House Leaders: Cagle Is Thwarting Tax Relief

By Dick Pettys
InsiderAdvantage Georgia

(4/3/08) Top leaders of the Georgia House fired a series of salvos Wednesday at Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, blaming him personally for thwarting tax relief. They said they will continue trying to negotiate but they also refused to extend the session's adjournment past Friday, already scheduled to be the final day.

A Cagle spokeswoman said it was hard to understand how repeated press conferences moved the ball forward.

The salvos began Wednesday morning with House Majority Leader Jerry Keen saying chances for tax relief are "growing dimmer with every minute" following Cagle's refusal the previous night to consider the latest House offer.

Just the day before, the House tried a new gambit to shake something lose, sending the Senate revised bills to both cut the tag tax, as the House originally proposed, and to phase-in a 10 percent cut in income tax rates, as the Senate proposed.

A few hours later, however, Cagle ruled one of the amended bills not germane, and the Senate voted unanimously to strip the House amendments off the second bill.

"I think we all know what went on yesterday," Keen said at a morning news conference.

"The lieutenant governor make it very clear that he personally is going to stop any vote on a car tax bill in the state of Georgia this year ... I am convinced that measure would've passed and passed overwhelmingly on the floor of the Senate yesterday and today we would have been in conference committee working out the details to deliver to the citizens of Georgia when they need it most the largest and most comprehensive tax cut in the history of this state."

Later, Richardson led the House in rejecting the Senate changes, insisted on the appointment of a conference committee and fired off his own message to Cagle:

"I assure you it is constitutional and it is germane, and I'll assure you one more thing, Mister Lieutenant Governor. If you will call it for a vote, the senators of the state of Georgia are ready, willing and able to vote to give this tax relief to Georgians. And there's only one person left in this building - that's in this country today - that's opposing HR 1246, and that person denied this an opportunity to be voted on yesterday. It's time to quite playing games."

Cagle's spokeswoman, Jaillene Hunter, responded: “It’s difficult to understand how Georgia families benefit from repeated press conferences where House leaders attack the Governor, the Lt. Governor, the State Senate and local elected officials. We continue to hope the House leadership will change course and agree to negotiate our differences on tax reform, so that we can pass meaningful legislation. We are not going to waste the two days we have left attacking our fellow Republicans.”

The new ploy began Tuesday afernoon with Richardson denouncing the Senate for playing games over tax relief and then sending them an offer he said would show if they meant business: a $1.5 billion tax cut that included not only his proposed elimination of the car tag tax in Georgia but Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle's proposal to cut income tax rates by 10 percent.

Toward that end, he got the House to send the two tax bills at play in this fight back to the Senate with amendments to accomplish his proposal.

“There can be no further games here," Richardson declared from the House well. "There can be no further amendments. “They can either vote to agree and accept this and it will go on the ballot, or they can disagree. If they disagree, they will have voted against giving Georgians tax reform.”

Cagle responded later by ruling the House amendments to Richardson's own bill not germane and by allowing the Senate to strip off the newly-added House amendments to the second bill. Both now return to the House.

He also issued this statement:

“With four days left, the General Assembly has a choice: the House and Senate can attack each other, or we can get serious about cutting taxes. It is my hope that the leadership of both chambers makes the choice to get serious about cutting taxes. The Senate will support a major tax cut, but we believe we should have the courage to cut state taxes instead of usurping the role of local officials. We also believe tax cuts should be accompanied by spending reductions, as Georgia’s Constitution clearly requires. We stand ready to consider any plan presented by the House to cut state spending and lower state taxes. I believe that if we work together in good faith there is still time to achieve that goal.”

Keen said Wednesday that Cagle's ruling on germaneness was bizarre.

"The lieutenant governor said that because we included the car tax - automobile taxes - in an ad valorem tax bill, it was nongermane. My friends, a car tax is an ad valorem tax. That is what it is. It is in the same code section ... I don't know how much more relevant it can be."

Keen also said, "It doesn't make anyone look good or bad. It makes all of us, as Republicans, look like we cannot get our job done, and that's unfortunate - particularly when it's one person that's standing in the way for whatever reasons that he may have."

The measures at issue are HR 1246, Richardson’s original tax relief plan from which the Senate deleted the provision to ax the tag tax and to which the House added it back, and HB 1244, the House-passed bill which the Senate used for its proposal to cut income tax rates by 10 percent.