Guest Column: Speaker Glenn Richardson

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Glenn Richardson is Speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives