Going Down To The Wire On A Wing And A Prayer

By Dick Pettys
InsiderAdvantage Georgia

(4/4/08) It looks like they'll be winging it today as Georgia lawmakers try to wrap up their 2008 session, still struggling after all this time to find some kind of tax plan they can put on the ballot that will make voters happy and perhaps ramp-up voter turnout in November.

There doesn't seem to be any script, no end-game plan. A lot of issues are all bundled-up together, as is usually the case as the sine die hour approaches. It just seems that there are more big issues entwined this time than in the past.

And while it hasn't been as long as last year's interminable session, just about anyone you ask in the chambers, in the corridors or in the press suite will say it seems like it's been much, much longer.

The issue with which this session began - tax relief - has come down to the final hours, with no certainty what will happen.

Meshed with that is a separate bill that would let voters decide whether to employ an additional penny sales tax to address local road needs.

Details of the tax cut can't be resolved without an agreement between House Speaker Glenn Richardson, who wields the gavel in the House, and Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, who presides over the Senate. Each has his own tax proposal and each is keenly aware that in the constant tension between the House and Senate, to cave-in is to lose face and, thus, power.

There's also an absent Gov. Sonny Perdue to be taken into consideration. He's currently in China but he'll be back this weekend, and he's made it clear he doesn't like either tax cut. If they ultimately pass something and it turns out to be a constitutional amendment, he can't veto that. But he can veto anything that's in the form of a bill.

The other issue is the road tax, which an impressive array of business and industry groups has united to try to pass. Perdue doesn't like that, either, we think, although there were indications on Thursday there might be some softening of his position.

A tax for trauma care also has gotten caught up in this mix.

We'll get to those details in a bit.

Spicing-up the last day will be debates over the gun bill (no, after two years, it's still not settled), the question of providing vouchers to students in failing schools and whether to relax certificate of need rules (another two-year-old issue).

Also requiring last-day action is the budget for the year beginning July 1. Assuming House-Senate negotiators put a compromise on the floors of both chambers, approval of the bill will come just a day after the latest revenue report produced some more unwelcome news about the economy.

If the governor isn't happy with the work product, he's shown no reluctance in the past to freely wield a line-item veto pen, as lawmakers well know.

The session, in fact, opened with the House voting to override 12 of Perdue's vetoes from last year, but the Senate would only go along with one of them. That did nothing to improve House-Senate relations, of course, and they've only worsened in the following weeks.

There's been a lot of trash-talk throughout the session, mostly from a House infuriated with the Senate. But the Senate's engaged in some of it, too. For example, when Richardson failed in a high-profile bid to dump a DOT board member who voted against his candidate for the DOT commissioner's job, Cagle said this: "I think in this business you win some and you lose some. And I don't know anything that he's won yet."

But Richardson did manage to unify the House behind his tax proposal, after losing an initial vote and then significantly modifying it in order to take his Republicans off the hook with their local officials back home.

In the Senate, Cagle continued to exert the steady hand that, in the past two years, has turned the Senate from a bickering, fiercely partisan body into a collegial institution.

Now, for the details on the tax plans:

When we left the statehouse just before 8 p.m. last night, nothing was settled.

Senate President Pro Tem Eric Johnson had told reporters that unless lawmakers could agree upon a tax relief plan, it was probably curtains for the road tax and for the trauma-funding fee. Cagle chimed in a bit later, saying that to reach an agreement on tax cuts, there had to be an agreement on spending cuts.

"A tax cut has to be matched with spending reductions," Cagle told reporters. "I think it's hard to sell a tax cut when you're not willing to cut spending, either."

House Speaker Pro Tem Mark Burkhalter shot back in a statement he issued later: “The members of the Georgia State Senate want to vote on tax cuts, but unfortunately, the lieutenant governor has been able to find any number of reasons not to let them vote to eliminate the tag tax. The best way to cut spending is to cut state revenue by lowering taxes. The House has now voted three times for tax cuts, and we are ready to vote again.”

Why are the tax measures enmeshed? Well, it's an election year. But there's also fear that without putting a tax cut or tax reform measure on the ballot, voters will reject the sales tax increase.

As we said: there's no script and no apparent plan for an end-game. This could be a wild and wooly finish.