Through these discussions, some hypothetical numbers have been thrown out there, and I think they merit a discussion here.

Let’s take . . . → Read More: [UPDATED] Hypothetical State Budget – Or Is It?]]> I’ve been talking to several State lawmakers over the last few days trying to get a handle on the State budget – THE single issue that has come to dominate the 2010 Session.

Through these discussions, some hypothetical numbers have been thrown out there, and I think they merit a discussion here.

Let’s take the target as $1 Billion. This is the number everyone was working off of last week, and most still are.

Most special interest tax breaks expire after some number of years and have to be renewed to continue. It is thought that we can save $100 million in non-renewal of certain special interest tax breaks this year.

We could then try to convince people near retirement age to take an early retirement, and save another $100 million. ($200 million so far, $800 million to go)

We then make $400 million in out right cuts. This is just me thinking, not anything that was mentioned by any source, but I genuinely think we can probably find $100 million to cut in each of the Big 4 Departments, and barring that it should be extremely easy to find $50 million to cut in each of the Elite 8 departments that eat up something like $16 Billion of last year’s $18 Billion budget. Again remember though, the Board of Regents is one of the Big 4, and they are a “black box” – the General Assembly ONLY gets to dictate the level of funding, not what that level pays for. In other words, the General Assembly could tell the Board of Regents to cut $50 million, and the Board could decide to cut the $11 million 4H program in retaliation, as they have already threatened to do. ($600 million down, $400 million to go)

Here’s where we start to step out of the hypothetical and into the realm of bills already being introduced though:

Next, we look at $300 million in outright tax increases. There’s a whole lot of taxes charged by the State out there, and it would hypothetically be possible to raise $300 million without any single tax being raised dramatically – but it would still be a tax increase, and it would still be felt to some degree. Proposals already out there include a hospital bed tax and a $1 per pack increase in the cigarette tax, but that will be the subject of another post later today. ($900 million down, $100 million to go)

Finally, we look at $100 million in “user fee modernization”. Some sources have had the cajones to call them fee increases outright, and Rep Earl Erhart had a bill introduced last session to call them what they are – tax increases. Some of these proposals already out there include a $75 surcharge to run for office at any level (HB 1297). Which means that instead of paying $25 or so to run for Lee County School Board, now you would pay $100 – with $75 of it going directly to the State. There is also a proposal out there to increase court fees which in the most extreme case would be a nearly 700% increase (from $5 to $34), with increases anywhere from 33%-150% being more common. That bill is HB 1328. HB 1343 would increase the cost of probation by $7 per month, as well as double the one time fee for a felon.

Finally, there is also a pair of bills that would place the fee maintenance burden on the department heads (shifting the blame for any increases away from the General Assembly), but then require a published list of all fees every year (thus at least letting you know once a year what the fees are). These are HB 1283 and HB 1284, respectively.

What I have presented above is a hypothetical, completely fluid picture of what is possibly being considered by the General Assembly as we speak. It is a finely balanced 5 legged stool, and if any leg comes up short, the shortfall must be made up somewhere else.

As you can see though, everything – including tax increases – IS on the table at the moment.

[UPDATE] One potential “silver bullet” (the ONLY thing mentioned to me as such)?

A 2.5 cent tax on everything purchased, with no exceptions whatsoever.

I’m not sure how seriously this one is being considered, but it WAS something that was discussed out loud, at least to me.

Now, I keep hearing from legislators and . . . → Read More: You’re Being Played]]> Over the last week and a half or so, much ado has been made about potential cuts to colleges (including cutting several degree programs at Albany State and other institutions) and the 4H program. Indeed, this is what motivated my first discussion on the budget last Friday.

Now, I keep hearing from legislators and some pundits that this isn’t the legislators’ fault – it is the Board of Regents’ and the Presidents of the colleges themselves. They claim it is a Constitutional issue, that the Georgia General Assembly can’t dictate to any school, or the Board of Regents as a whole, exactly how to spend its money.

Most people may see this as a cop-out, as the legislators trying to dodge a bullet.

But the legislators are correct.

