I am pleased as punch that we have a Republican governor in the capital of Georgia. I know he’s been super-busy on trying to wrangle a budget and a government that’s been run by a dictator for the past 4 years.

So, as long as he understands that none of the following is criticism of his plan and his ideas, and these are just other ideas, I hope to continue on good terms with Governor Perdue.

Ethics Revisions Overlooked

Item #1: According to the Georgia Constitution, Section IV (Organization and Procedure of the General Assembly), Paragraph IX, the Members of our State Legislature have this jewel protecting them:

“The members of both houses shall be free from arrest during sessions of the General Assembly, or committee meetings thereof, and in going thereto or returning there from, except for treason, felony, or breach of the peace. No member shall be liable to answer in any other place for anything spoken in either house or in any committee meeting of either house.”

Does everyone understand what this says? This means that for the 40 business days (including the weekends in-between) that the legislature is in Session, state representatives and state senators are all exempt from following any laws where the penalty is a misdemeanor.

Speeding to your mistress/boyfriend’s apartment for dinner and got caught by a State Patrol police officer? “No problem, Mr./Ms. State Rep/Senator. You just go on your way and allow me to arrest and harass some common citizen..."

Furthermore, the 2nd sentence of Paragraph IX basically says that any Member can say anything they damn well please, whether slander or an outright lie, and not be charged with anything while they are doing the all-important job of figuring out how to spend your tax dollars.

If the procedure for overturning this constitutional amendment is to stick it on the ballot for repeal, then so be it. Stick it on the same ballot that will have the flag issue on it. Make sure you word the ballot question something like this: “Should the Georgia Constitution be amended to require privileged public officials to follow the same laws at all times that other residents of Georgia are required to follow?” A majority of “Yes” choices would repeal Paragraph IX and put an end to such “above-the-law” thinking by the Legislature.

Item #2: Political Action Committees (“PACs”) and “Associations.” Our state ethics law basically says a PAC (or an Association) can collect as much money as it wants, spend it anyway it wants, and as long as it does not contribute more than $5000 to a political candidate, it does not have to disclose how it gets funded, nor what it does with the funds. An association appears to be exempt from following any ethics laws.

Take the example of the association that cropped-up in the last cycle as “Georgians for Better Transportation.” It still exists, by the way. Their Website, GBTNet.com states that it “is a non-profit, statewide association of individuals, companies and organizations concerned with multi-modal transportation and its critical value to Georgia's economic health.” Kind of a mouthful, eh?

During the Republican Primary, GBT ran a lobbying/phone call effort against Bill Byrne. The fact that it backfired on GBT is irrelevant because the callers who were re-directed to the Byrne campaign were told the facts about Byrne’s position on the Northern Arc.

But, the insidious thing about GBT is that it contributed $5000 to Governor Barnes and escaped the disclosure requirements of the state’s ethics laws (the law specifies “more than $5000”). Enough of these hidden political schemes.

If you’re going to form an organization, collect funds, and hire a lobbyist to act as your agent, and you participate in any way within the political realm on an issue, you should be required to disclose exactly how you are being funded and how are you spending the money. Period. No exemptions. No exceptions.

And, the disclosure laws should be revised to require every such organization to file, not only if they contribute any amount to a candidate, but also file annual reports showing what they have done in the past year with regards to collecting funds and disbursing funds. They don’t file, they lose their PAC registration and ability to operate. Let’s have a little accountability here, shall we?

I have no problem with raising contribution limits. I would have no problem with having unlimited amounts of contributions as long as everyone fully disclosed sources and disbursements. And, these PACs and associations are unregulated political animals with a huge potential for serious abuse of the political system.

Item #3: State Agency Lobbyists. Did you know that nearly every state agency hires or pays an employee for lobbying duties during the General Assembly? What does this mean?

It means that our tax dollars are being paid to someone whose job it is to extract more tax dollars out of the budget and send them to his/her “client.” Sounds a bit kinky, doesn’t it? Yeah, well, government is known to be one giant cluster-something and this is one of the reasons why.

I hope I don’t have to spend too much word-space telling the Governor and the Republican legislators exactly why this is BS, but, this practice by state agencies and courts (yes, courts have lobbyists as well…just ask Cathy Cox who her husband lobbies for) is government manure to the Nth degree.

Prohibit it. Period. State agencies don’t have the right to “lobby” for funds. They should take what the legislature gives them and be happy with it. Why should taxpayers pay anyone to cause the demand for our tax dollars to increase?

