If the Speaker doesn’t like blogs, what he going to say about Town Hall meetings after comments like this?
“This plan makes us similar to the feds,” said Thor Johnson, president of the Lilburn Business Association. “What happened to the Republican, conservative approach of local control?”
And this?
Lilburn Mayor Jack Bolton opposed the plan that he said left too much power at the state level.
“The state should be giving us more options,” he said, “not just somebody down in the city of Atlanta deciding what we need.
“I’m very passionate that this is a bad bill,” Bolton continued after the meeting. “It takes power from those who live, work and play here.”
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Icarus wrote: “I
This really is a productive discussion and as usual Indy you are asking relevant questions with respect to detail. I am again serious about asking you to participate in the discussion and to make this plan work.
Icarus….from my perspective and I feel it is also the Speakers; of your premises all are good EXCEPT number 5, and the first part of 4 which keeps existing spending levels. If you mean at the state level I am more interested in drawing down spending. At the local level it is not my business as a state legislator to tell them how to spend the taxpayers money. As a taxpayer though I would hope they would accept the same premise.
Indy,
Are you in accounting?
I too am concerned with giving the state so much power. However, I vigorously support eliminating property taxes in favor of a service tax. I am in the service industry, and will be for the rest of my life, so this will directly effect me. We are a service economy, and land owners and manufacturers of tangible goods should not bear the tax burden.
Dorian,
How can rural Georgia be opposed to this bill? I understand the concern over local control. However, rural Georgians are the largest land owners in the state. This new tax structure would shift the tax burden away from rural Georgians toward Atlanta and its service industry.
Money is power. My concern is the politics that will inevitably be played with the money. As long as there are safeguards to ensure that some locality does not get screwed out of their money because of their political orientation, which Rep. Ehrhart says there is (guaranteeing they will receive at minimum their current level of funding), then this might be a good plan.
Rep. Ehrhart,
How much bureaucracy will this add to the state level? Will a new department be created to handle this?
Donkey you are thinking of land in terms of acres and not value. You could own a house off the 280 loop in Cobb County that is worth as much as a small farm down here. To be certain, there are some major landowners who own several thousand acres, but I would hardly fine them to be representative of the general population. Plus, you would probably be surprised home much acerage the gov’t owns. You get a homestead exemption for your house, a conservation exemption (if you want it), and other types of breaks if you farm. The primary residence of senior citizens is completely exempt from property taxes. Anyway, my small part of rural Georgia sees this as an Atlanta power grab and not a politician representing their interest(s) in any way. Hearing us hicks talk about this amongst ourselves would be an entertaining thing to watch, I imagine.
I’m in the middle of a busy day for once, so I can’t give the responses above the justice they deserve, but I’ll give a few quick shots and try to fill in later.
Of the premises I listed above, #3 (provide equal services among unequal districts) contradicts #2 & 7 (cut taxes, give money back to the people).
There is no way that you will be increasing funding in areas with lower property tax digests to increase their spending to that of high tax digest areas while cutting taxes. The only way to equalize services would be to cut spending in high digest areas, or force these areas to raise their local sales taxes even higher to compensate for their reduced allotment.
Then there’s the argument of guaranteed funding at existing levels. What if, instead of picking today’s date, we used the funding levels of 1957 and adjusted for inflation. I use this example because it could well be 50 years before another tax “reform” is tried again. How does this plan adjust for growth patterns (which will certainly happen after the economic boom that is expected)? Again, the state, over time, will gradually control more and more of local affairs if this bill passes.
“Donkey you are thinking of land in terms of acres and not value.”
Touche.
I haven’t spent much time thinking this through, but if the real problem is with property taxes and a sales tax that does not extend to all services, can the state pass legislation outlawing property taxes, forcing localities to tax at the consumption level instead? I would think that this one legislation would require localities to both increase consumption tax rates and broaden their tax base to raise sufficient revenue, having the end result of both eliminating property taxes and extending consumption tax to all goods and services. I know it sounds less sexy than the Great Tax Plan, but it might be more effective. If FL and other states can eliminate income tax, why don’t we just eliminate property tax?
dorian,
“If these
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