Per Article VIII, Section IV, Paragraph 1(c) of the Constitution of the State of Georgia:

All appropriations made for the use of any or all institutions in the university system shall be paid to the board of regents in a lump sum, with the power and authority in said board to allocate and distribute the same among the institutions under its control in such way and manner and in such amounts as will further an efficient and economical administration of the university system.

Yep, you read it right. The General Assembly must lump every penny for every program at every school the Board of Regents controls into one big, fat check and hand it over to the Board of Regents – who then doesn’t have to listen to a word the General Assembly says about what the money is for.

Because the General Assembly doesn’t have the power to dictate funding inside the “black box” that is the Board of Regents, the only thing the General Assembly can do is dictate how much money goes into the black box. If that amount of money rises from one year to another, the Board of Regents exclusively gets to decide where to spend the extra money – even if they decide to spend it all on the Chancellors of the Board of Regents. The General Assembly can’t tell them not to do that.

On the flip side, if the amount of money put into the black box drops from one year to the next, the Board of Regents exclusively has to decide where to make the cuts. The General Assembly doesn’t get to make these decisions either, and has absolutely no say in the matter once the level of money to put into the black box is decided.

In other words, when you hear that 4H is going to be cut or that your degree program is going to be cut before you get a chance to graduate due to budget cuts, know that your own Department Chair, your own Dean of your school, your own University President, and your own Board of Regents screwed you over.

It was NOT the General Assembly. It was NOT the Lt Governor. It was NOT the Governor.

It was the very people you and the citizens of Georgia entrusted to teach you.

When your President, your Dean, your Department Chair, your professors tell you that it was the General Assembly, know they’re playing you for a fool. They think you don’t know any better, and had you not read this post or read the Constitution of the State of Georgia, you probably wouldn’t know any better.

But if you hear them doing this again, kindly point them in the direction of the nearest copy of the Constitution of the State of Georgia you can find. (A fully html version is available on this site at http://www.swgapolitics.com/ga_constitution, which we provide as a service – it does not add to our page view statistics in any way.) Point them to Article VIII, Section IV, Paragraph 1(c). Show them where it says that the Board of Regents exclusively controls how all money within its system is spent.

And (politely) ask them to stop playing you and make the hard choices.

The first point I want to make here is that this is political gamesmanship and nothing more. The . . . → Read More: The State Budget]]> Over the last few days, a fairly large group of people all across the State – including here in the Lee/Dougherty area – have gotten very upset over various proposed cuts in education, specifically over 4H.

The first point I want to make here is that this is political gamesmanship and nothing more. The General Assembly ordered cuts, and the Board of Regents responded with cutting programs that they knew would attract this mass public outcry in order to try to pressure the General Assembly to not force them to make these cuts. Apparently, at least some in the General Assembly are already caving.

Even before then, however, you had several lawmakers – including State Rep Austin Scott (R-Tifton, running for Governor) get pissed that the Board of Regents would consider eliminating the very popular 4H program completely as one concrete example of the gamesmanship described above. Scott took the bait hook, line, and sinker. He told the Tifton Gazette “We asked them to bring us their proposed potential budget cuts and instead, they say they want to raise tuition and eliminate 4-H.” Scott has been in the General Assembly for more than a decade, approaching a decade and a half. He has been a Chairman of a couple of different committees. He wants to be Governor. He should know better than to engage in this petty gamesmanship, and he should rise above it.

But those are side issues to me – political noise that doesn’t amount to anything substantive, and indeed hides the substantive issues that need to be discussed.

The fact of the matter is, the State is in an extreme budget crisis right now. We have spent and spent and spent when times were good and completely ignored basic economic reality that no trend is permanent, and more often the basic scientific law of equal and opposite reactions applies. In other words, for any boom there will be a corresponding bust, and for any bust there will be a corresponding boom – no matter what any individual, group, or government does.

During this budget crisis, brought on in part by extravagant spending during the good times, cuts absolutely have to be made. The only other option is to raise taxes, which is completely unacceptable. Government does too much already, and before raising taxes can be considered a viable solution, this must end.

