent level, to reflect the statewide sales tax. Local option sales taxes won't apply. "I'm only putting the state tax on there. The locals wanted us to leave them alone as much as possible," he said.

On hate crime laws, Richardson said: “I haven’t seen a dramatic change in crime levels since we adopted it or since the Supreme Court tossed it out. I see no reason to address it. I think my record was pretty clear on that. I never have understood treating crimes with different punishments because of the person against whom you committed it or the reasons for the same. I always say an assault’s an assault, whether you do it with bias, prejudice or whatever it is. So I see no reason in addressing it.”

On transportation: “I still think transportation solutions should be statewide. I have not yet subscribed to a regional approach to solving transportation. I think it’s a statewide problem; it needs a statewide solution. I’m waiting on the joint study committee to give me recommendations as to what to do ... and I intend to follow what they put out there and try it.”

There have been competing proposals for a statewide sales tax to fund transportation needs or a regional approach that would allow local governments to band together across jurisdictional problems to address local needs.