Campaigns & Elections

Bob Reilly joins Sandy McGrew in the race for Canton City Council Ward 1, which is currently held by Bob Rush, who is not running for reelection.

State Rep. Allen Peake (R-Macon) still believes summer was the best option for the first election of the Mayor and Commission for the new Macon-Bibb consolidated government, despite charges that the date was chosen to reduce black voting.

Peake and others, including state Sen. Cecil Staton, R-Macon, drew protests over the change, with officials such as state Sen. David Lucas, R-Macon, referring to it as a “bait-and-switch” action.

Lucas and others also maintained that Republicans were marginalizing black voting.

But Peake countered that contention by saying nonpartisan elections are actually more inclusive, not less. Previously, voters had to declare themselves for one party or the other during a primary election. That meant voters couldn’t vote for certain offices if someone from their party wasn’t running.

Nonpartisan elections eliminate that dilemma, he said.

Peake also noted that all cities in Georgia except Macon hold nonpartisan elections, so the move would make the city consistent with the rest of the state.

The mayoral race, with six candidates on the ballot and one write-in candidate, is going to be “hotly contested” and almost certainly result in a runoff Oct. 15, Peake said.

He noted that the District 2 race, featuring Macon City Councilmen Larry Schlesinger and Henry Ficklin as well as former mayoral candidate Paul Bronson, and the District 9 race between City Council President James Timley and local activist Al Tillman, would be among the most interesting races, while the District 3 race pitting Councilwoman Elaine Lucas against former school board member Terry Tripp also will draw a lot of attention.

Peake pointed out that the District 7 race — with Eric Arnold, Barry Bell and Scotty Shepherd — features candidates who have never held a political office in Macon or Bibb County before, meaning the new commission will have new blood. Most of the district races feature at least one candidate who has never been elected to office before.

Holder is now going to sue Texas under Section 3 of the Voting Rights Act, which allows a court to order a jurisdiction to get all of its voting changes pre-approved before they can take effect. But the problem Holder faces is that he will have to prove that Texas has engaged in discriminatory conduct intended to violate the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendment rights of Texas voters. And he will have to convince the court that Texas has such a history and pattern of discriminatory conduct that it is likely to repeat this behavior in the future unless it is placed under federal supervision.

Holder may be planning to use Section 3 to go after all of the nine states that were covered by Section 5 before its coverage formula was struck down by the Supreme Court. But he may have a tough time, since the evidence is simply not there to show that any of those states are or have been intentionally (and repeatedly) discriminating in voting. Holder and his political allies believe that voter ID laws are evidence of discriminatory conduct, and his past behavior shows he wants to use the Voting Rights Act to stop such election integrity efforts. But most courts have found voter ID laws are not a violation of the Voting Rights Act, and the U.S. Supreme Court found that a voter ID requirement is constitutional. And Section 3 applies a constitutional standard.

State & Local Government Operations

Yesterday, the office of Attorney General Sam Olens took Cumming Mayor H. Ford Gravitt to court over alleged Open Meetings Act violations when the Mayor prevented Nidia Tisdale from video recording a City Council meeting.

Traffic will remain a part of living in Metro Atlanta for the foreseeable future, according to experts who spoke at a forum hosted by the Georgia Chamber of Commerce.

Almost a year after voters in 10 metro counties soundly rejected a proposed penny sales tax for transportation improvements, the mantra Thursday was creative planning to deliver the best product possible within existing resources.

“We have to be smarter with what we do,” said Jane Hayse, director of the Atlanta Regional Commission’s Center for Livable Communities.

“We have to be very diligent with the choices we make … to deliver the best bang for the buck,” added Chris Tomlinson, executive director of the State Road and Tollway Authority.

Hayse that might mean taking an expensive plan to widen a highway and scaling it back to adding turn lanes or improving the timing of the signal lights to ease traffic flow.

Another victim of low expectations is passenger rail. Years of planning have gone into bringing commuter and inter-city rail to Georgia, but there’s still no money on the horizon to pay for it.

“It’s challenging in the current environment,” said Toby Carr, director of planning for the Georgia Department of Transportation.

On the positive side, Hayse and Carr cited the growth of self-taxing community improvement districts as funding sources for transportation projects.

A new Airport West Community Improvement District is being pitched by Emory Morsberger for the Hartsfield-Jackson Airport area.

“The airport is the goose laying the golden egg,” Morsberger said. “We want to produce more golden eggs.”

The presence of the world’s busiest airport is a natural draw that brings travelers, visitors and economic impact into the zone that includes the city of College Park, the city of East Point, the city of Atlanta and unincorporated Fulton County. But so far, the efforts to leverage the airport’s magnetism have been done on a one-by-one basis.

“In the past, it’s just been different cities operating independently, on their own,” Morsberger said. “But by working together, we can synergize all the different groups here.”

When officially organized with a board in place — which Morsberger believes will happen by October — the Airport West CID will be one of the metro area’s biggest, with a footprint of about 15 square miles. It already has the support of about 300 businesses and 180 owners. It will also be the third CID in south Fulton County; the first was formed in 1999 and takes in portions of Fairburn, Union City, Palmetto and unincorporated Fulton.