Education, per the Governor’s FY2011 Recommended Budget (page 19 of the 422 page document), is 57% of the State budget, and I have been told various figures that anywhere from 80-97% of that is local teacher salaries. Yes, teachers work administratively for their local school system, but the bulk of their salary (in many counties, their entire salary) comes from the State. This Budget document lists the State budget as $18.1 Billion, and the State Department of Education alone is almost $7 Billion of it. The Board of Regents (which oversees Albany State, Darton, and Georgia Southwestern in Americus) is another approximately $2 Billion in the Budget, and “Education” as a policy group is more than $10 Billion in the State budget.

Outside of education, the largest expenditures are health and public safety, combining for nearly $5 Billion in the budget. In these two areas, the largest departments are the Department of Community Health and the Department of Corrections, combining for just over $3 Billion for just those two departments. Indeed, in FY2011, the Department of Community Health’s budget is bigger than the Board of Regents’.

In other words, in an $18 Billion dollar budget, $14 Billion of it is tied up in FOUR departments. Each of these four are political hot potatoes, because by and large the populace wants the services regardless of whether it is genuinely a proper role of government, yet they don’t want to pay for them to do their jobs properly as stated.

Right now, the General Assembly is debating another $1 Billion in cuts. Some solid proposals have been put out there, including Austin Scott’s proposal to sell off the fleet of airplanes owned by the State of Georgia, many of which are apparently flown as little as five hours per week. Another legislator, who chooses not to be named, has discussed the possibility of merging various departments and eliminating redundancy. Indeed, one proposal was discussed in subcommittee to combine ALL state law enforcement (GBI, State Troopers, Park Rangers, etc) into a single agency, and that is one that on first glance I think has merit.

Another idea that I’ve discussed with at least one member of the House Appropriations committee is decriminalization and taxation of marijuana. Not only would it have a dramatic cost saving to the Department of Corrections (one of the Top 4 most expensive departments in the state, as shown above), but it would also ADD a revenue stream that could potentially equal or even out pace the revenue generated from alcohol and tobacco taxes. I’ll be honest here, I think the idea stands about a snowball’s chance in Hell of even being seriously considered in a single legislator’s head, much less actually being spoken of. I think its chances of actually being introduced and passed currently sit at about the same odds of another Big Bang happening. But if we’re talking about budget constraints and what can be done about them, I seriously believe this idea should be explored and implemented.

The overall point here is simple and direct though:

There can be NO sacred cows at this time. We simply don’t have room in the budget for them. Four departments account for $14 Billion of the $18 Billion budget, and four other departments (Transportation, Student Finance Commission, Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities, and Human Services) account for nearly $2.7 Billion of the remaining $4 Billion. Thus, EIGHT departments represent $16.7 Billion – nearly 93% of the budget.

Budget cuts, like splinters, are painful. But if we thrash around like a little kid over our pet project being cut, we too will only make the experience of dealing with the problem that much more painful for everyone concerned.

The Project took quite a bit of work. First, I had to set . . . → Read More: Announcing The Project]]> For the past month and a half or so, I’ve been mentioning this thing I called “The Project” on twitter and Facebook occassionally. I’ve told a few people what it is already, but I am ready now to officially unveil it.

The Project took quite a bit of work. First, I had to set everything up in a table which would eventually have nearly 121,000 individual data points. (120,944 to be exact). I manually entered the data for the first 26,000 data points. I found a way to automate the next 95,000, but even this was a time consuming process – just not anywhere near as time consuming as the first 26,000.

But why would I spend so much time entering data – on top of everything else I already do? Why did I deem it so important? What is The Project?

Quite simply, The Project is quite possibly the single most powerful tool I’ve yet deployed other than this site in general.

At its heart, as the ‘table’ reference above suggests, it is an Excel file. Nothing too fancy there, and really there isn’t anything overly fancy within the file. It is the data within the file that makes this tool so powerful.

What is the data?

Every single vote cast in the 2009 legislative session from every single member of the General Assembly, directly from LEGIS.

The 26K votes I manually entered were the Senate, 56 members x 469 votes in the 40 days of the 2009 Legislative term. The 95K I managed to automate to a certain degree were the votes from the House, 180 members x 526 votes in the 40 day Legislative term.

