Grilling with the Governor

 

 

Might as well fly the Jolly Roger

If Fulton County Tax Commissioner Arthur Ferdinand had a shred of honesty, he’d hoist a Jolly Roger above his office with the addition of a skeletal hand giving the taxpayers his regards via a single upraised bony finger. At least that way taxpayers headed into his office would know they’re dealing with an individual dedicated to the systematic pillaging of Fulton County in order to line his own pocket. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports:

Ferdinand takes a cut every time his office sells a tax debt to a private collection firm or the taxpayer antes up, an investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has found. He already was Georgia’s highest-paid elected official, but a 50-cent fee he now gets on each and every paid-off lien has added tens of thousands a dollars a year to his pay.

With the boost, Ferdinand earned $383,000 last year for a job where he started out earning $77,400 in 1997.

He may be Georgia’s only tax commissioner taking that money.

No other tax commissioner in Georgia sells so many tax liens to private debt collectors. With each sale, Ferdinand hears cha-ching!

“This incentivizes him to pass your debt to a third-party collector,” said Hugh Wood, a partner with Wood & Meredith, a law firm that handles real estate litigation. “The tax commissioner now has two masters. Either he is serving himself, or he is serving the taxpayer.”

Ferdinand said of his motives in an email, “My intent is to make sure taxes are paid as quickly as possible.”

“Just because there is a law on the books that authorizes certain behavior,” state Rep. Lynne Riley, R-Johns Creek, said, “that doesn’t mean it’s ethically or morally the appropriate thing to do.”

Several North Fulton state lawmakers, though, were livid upon being informed of the profits from liens. They called Ferdinand’s position audacious, considering that he already earns more than twice as much as Gov. Nathan Deal.

“That’s outrageous,” said state House Speaker Pro Tem Jan Jones, R-Milton, who had to pay the county’s biggest lien buyer — Vesta Holdings — $105 to satisfy a lien against her home in 2011. “He has a built-in incentive to slap a lien before a taxpayer has had adequate notice to clean up a mistake, even.”

Jones and state Rep. Wendell Willard, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, said they would work to overturn the state law he’s using to justify the payments and expressed hope the revelations will attract support for a bill targeting Ferdinand that stalled in the Senate earlier this year.

Immigration Reform

Some businesses and allied interests are seeking immigration review that would allow some form of guest worker program. From the AJC:

Georgia business leaders are diving into the thorny debate on overhauling the nation’s immigration laws, seeking to push Congress to act as soon it emerges from its summer recess next month.

Dozens of corporate executives, farmers and other businessmen have descended on Capitol Hill this year, pressing their cases for changing foreign-worker laws.

And just last week the Georgia Chamber of Commerce joined more than 400 business groups and employers nationwide – including Facebook, Google and Microsoft — in sending a letter to Congress in support of immigration-overhaul legislation. They said fixing the badly broken system would boost the economy, though they didn’t specify legislation they want passed.

The Senate bill — favored by many Georgia business groups — would make it easier to hire foreign workers and would provide a path to citizenship for immigrants living in the U.S. illegally. Calling that “amnesty,” House Republicans won’t take up the Senate bill. They are considering several smaller bills instead, some focused on border security and immigration enforcement. One would make it easier to hire more foreign workers, though that legislation has yet to make it to the House floor.

So far, Georgia’s business lobby is batting 0-for-1. In June, Georgia’s two senators, Republicans Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss, voted against the Senate bill. Chambliss said the agriculture part was flawed, and both said there were not enough assurances about border security.

Coca-Cola CEO Muhtar Kent wrote an op-ed in USA Today calling for immigration reform.

As a first-generation American, I know firsthand the blessings of living in this country. As a business leader, I also know we need to make it easier for committed, highly skilled people to make their lives and livelihoods here. Immigration is an essential part of the growth calculus for this great country.

Nearly half of Fortune 500 companies were started by immigrants or their children. Last year, three-quarters of patents coming out of our 10 top research universities were granted to immigrants.

As Washington grapples with much-needed immigration reform, my hope is that our leaders focus on creating a modern system with rational laws and regulations, strong border controls, greater opportunities for skilled foreign-born professionals and a clear way forward for undocumented workers — a potential route to U.S. citizenship that bears all the rights, responsibilities and obligations of that coveted status.

At Coca-Cola, for instance, we operate as a local business in 200-plus countries, hiring, manufacturing and distributing locally. And yet we struggle with the often byzantine processes involved in moving our leaders and their families across borders.

The cost to our business, our people and global business everywhere is immediate — and acute. For those countries erecting barriers, however, the cost is even greater as they fail to gain the talent and know-how of experienced workers.

Also writing to support immigration reform was Congressman Hank Johnson, whose op-ed ran in the AJC.

Immigration reform must include citizenship for more than 11 million undocumented immigrants. Let’s put aside our differences and work in a bipartisan way to get this job done.

A bipartisan Senate coalition voted 68 to 32 that a path to citizenship must be part of fixing our immigration system. That Senate coalition represents more than 80 percent of the American people. The Senate did its job. Now it’s the House’s turn.

The Senate bill is comprehensive. It offers an opportunity for an immigrant to become a citizen after passing a criminal background check, paying a penalty, learning English and paying back taxes, while it improves border security and e-verification.