“We have similarities [to other CIDs], but we’re also very different,” said Joddie Gray who has administered the South Fulton Community Improvement District since 2001. “We are an area of mostly warehousing and manufacturing, so our focus has always been on freight transportation and getting trucks to the highway.”

The Georgia Public Policy Foundation’s Friday Facts has more from the transportation forum here.

GPPF is holding a luncheon called Georgia Transportation: the Next Frontier on August 28th at the Georgian Club. On Friday, October 11th, GPPF’s fourth annual Georgia Legislative Policy Forum will discuss tax reform, transportation and other issues likely to arise in the 2014 Session of the Georgia General Assembly.

While I believe any Next Frontier transportation system must include teleporters, the Atlanta Braves are looking to add a short Maglev system as one option for connecting MARTA to Turner Field.

Former Macon Police Chief Mike Burns was awarded Outstanding Chief of the Year by the Georgia Association of Chiefs.

Agriculture News

Krysta Harden, originally of Camilla, Ga., has been tapped for deputy secretary of US Department of Agriculture and was introduced by Senator Saxby Chambliss to the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry.

GrowingGeorgia.com has an Op-Ed that argues the state and federal governments should continue their historical role in supporting agriculture.

There is a fundamental need for nations to have the capacity to feed their citizens and not rely on foreign powers, which can sometimes change their allegiance, to provide such basic necessities as food. If you doubt this statement, think about how uncomfortable many Americans are with the thought of importing our energy needs.
For this reason, the roots of government involvement in US agriculture are actually as old as the nation itself. Government involvement began with the founding fathers of the nation and carries the fingerprints of other great Americans who followed.
In 1799, after years of colonies and states granting tracts of land to citizens encouraging people to plant crops and begin commerce, George Washington called for the establishment of the National Board of Agriculture to collect information on the nation’s agricultural inventories.

Tax Watch

The Georgia state income tax could be halved and replaced with sales tax revenues in a plan being developed by legislators under the Gold Dome.

Supporters say taxing income discourages job creation and other business investment.

“When you lower income tax rates, you lower rates on production, earned income and investing,” Christine Ries, an economics professor at Georgia Tech, told a state Senate study committee July 17. “If you want more of something, don’t tax it.”

“What we’ve done is adjusted our tax laws,” said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Judson Hill, R-Marietta, who also chairs the study committee. “We haven’t reformed them.”

Hill and others say the time is right to take aim at the income tax because the surrounding states Georgia competes with for jobs either don’t tax income at all or boast lower tax rates.

Senate President Pro Tempore David Shafer, R-Duluth, introduced a constitutional amendment late in the 2013 session to freeze Georgia’s personal income tax rate at6 percent.

Then, in the session’s final few days, Georgia Rep. Tom Kirby, R-Loganville, introduced a proposal to abolish the state income tax altogether.

Several organizations have co-sponsored an online tax structure simulator that allows you to play legislator by tweaking tax rates to see how they affect collections. Georgia Tech economist Christine Ries worked on the economic model underlying the simulator.

Errata: Yesterday I mistakenly wrote that the Bartow County Commission voted to keep the millage rate steady; it was the Board of Education that did so. Maybe I’m going crazy, maybe I’m going blind. Sorry.

But then Bartow County’s sole County Commissioner Steve Taylor approved a 25 percent property tax hike.

The Glynn County Board of Education is considering raising property taxes approximately 6.6 percent.

In Extreme Northwest Georgia (also called “Mullis Country”) Chatooga County is cutting 28 teachers and 24 staff positions in order to meet its budget without raising taxes.

Raising taxes is usually a last resort, but Georgia school systems, which have collectively lost more than $5 billion in funding from state austerity cuts since 2003, say they’re running out of options.

“When you look at doing a budget, there are only two ways you can go,” said Dade County Superintendent Shawn Tobin. “You either cut your staff to the bare bones or you start raising millage [property tax] rates.”

Both Dade and Catoosa county school systems are looking at increasing taxes for the coming year after having reached a tipping point on cuts.

Dade will ask for a 1.25 mill increase from its current rate of 13.92 — one of the lowest in North Georgia.

[S]tate-mandated increases in insurance and retirement costs have put the district in another tight budget cycle, not to mention a $1.5 million austerity cut from the state.

Next door, Catoosa County will ask for a tax increase, after officials say they’ve exhausted many other routes of cost savings.

The school board is considering a 1.95 mill increase on its current millage rate of 16.763, pushing Catoosa near the state-maximum of 20 mills for school property taxes.

Catoosa has already increased class sizes, dipped into reserve funds, reduced staff levels and furloughed employees. The county will lose another 35 employees through attrition and continue five days of furlough in the coming school year.

“We’re going to lose money even though we’re raising taxes,” Tobin said.

The Waleska City Council is considering lowering the millage rate by 17 percent.

Conyers City Council has voted unanimously to raise property taxes.

Earlier this week, Oxford City Council voted to raise property taxes.

Peachtree City is likely to lower property taxes by 1.25%.