Now, I have the ability to do any number of analyses. For those members of the General Assembly who are currently running for statewide office in 2010, I can now examine their 2009 voting records in detail very easily – and I plan to. I can look for patterns of who bucked their Party and proved a ‘maverick’ streak. (Two notables from the Senate who regularly did this were Jeff Chapman and Preston Smith.) I can look for patterns of attendance and who appeared to be too busy doing other things to worry about actually casting votes in the Session – and there are a couple of people in both the House and the Senate who fit that mold.

With future planned additions to how I encode names, I will be able to easily track various groups of people, such as the former 216 Group or Committee Chairmen or Atlanta vs Rural or North Ga vs South Ga or any number of other things.

One caveat to the data I have is that the Senate recorded roll call votes in LEGIS, while the House did not.

For the moment, I’ll leave you with some basic stats as far as general numbers:

In the Senate, 56 Senators voted on 469 individual items, for a total of 26,264 data points. Subtracting out the roll call data points yields 24,136 actual votes – there was no roll call vote on the last two days of the term. Of these, 1,323 were members not voting on the issue at hand, 1,268 were members being excused from voting on the issue at hand, and 3,784 were members voting against the issue at hand. As percentages of actual votes, this means that members did not vote at all 5.5% of the time, were excused 5.3% of the time, and voted against the measure at hand 15.7% of the time. As averages per member, this represents the average member not voting 23.6 times in 40 days, being excused an additional 22.6 times in 40 days, and voting against the measure at hand 67.7 times in 40 days.

In the House, 180 Representatives voted on 526 individual items, for a total of 94,680 data points. Subtracting out the roll call data points, there are 486 actual votes, indicating 87,480 votes other than roll call. Of these, 5,724 were members not voting on the issue at hand, 4,102 were members being excused from voting on the issue at hand, and 16,188 were members voting against the issue at hand. As percentages of actual votes, this means that members did not vote at all 6.5% of the time, were excused 4.6% of the time, and voted against the measure at hand 18.5% of the time. As averages per member, this represents the average member not voting 31.8 times in 40 days, being excused an additional 22.8 times in 40 days, and voting against the measure at hand 89.9 times in 40 days.

Note that there are a variety of perfectly legitimate reasons to not vote or be excused, including conflicts of interest among others.

But I ran into . . . → Read More: Are GA Leaders Costing Georgians Jobs?]]> Georgia leaders like to talk about how they are bringing jobs to Georgia, especially under this economic climate. DuBose Porter has one plan and Republicans in the General Assembly consistently talk about how proud they are of their own efforts this past session with the passage of the JOBS Act.

But I ran into a dirty little secret over the past few days, one which State Rep Jeff Mays was kind enough to point out to me was part of Georgia Law.

You see, I like to do most of my Christmas shopping online. Quite frankly, I’m not such a fan of the crowds on Black Friday or pretty much any day between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and most stores offer the same deals online as you get in the physical store. So I get the same price with nowhere NEAR the hassle. As an added bonus, if I shop online I don’t have to pay sales tax. But that is where the dirty little secret comes in.

You see, OCGA 48-8-2, subsection 3 part E states that a “dealer” in the State of GA can be defined as anyone who “Maintains or has within this state, indirectly or by a subsidiary, an office, distribution center, salesroom or sales office, warehouse, service enterprise, or any other place of business”.

What this means is that any store that has pretty much any physical presence in Georgia must charge Georgia sales tax on its sales – whether from a brick and mortar store or from online sales. There may be some caveats within there, but none that I saw in about 20 minutes of searching.

This gives a competitive advantage to some sites, such as Amazon.com, which is who got my business after I learned that my preferred store, BestBuy.com, had the exact same deals as Amazon.com but had to charge me sales tax due to this law, while Amazon.com did not.

This also costs Georgians jobs, because retailers who get a significant amount of business from online sales are not going to want to have any form of physical presence in Georgia – not even so much as a two-person office. For example, a major retailer – Cabela’s Outdoors – was actively working to build a new store in Adairsville, GA barely 5 miles from the school I graduated HS from just a few years ago. I’m now told that the primary reason they did NOT build was directly because of this law. That was to be a combined retail/warehouse site, and would have meant something along the lines of 100-200 jobs at a bare minimum, not to mention the economic impact on an area of Bartow County that could really use the money. For those that are unaware, one of Cabela’s biggest competitors -and one who I’m told Cabela’s physical stores are most similar to – is Bass Pro Shops. This Cabela’s would have been the only one in a 3 state radius – the next closest store would have been outside Baton Rouge! The physical store alone would have generated a LOT of sales tax money for the State and the County, but our leaders got greedy with this code section above, and we lost out on potentially hundreds of jobs just from this one retailer.

