The Marietta Daily Journal – Fractional fracture It s back to drawing board for Lee and his split penny plan

The General Assembly’s failure to pass the main request from the Cobb Chamber of Commerce and county Chairman Tim Lee this year has thrown a wrench in Lee’s plan to bring a special purpose local option sales tax referendum to voters this November.

Lee said he was relying on passage of state Rep. John Carson’s House Bill 153, which would allow counties and cities to collect a sales tax of less than 1 cent per dollar spent.

Had that passed, Lee planned to ask voters for a fractional SPLOST this fall.

“It would have been better to have a fractional penny available to me, but since that’s not going to work I’ve got to go with the full penny and try to work around it, so it makes it a little more harder, but we’ll get it done,” Lee said.

A six-year SPLOST is projected to collect about $750 million. Of that sum, 74 percent — or $555 million — would go to county projects and 26 percent — or $195 million — would go to Cobb’s six cities.

The House passed Carson’s bill on March 3, sending it to the Senate, which changed it to allow for multiple SPLOSTs at the same time, provided they add up to no more than 1 percent at any given time.

Carson objected to the Senate’s revision and a standoff occurred between the two chambers.

Lee said he will speak with lawmakers before deciding whether to pursue the fractional SPLOST legislation in the future.

Commenting on the opposition, Lee said, “I think some of the cities in the rural areas and some of the counties in the rural areas where their SPLOSTs don’t raise as much money, they have difficulties doing any significant major capital projects with less than a penny, and that the stress might be too strong from their constituent base to do less than a penny in order to get done any significant projects, so I think that is the biggest reason.”

State Sen. Judson Hill (R-east Cobb) said Carson’s original bill was called up for a Senate vote about five minutes before midnight, but it never received a vote before the session ended for the year.

Senate leadership was advised earlier in the evening by opponents of the bill that they intended a filibuster to run the clock out, Hill said.

Who were the opponents?

“I think some out of Gwinnett as well as the vast majority of the Democrats,” Hill said.