Last year, as I was leading the annual battle in the State House against pet local budget projects, called “pork”, I was pulled aside by a Democrat whom I respect, a well-intentioned, honest, hard-working member. He wanted to have a serious discussion about this subject, so we did. His view, it turns out, boils down to this: Simply because he is a legislator, he thinks he should have a pot of $50,000 or so of taxpayers’ money to distribute to worthy causes in his district, no questions asked. That is how he thinks of pork. Moreover, he thinks every other member of the legislature should have this, too!

Is this shocking? Not to legislators. Over the years, other Democrats, and even Republicans, have made the similar comments to me. (And I’ve always made the same comment back to them -- in essence: not if I have anything to do with it!) But it is revealing, because it lays bare how deeply the habit of pork-barrel spending is ingrained in the legislature.

The pork, it seems, we have with us always. The “official” count for pork projects in the FY 2003 state budget, approved last year – the last “normal” year – was $16 million. The estimate for the FY 2004 budget, approved a fortnight ago -- the first “crisis” year – is $20 million. More, in other words, in a “crisis” year than even in a “normal” year.

Gov. Perdue did not cause this. Unlike Gov. Barnes, he didn’t ask for any of it, and he was as surprised as anybody at the blink-and-you’ll-miss-‘em last-minute additions. In fact, nobody in the legislature acknowledges that it is his or her fault. He or she, you see, just wanted this one little item, but had to vote for all the rest of it so that “the others” would vote for his.

Senate President Pro Tem Eric Johnson (R) was quoted in the newspaper last week as saying about all the last-minute pork, “Apparently, that’s tradition.” Indeed it is. Former Speaker Tom Murphy (D) was once quoted in the newspaper as saying he wasn’t sure that there was enough pork in the budget to pass it. When I was the House Minority Leader, I never requested a pork item, and I voted against them all, year after year, but the system endured unchanged.

Is this any way to run a state? Of course not, and there will never be a better time to change than now, with, finally, a true two-party system in place. Unfortunately, voters can’t rely on a simple change of parties to fix this, because a lot of Republicans act way too much like Democrats on this subject. Last year, to cite only one example, House Minority Leader Lynn Westmoreland (R) voted for the budget after making a floor speech calling it a “tight budget”, just like then-Appropriations Committee Chairman Terry Coleman (D) did. It sure was tight – tightly packed with pork.

So, to give pork-addicted legislators, Republicans as well as Democrats, a push, we should institute the following four procedures:

1.) Don’t include anything that a local government hasn’t officially asked for. If the city or county really wants it, then getting a formal resolution saying so should be no problem. If they hesitate to put it in writing, that’s a big red flag.

2.) Make individual legislators officially apply for it as one would for a grant from a foundation – with a statement of purpose, justification, use, and rationale for the amount requested. If somebody can’t articulate that, it’s hard to believe it’s a high- enough priority to spend state money on.

3.) Publish the applications early in the session. They should be available to be seen, commented on, and debated at the same time as other budget-related items are being debated, such as, for instance, teacher pay raises and tax increases. The worst part of this year’s budget performance was the months’ worth of legislators crying about not having enough money, absent tax increases, for the real needs of the state, and then stuffing the budget full of pork at the last minute.

4.) Require the local government receiving the state money to put up substantial local matching money (say, half). The local money could be public or private, I don’t care. But the state money should be “assistance”, not “gifts.”

If we put these four rules in place, they would probably reduce the pork by half, maybe more. This could be done without statutory changes, and without even House or Senate rules changes. It could be done simply by a change in informal procedure in the legislature, or even in just one house of the legislature. (Contrary to common practice, the Senate does not have to accept the House’s pork just because the House gets first crack at the budget; it could zero it all out and require justification all over again.) The Governor could even do it all by himself, by line-item vetoing projects that don’t meet these standards – though legislators would no doubt respond by trying to package pork projects with other items in increasingly clever ways so as to make line-item vetoing difficult.

Some of the pork in past budgets would, indeed, actually meet these procedural requirements. Columbus, for example, has a splendid new performing arts center, built with significant state participation, but with overwhelmingly (80% or more) locally-raised money.

But a lot of the pork wouldn’t pass muster, such as the $5000 awarded several years ago to then-Rep. Vernon Jones to divide, as he later saw fit, among worthy organizations in his district (Gov. Barnes wisely vetoed that one), or the $3 million included in the FY 2003 budget to be spent on something, anything, unspecified, in McIntosh County (Gov. Barnes, unwisely, did not veto that one).

Margaret Thatcher eventually made great changes in Britain, not by doing it all at once, but by doggedly pursuing a strategy of relentless incrementalism. That will be what it will take to liberate Georgia taxpayers from the legislature’s addiction to pork. If there were ever a year when that need was evident, it’s this year. Let’s get started.