Furthermore, let’s look at the border cities issues, which are major areas of concern in areas such as extreme northwest GA, Columbus, Valdosta, Augusta, Savannah, Rome, and even in South GA along the FL and AL lines. Assuming our border states do not have similar clauses in their own laws, this means that a company – whether it be a mom-and-pop operation that employs a handful of people or an operation such as Cabela’s that employs a few hundred people per site – could locate just across the border in any of these areas and utilize the Georgia population to drive its profit from the physical store while still enjoying its tax-free online sales due to the other state’s tax laws! In other words, more jobs and tax revenue LOST because of Georgia lawmakers!

A final note on this topic, for now: One person tried to call me a “tax dodger” on Facebook over this issue. He said that I could take advantage of in-store pickup from a store located in Georgia, and thus this made up for the additional unnecessary tax burden. But Best Buy was the store in question, and the closest physical store they have to Albany is roughly 100 miles away. Even at my parents’ house in Cartersville, the closest Best Buy store is about 25 miles away, and I own a full-size pickup truck and a small SUV right now. This means that either way, if I go to Best Buy physically – even just to pickup an item I ordered online – I’m going to spend a minimum of roughly $5 in gas to get that item – in addition to paying the sales tax! Meanwhile, I can go to Amazon.com, but that exact same item and have it delivered to my door with NO sales tax! As a consumer, why would I want to pay more for the same item??? This is just one example – as we all know, there are quite a few stores that fall into this same problem for us here in Southwest Georgia!

This next session, Georgia lawmakers including both Speaker of the House Glenn Richardson and many State Representatives and a few State Senators have said that jobs and the economy are one of the top – if not THE top – priority they have. I have a potential solution I’d like them to consider:

Repeal OCGA 48-8-2, subsection 3 part E.

Tomorrow, the Georgia Senate Rules Committee, and possibly the entire Georgia Senate, will consider HB 614, the “Georgia Prescription Monitoring Program . . . → Read More: Legislative Alert: HB 614 ‘The Prescription Drug Monitoring Act’]]> The following is from my good friend and colleague Jason Pye via his blog, JasonPye.com: (Note here that ‘tomorrow’ refers to TODAY, Monday, March 30 2009, as this post was written last night.)

Tomorrow, the Georgia Senate Rules Committee, and possibly the entire Georgia Senate, will consider HB 614, the “Georgia Prescription Monitoring Program Act” which would establish a state surveillance system for the monitoring of prescribing and dispensing of certain medications (Schedules II, III, IV, or V). Included in the database would be most pain relievers, anxiety medications, sleep aids, anti-diarrheals, and anything containing Codeine such as Robitussin.

This bill is bad social and fiscal policy and it violates the privacy and due process rights of Georgia citizens enumerated in the Georgia Constitution.

This bill is bad social policy because it allows government intrusion and second-guessing of the doctor-patient relationship. It treats Georgia citizens not as civilized people but as children who need to be monitored and controlled.

Also, as noted by the American Cancer Society, several studies indicate that prescription monitoring programs have a “chilling effect” on healthcare professionals’ prescribing of needed medication to legitimate pain patients for fear of being investigated by law enforcement.

This law is also bad fiscal policy. Once the initial federal funding for this program has run out, Georgia citizens will be left to foot the bill, which the U.S. Dept. of Justice estimates to cost the state up to $1 million annually. In our current economic crisis, this is not only fiscally irresponsible, it is downright immoral. Moreover, this program will not withstand judicial scrutiny and a lawsuit in its defense will cost the taxpayers that much more money.