The Senate has delivered. I implore my conservative friends in the House to look to the soul, look to the humanity, look to the smart economic policy of comprehensive immigration reform. We can have open honest debate. You can make your points. You can play to your base. But in the end, we need to do what 87 percent of the American people support.

Opposing the Senate version of immigration reform was Congressman Phil Gingrey, also in an AJC op-ed.

The Senate’s approach is a short-sighted mistake. Illegal immigration is one of the biggest crises facing our nation. Amnesty is not the solution. The Senate bill would legalize millions who have “jumped the line” and do nothing to stem the tide of illegal immigration.

Most importantly, the bill fails to secure the border, the single most important element of addressing our illegal immigration problem. It would cede border enforcement to unaccountable bureaucrats and allow portions of the law to be written by unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats. This approach is similar to another “comprehensive” bill rushed through Congress — the Affordable Care Act.

We can’t afford to repeat the mistakes of Obamacare. We are witnessing fallout from lawmakers who rammed a massive bill through Congress. The Senate has taken the same pass-it-to-see-what’s-in-it tack with immigration.

Macon-Bibb County Elections

The Macon Telegraph is running a series of profiles as candidates and voters head toward the first elections on September 17, 2013 for Mayor and Commission of the new consolidated Macon-Bibb County government.

Click here for the list of all qualified candidates.

Click here for sample ballots.

In North Bibb County’s District 1, a last minute entry by Harold Young sets up a race against current Bibb County Commissioner Gary Bechtel.

Joe Allen is running for Mayor of Macon-Bibb and has served 19 years on the Bibb County Commission. Most interesting idea? Have the Mayor or his designee to the School Board through legislation.

Charlie Bishop is also running for Mayor, having served on the Bibb County Commission as a district commissioner and as Chairman before losing his 2008 reelection bid to Sam Hart. Bishop argues that his combination of elected service in county government and his tenure as Chief of Macon Police form 1983 to 2000 make him uniquely qualified to lead the new consolidated government.

David Cousino dressed up as a cowboy when he qualified to run for Mayor and used the gold-colored dollar coins to pay part of his qualifying fee. In two prior runs for Bibb Commission and a shot at Mayor of Macon, his electoral highpoint was 459 votes against Robert Reichert in 2007. So he’s got that going for him.

C. Jack Ellis seeks a rerun as Mayor, having held Macon’s top slot for two terms ending in 2007. Ellis showed his political skill in managing to be for consolidation, then against it, now for it.

2014 Election Dates to shift even earlier?

On July 24, I wrote this:

I think there’s another option that’s being considered and might have wide-ranging effects on who ends up voting in next year’s Primary and Primary Runoff elections. That option is for the Georgia General Assembly to take the Federal and state elections even earlier. If the state and the U.S. Department of Justice were able to negotiate dates even earlier that ensured the 45 days for overseas balloting, I think the court would be amenable.

What that would mean is Primary elections in early May with a Primary Runoff in late June. The reason for considering this is to move the two elections out of the middle of summer, when more highly-motivated (read “crazier”) voters are more likely to dominate and the smaller electorate might produce an even more extreme candidate.

Over the weekend, Jim Galloway wrote that the General Assembly leadership is thinking about May 20th as a date for the 2014 elections. From Political Insider:

Here’s the idea that rose up at a meeting called last week by Gov. Nathan Deal and attended by House Speaker David Ralston, Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle and Secretary of State Brian Kemp: Move next year’s primary vote to May 20, a spring-time date that would be the earliest in Georgia history.

That’s an important two weeks earlier than the June 3 date for congressional races ordered by a federal judge this summer — before the end of the school year and the beginning of vacation season.

Historically, primaries in Georgia have been conducted in mid-July or later, during the dog days when many families check out of their daily routines. A pre-Memorial Day primary would ensure a larger GOP turnout with a voting population more akin to a November general election, and less likely to be dominated by the GOP’s most fervent and conservative activists.

A more centrist audience, the thinking goes, would result in more tempered rhetoric – and not just among U.S. Senate candidates. With state School Superintendent John Barge considering a challenge, Deal could have two opponents looking to rip away the GOP nomination for governor.

All the talk that Michelle Nunn has a snowball’s chance is predicated on the idea that Georgia Republicans might nominate someone “too extreme” or “too conservative” to be elected statewide. I just don’t think it’s possible to nominate someone too conservative to win in November 2014.

Want to know how conservative GOP Primary voters are? According to PPP’s poll released last week, 70% of Georgia Republicans believe in creationism over evolution. Makes that so-called “gaffe” in which Paul Broun said the theory of evolution is “lies from the pits of hell,” look like it might be within the mainstream of GAGOP opinion.

But that same poll tells us that 53% of all Georgia voters surveyed are creationists, so that position is arguably within the mainstream of Georgia opinion. Even more so if the PPP poll were not slanted by assuming that self-identified Democrats are within one percentage point of self-identified Republicans, despite ten years of elecotral results that appear to show about a ten-point GOP lead.

I don’t favor any candidate for United States Senate in 2014, but my point here is that for people outside of Georgia and unfamiliar with our state “on the ground,” what sounds like an “Akin-esque” gaffe may be more reflective of Peach State public opinion than they want to believe.