Walter C. Jones:

Tax Reform Plan Under Fire From Right And Left

By Walter C. Jones
Morris News Service

(3/3/08) Lawmakers may finally vote Wednesday or Thursday on House Speaker Glenn Richardson's tax-swap plan, meaning some serious logrolling will be occurring over the next few days.

Richardson's plan would end residential property taxes that go for education and car taxes, but replace them by expanding the statewide sales tax to include food, lottery tickets and services. It would also cap how fast local education spending could increase.

Only 75 of the 107 Republicans in the House are ready to vote for it, according to reports relayed by House Democratic Caucus Chairman Calvin Smyre of Columbus. That number may be on the high side, according to one Republican committee chairman.

For months, the plan has been attacked by school boards who don't want to give up any control on spending -- and by city and county commissioners who figure Richardson will make good on his promise to restrict their spending next.

Two new camps chimed in with their opposition last Thursday, the Democrats and the Americans for Tax Reform.

As a constitutional amendment, the plan can't succeed without some bipartisan support to reach the 120 House votes required for a two-thirds majority.

Republicans say they were told their leadership expects about 40 Democrats to vote for the plan -- a contention the press conference was designed to demolish.

But it could be a valid figure since fewer than half the Democrats showed up at the press conference, and even Smyre conceded counting Democratic votes is difficult because they tend to keep changing.

At the press conference, the Democrats displayed placards with "175" in giant red type and distributed a list of 175 services that would be taxed under the proposal.

"The Republican tax plan puts 175 new taxes on Georgians, from grits to putting you in the grave," said House Democratic Leader DuBose Porter of Dublin.

Even though the plan is designed to be revenue neutral to the state, its impact on individual taxpayers probably won't be. Property owners are more likely to benefit while renters could pay more, an equation every legislator has certainly already calculated in gauging its probable impact for his own district.

Porter said revenue neutrality doesn't allow Republicans to escape the charge of new taxes -- especially since the old taxes aren't being wiped off the books where they could never be raised again.

Democrats also hope to block taxing food, something they say will cause a greater burden on lower-income Georgians, especially those who won't go to the bother of applying for the rebate included in the plan as a way to mitigate that situation.

After the press conference, House leaders issued their own statements.

House Republican Leader Jerry Keen of St. Simons Island, blasted Democrats for trying to prevent the constitutional amendment from showing up on the November ballot.

"Georgians deserve the chance to have their voice heard on the important issue of reforming our tax system," he said.

And Republican Whip Barry Fleming of Harlem, who is running for Congress, offered a comparison.

"Just like the Democrats in Washington, Democrats in Georgia are refusing to give tax relief to their constituents," he said.

The bigger blow to the proposal originally dubbed the GREAT Plan may have come from the Americans for Tax Reform, a Washington-based advocacy group run by fiscal hawk Grover Norquist. The significance is that many of the most conservative legislators -- and Republican activists -- depend on Norquist to determine the ideological purity of fiscal proposals and to issue report cards around election time of politicians who are tax cutters or tax boosters.

Norquist's opinion was delivered to every legislator, and it's likely to affect some lawmakers who would ordinarily be counted as part of Richardson's base in the House.

"This plan, which has been modified numerous times, is now being fast-tracked with little room for legislators to analyze or fully digest the consequences to taxpayers," Norquist wrote. "This is not the way to set tax policy. Barring any possibility for further review, which would help clarify certain issues and allow signers of the Taxpayer Protection Pledge to get certainty that this is in fact not a tax increase, ATR urges you to vote no on the GREAT plan."

Richardson is expected to continue changing provisions in his bill to try to win votes, such as forgoing the tax on services, which would be difficult to administer any way.

House Republicans for and those against the plan predict that Richardson's persuasion techniques will be forceful.

The vote is timed to come to a vote before the budget does, allowing time to add or subtract pet projects depending on how lawmakers vote. It also comes at a point when the speaker could stall or accelerate a number of individual bills by legislators pretty much on his whim.

His threats won't be taken lightly after how he punished four House Republicans earlier this session for voting against his wishes on the election of a member of the Department of Transportation board. He stripped them of their committee assignments and any minor leadership posts they held.

The public isn't likely to ever know the total costs for the promises, threats, killed bills and lost personal prestige that will be racked up in the coming week. The final vote tally will only offer a glimpse.