The Marietta Daily Journal – Cobb SPLOST 30 years later

MARIETTA — If Cobb voters choose to renew a potential 1 percent sales tax for county government projects Nov. 4, they will be acting on a tax program about to mark 30 years in Georgia.

The special purpose local option sales tax, or SPLOST, became a legal option in 1985 by an amendment to the Georgia Constitution. The purpose was to allow citizens to vote for an added sales tax to fund a specific project list, said U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Georgia), who was the Republican Leader in the Georgia House at the time.

“What was happening was people were getting tired of bond referendums and borrowing, and so using a local option sales tax that was voted on by the people like a bond issue, but had a sunset of five or six years, and all the places the money was going to be spent had to be posted on the question, was a lot more palatable to the voters than having a bond issue where you’d authorize the county to go out and borrow a bunch of money not knowing where it was going and having to pay interest on it,” Isakson said.

The decision was given to the people and, for the most part, Cobb’s voters have said yes.

Not including SPLOST votes specifically for education or the ill-fated T-SPLOST in 2012, sales tax referendums have come before Cobb voters eight times.

Five have passed.

via The Marietta Daily Journal – Cobb SPLOST 30 years later.