Budget Items Overlooked

Item #1: So, the Governor recommends increasing taxes on alcohol and tobacco products. Great. But, if we want to increase the revenue generated by alcohol sales, isn’t it about time that we stopped this ridiculous ban on selling alcohol on Sunday through retail channels?

I say “retail channels” because you can get alcohol on Sunday if you want to go to a restaurant or bar and order it by the drink, but you cannot buy a six-pack from Kroger or a bottle of Bacardi from the local liquor store.

Seems to us that it would actually make our roads safer if we allowed Joe-Cool to buy his bottle of rum from the liquor store and take it home for Superbowl Sunday and consume it on his private premises, rather than buying 4 Zombies from Applebee’s and driving home drunk. But, then again, I know my brand of logic is not something usually practiced in the legislature.

Item #2: Legislative Per Diem Accounts. Every legislator gets paid a salary for their part time work and they get a “per diem” stipend of (I think this is the limit) $7000 each year. This is something they get paid whether they live inside Atlanta or outside. According to what I understand, a check appears on their chair every week just because they park their rear-end there. And, what’s more, it’s tax-free.

So, since we have to obviously cut some spending here and there, what say we carve-out $2000 from each of the 236 (180 house + 56 senators) members’ legislative accounts that they can spend for the next 3 years of budget crunch?

So, you don’t think $572,000 per year in savings amounts to much money? Really? Remember, this is $572,000 of after-tax dollars. At a 6% state income tax rate, this equates to a pre-tax amount of $9.53 million in earned revenue. A company could take this money it pays in taxes and invest it in capital equipment or personnel and provide more return on investment to this state than the Legislature could by individually pissing away $2000 per person.

Item #3: Here’s a novel way to increase revenue. How about we levy a tax on campaign accounts to help pay for the administration of campaign disclosures? Now that campaign contribution disclosures are going to be filed electronically, it would take a little bit of work (I’ll write the code) to take the average amount of “Cash on Hand” in each account and...say, levy a 10% surtax on those funds to help pay for the operations of the Secretary of State’s office?

After all, it's not like the candidates really earned this money, did they? No, this money was given to them, and if we citizens have to pay a tax on money we receive, so should the politicians pay something as well.

You know, you legislators pass all these laws, and then overwhelm government agencies with new demands to manage these mandates. It’s time you folks contributed to the mess you create.

Item #4: Those two “tax-holidays” Governor Barnes gave us last year (you know, the ones several Republican legislators claimed was their idea that Barnes stole…wonder where they are now?) cost this state some $8 million in revenue. Let’s not do that again, shall we?

Item #5: Governor’s Office. Look, Governor, everyone’s gotta cut, and there is no governor’s edict that requires you to spend money like Governor Barnes did.

Just some ideas off the top of my head. De-fund Cathy Steinberg’s position in the Insurance Office of Consumer Advocate. De-fund GRTA. De-fund Barnes’ “Office of Education Accountability.” In fact, you could do well de-funding a lot of Barnes’ initiatives.

I have copies of the budget of the Office of the Governor going back to 1997. As of June 30, 1977, the annual operating budget of this office was $212.9 million, and that was under Governor Zell Miller. As of June 30, 2001, the operating budget was $89.0 million under Governor Barnes.

Either Barnes really did slice the operating costs by 58% over 4 years or he just shifted costs off his income statement to other places in the budget to hide them. In any case, there’s bound to be costs you can cut out of your administration as well.

Summary:

I hear school teachers are complaining about not getting a raise. Perhaps Linda Schrenko or Jeff Williams will stand on a stump and tell us why people should be awarded raises when the state is 50th in the nation in SAT scores?

How many jobs have been lost in the private sector in Georgia over the past 2 years? 100,000? I’d encourage chopping-off a few heads in government to give the people whining about not getting raises something to be very grateful for: that they still have a job despite their incompetence.

Tax cigarettes into oblivion for all I care and put Marcus Collins out of a job at the same time. Raise taxes on alcohol. It will not, as Lt. Governor Bubba claims, drive convention business away (what an idiot!).

I will accept losing some homestead exemption and paying higher taxes, but you folks in the Legislature had better figure out how to reduce a $16 billion budget by 5% at minimum. I bet I can find where to slice in no time at all.

No one in the new administration should be married to the pork in the state budget. If department heads claim they cannot live on less, replace those department heads with new folks who have a business mind. Pretend you’re Al “Chainsaw” Dunlap and slice-out the fat and inefficiency in this state. It’s there. Find it. That's why we voted for you and that's what we're paying you people for.