A Little Cold Water From Governor On Hopes This Year For Additional Transportation Funding

By Dick Pettys
InsiderAdvantage Georgia

(1/10/07) Gov. Sonny Perdue seemed to throw some cold water Wednesday on transportation advocates’ hopes for new taxing authority in ’08 to fund a backlog of road and other needs, saying, “I think I want to see us get our act together before we start burdening people with more taxes.”

He commented at the statehouse at the end of the first day’s GOP unity tour that featured Perdue, Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle and House Majority Leader Jerry Keen, subbing for Speaker Glenn Richardson, who was in court. The tour continues to more cities on Thursday.

The talk, in general, was of broad goals they all agree on, but Keen, when asked if the House still plans to try to override some of Perdue’s vetoes from last year, ruled nothing in or out.

“As far as anything that will happen the first day or week, no decisions have been made yet. As far as any actions about any veto overrides, that’ll be something that, as we come back in Monday, the leadership will sit down, certainly talk to our caucus members and go from there,” he said.

And Perdue, while avoiding rhetorical flourishes or fighting words, made it clear he still likes his tax proposals better than Richardson’s GREAT plan. In fact, he also said he may spring one or two tax-cutting surprises next week when the Legislature convenes.

Still, the fact that all three top state officials were willing to engage in a unity fly-around suggests better communications now than last year between the three. And in a session with a lot to do amid the occasional distractions of a presidential campaign and legislative elections coming up next summer, that’s got to help - at least some.

On transportation, Perdue said the transportation department, under new Commissioner Gena Abraham, is on track to dig itself out of the past and get better, smarter control over what it is doing and how it does things.

“I’m a value buyer, for myself, my business but I’m also a value buyer for the state. Many times, if I’m not doing something well, more money’s not necessarily the answer. I believe we have a need for more resources but I think we also have to get our house in order to make sure we can handle more resources efficiently and effectively,” he said.

He also said he believes public-private partnerships represent good opportunities for the state. “I think Georgia is a blue chip stock in which to invest and I would like to see us explore concession opportunities where much of that burden would not be put on taxpayers, either voluntarily or involuntarily, to fund.”

The veto threat had its origin in a dispute last year between Perdue and House leaders over a tax giveback they proposed as a way to resolve a budget impasse with the Senate. Ultimately, he vetoed the budget and an angry House almost immediately voted to override, but Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, citing a procedural technicality, refused to call the override motion for a vote in the upper chamber. Perdue later “un-vetoed” the budget, but line-itemed out the tax cut. A few weeks later, he used the line-item veto again to eliminate a number of projects in the “big” budget bill, as well as to reject a number of other pieces of legislation.

While Keen was noncommittal about veto overrides, Perdue said in answer to a specific question on the tax giveback idea, “I think we’re over that. I want to give the money back by taxing less ... Frankly, when you total it up, we’ve seen over $2 billion in tax relief in the period of time of our administration. I think we can continue to move incrementally in that and continue to right-size government. We don’t want to take any more than is needed, but you can’t flip-flop back and forth. You’ve got to have a consistent program going forward.”

The Speaker’s GREAT plan would eliminate ad valorem school taxes and auto taxes, replacing the lost revenue by expanding the sales tax to cover consumer services which are not now taxed. While cities and counties could continue to levy property taxes, assessment growth would be limited to 1 percent per year, and local spending would be limited to 1 percent plus inflation.

Perdue has said before he prefers the income tax exemption he has proposed for seniors, and reiterated that position at the news conference.

But he also sounded somewhat sympathetic to the GREAT plan’s second goal of reining-in local government spending.

“I think it’s a very complex issue. I also have some concerns about the growth of local government ... When we were in our recession years and our budgets were going down, we continued to see the growth of local government, and we’ve seen local government growth with budget and f-t-e counts and employee costs and size of budgets grow significantly more than the state government has over these five years.

“I think that concerns all of us, but as Republicans we also understand the principle of local control, and what we would like to see is some mitigation and some moderation in the growth of local governments. I would prefer them voluntarily limiting that growth, but I know there’s a lot of interest in the General Assembly and we could very well see some efforts to help them voluntarily limit that growth this year.”

The Democratic Party panned the unity tour as a taxpayer-funded publicity stunt. Democratic Party Chairman Jane Kidd called it “just a great big campaign ad for the Georgia GOP, and the taxpayers are footing the bill. It’s this kind of government waste that is putting Georgia in a hole.”