This bill also violates the privacy and due process rights of Georgia citizens. It gives the Georgia Drugs and Narcotics Agency access to the private medical records of Georgia citizens without probable cause.
Under Georgia law, no law enforcement official can lawfully obtain any part of a Georgia citizen’s medical record without first obtaining the patient’s consent or a court order, such as a search warrant or a subpoena. In Johnson v. State, the Georgia Court of Appeals held that “the State is not entitled to exercise indiscriminate subpoena power as an investigative substitute for procedural devices otherwise available to it in the criminal context, such as a search warrant.”

In King v. State, the Georgia Supreme Court reiterated that “In this state, privacy is considered a fundamental constitutional right and is ‘recognized as having a value so essential to individual liberty in our society that [its] infringement merits careful scrutiny by the courts.’” It also noted that “[p]ermitting the State unlimited access to medical records for the purposes of prosecuting the patient would have the highly oppressive effect of chilling the decision of any and all Georgians to seek medical treatment.”

There are alternative, much more reasonable methods of accomplishing the same ends of this legislation without the egregious constitutional violations of this bill’s means. Please stand up for our privacy and due process rights. Please do not pave the way for Orwell’s big-government 1984. Please vote “NO” on HB 614.

This is a very well written piece that says everything I would have thought to say and more. I’m going to add a ‘SWGA Politics feel’ to it with this, and I close:

Because of everything Jason just said, I must most strenuously OPPOSE this measure.

HB 614: OPPOSE

Call or email your Senator NOW.

It was known as HR 280, and its title was “Claim sovereignty under Tenth Amendment of Constitution over certain powers; serve notice to federal government to cease and desist”.

Basically, this Resolution says that the 10th Amendment to . . . → Read More: These Representatives Got Balls]]> I saw something while working on this post for Georgia Legislative Watch that caught my eye.

It was known as HR 280, and its title was “Claim sovereignty under Tenth Amendment of Constitution over certain powers; serve notice to federal government to cease and desist”.

Basically, this Resolution says that the 10th Amendment to the US Constitution declared that any power not specifically vested in the National government via the Constitution was reserved to the States. The National government was created to be an agent of the States, yet now treats the States as agents of the National government. Many National decisions are direct violations of the 10th Amendment, and SCOTUS ruled in 1992 that the US Congress can not simply override the legislative and regulatory processes of the States. Finally, there is a lot of stuff going on right now in Washington that if done as proposed would further violate the 10th Amendment.

Because of all these factors, the State of Georgia claims its sovereignty rights under the 10th Amendment over all powers not specifically delegated to the National government via the US Constitution. Furthermore, the State of Georgia orders the National government, as its agent, to immediately cease and desist with all actions beyond the scope of its Constitutional powers.

The order would be transmitted to POTUS (Barack Obama), President of the US Senate (V-POTUS Joe Biden), Speaker of the US House of Representatives (Nancy Pelosi), each State’s Speaker of the House and President of the Senate (the other 49 states), and each US Representative and US Senator that represents Georgia.

Those are some heavy hitters politically, and this Resolution is sponsored by a group of relative newcomers to the State House: Martin Scott (R-Rossville, 3rd term), Tommy Benton (R-Jefferson, 3rd term), Sean Jerguson (R-Canton, 2nd term), Terry England (R-Auburn, 3rd term), Stephen Allison (R-Blairsville, 1st term), and Tom Weldon (R-Ringgold, 1st term).

I urge you to do everything you can to support this Resolution and these Representatives. They clearly are on the right path, and I personally wish them all the best.

Just as a heads up, there is a similar measure in the New Hampshire Legislature. You can find some coverage of it here and here.

The main difference between the GA and NH measures is that the GA measure doesn’t include a nullification clause. A nullification clause would state essentially that ertain future acts will be viewed as a “breach of peace” with the states themselves that risks “nullifying the Constitution”. Just as a refresher to your history knowledge, this was a major bone of contention circa 1860. It was this ‘nullification’ principle that the Southern States cited when they seceded from the Union to kick off the American Civil War.

Honestly, at this point I would kill any resolutions that had a nullification clause – including the NH one – simply because I don’t feel that the situation yet warrants war, which is what a nullification clause would lead directly to.

The Second American Civil War.

GA didn’t fare so well the first time, and I’d rather not see a second time in my lifetime if it can be avoided.

Pass the State level Resolutions. Put pressure on Congress.

But don’t start a physical war.