Tag Archives: tax

Live streaming of Public Service Commission Forum tonight

All candidates for the Georgia Public Service Commission at a forum tonight, 7-9PM 12 July 2012. GA PSC is the body that says Georgia Power can charge its customers for cost overruns for the new nukes at Plant Vogtle; the new nukes that will suck up even more water and are already sucking up lots of money through the stealth tax Construction Work in Progress (CWIP) charge on Georgia Power customer bills. GA PSC did require Georgia Power to buy 50 MW of solar, but that’s pennies compared to the dollars Georgia Power and Southern Company are shovelling into that pit by the Savannah River. Who will stand up and say enough nuclear is too much, and let’s get on with solar and wind?

Georgia Interfaith Power and Light blogged today, PSC Debate Tonight,

Tonight, GIPL is joining forces with 14 local organizations to host a Political Forum with this year’s candidates for the Public Service Commission.

We’re having technical difficulties with the live web stream. We hope it will be up and running tonight, but if not, the debate will be posted online this week. You can check this website tonight at 7pm for live web streaming, or watch our twitter feed @GeorgiaIPL for updates.

When: Thursday, July 12, 7 – 9 p.m.
Where: Glenn Memorial UMC’s Auditorium/Sanctuary
1660 N. Decatur Road
Atlanta, GA 30307

All four challengers in the 2012 race have confirmed their attendance. Participants

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Chatham County calls in LOST mediator

Chatham County and its cities appears to be the future of Lowndes County and our cities. On LOST negotiations, Chatham got tired of listening to the cities and called in the mediator.

Eric Curl wrote for Savannah Now today, Chatham rejects cities' sales-tax proposal, calls for mediator

With a month of negotiations still remaining, Chatham County has given up on working solely with the eight municipalities to determine how an estimated $600 million in Local Option Sales Tax revenue should be split up during the next 10 years.

Chatham County Chairman Pete Liakakis requested Tuesday night that a third party be brought in immediately to help determine distributions, instead of waiting the full 60 days available to reach an agreement before mediation is required.

“I believe the parties are so far apart, that the current process is at an impasse,” Liakakis said.

Liakakis said a proposal presented by the cities two weeks ago that would lower the county's share by about 7 percent while boosting the municipalities' portion was flawed because it is built around the concept that the county's share should be based on the residents living outside city limits.

“It ignores the fact that the county provides services to all citizens of the county,” he said.

Yep, sounds familiar.

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Gretchen Quarterman is running for Lowndes County Chairman

In case you haven’t heard, one of the LAKE crew, Gretchen Quarterman, is running for Chairman of the Lowndes County Commission. Today she’s at the Spirit of America Celebration at Valdosta Mall (next to Buffalo Wild Wing). As you can see, she’s been practicing.

Here’s her campaign website and her facebook campaign page. According to the VDT, 8 May 2012,

“Anyone who is entrusted with the resources of another human being or thing, you have to be a good steward of tax money, air, and water. They are entrusted to us and need to be handled with responsibility.”

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Appointments to four boards, road abandomnent, and community block grant @ LCC 2012-06-25

Budget amendments on the agenda for the Lowndes County Commission Work Session Monday at 8:30 AM 25 June 2012 and Regular Session 5:30 PM Tuesday 26 June 2012. See if you can find some clues to what those amendments might be in the the videos of last week’s budget hearing.

Also this week: appointments to four boards (Parks & Rec, Construction, KLVB, and Library), a public hearing on a road abandonment (Brinson Drive), and the County Manager has something to say about FY 2010 Community Development Block Grant. Plus a bunch of service contracts. Here’s the agenda for tomorrow and Tuesday.

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LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
PROPOSED AGENDA
WORK SESSION, MONDAY, JUNE 25, 2012, 8:30 a.m.
REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, JUNE 26, 2012, 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street – 2nd Floor
Continue reading →

Georgia Trend Propagandizes for T-SPLOST

When did state tax policy become a plaything for companies, instead of a source of services for taxpayers? There’s a lot of fudging in the T-SPLOST article in the current Georgia Trend. I guess that’s not surprising when it’s mostly about the viewpoint of the CEO of the Georgia Chamber of Commerce.

Ben Young wrote for Georgia Trend June 2012, Transportation Game Changer: July’s statewide referendum will determine Georgia’s economic future. There’s a lot at stake for all 12 regions.

“The reason our port is the fastest growing is because our road and rail network is so efficient,” says Chris Cummiskey, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Economic De-velopment, another top RTR advocate. “If Zell Miller and other former administrations hadn’t done something to make the port more of a growth engine, we would now have little to no success in advanced manufacturing.”

Yet the rest of the article is all about roads, with little or nothing about rail, except for metro Atlanta and Charlotte as a comparison. Where are the rail projects linking Valdosta to Atlanta and Savannah, or the Valdosta MSA commuter rail or bus system? Nowhere in T-SPLOST.

It is also unclear how Georgia can sustain growth in logistics-related sectors that depend on moving goods quickly and efficiently — sectors believed to be leading us out of the recession — without strengthening the highway network, which has suffered due to lower gas tax revenues. Without an additional tax, there is no way to keep up what we have, much less build anything new, proponents say.

Um, then maybe the governor shouldn’t have refused to extend Georgia’s gas tax by 8/10 cent (almost as much as proposed the 1 cent T-SPLOST tax, but on gasoline, not on everything including food). And note “believed to be” and “proponents say”. Later in the same article:

People are desperate for more transportation funding and the improvements it will bring, but the referendum itself is complex.

Who are these unnamed “people”? The same “proponents” by whom things are “believed to be”? Isn’t it wonderful to base tax policy on hearsay?

If Georgia was serious about creating jobs to lead us out of the recession and into a national and world leader, Georgia legislators Continue reading →

SO CEO Fanning: Policy, jobs, and the economy plus fracking

You may have wondered, how was Southern Company (SO) CEO Thomas A. Fanning so ready and able to respond at length to any question at the SO shareholder meeting? Because he’s a class A CEO who does his homework, such as this white paper he wrote dated September 2011: American Energy Policy, Jobs and the Economy, in which he explains what he meant by “the revolution we have seen in the shale gas industry”.

So, natural gas is important, but it’s not a panacea. Here’s why.

First, the reason prices have dropped so far is because of a new technology called fracking, which releases natural gas from so-called tight rock formations, such as shale gas. Fracking is the injection of chemicals underground, which have the effect of fracturing the rock deposits, thereby releasing the natural gas. There are environmental concerns around the chemicals associated with the fracking process. Those concerns have to be resolved.

Those concerns range from polluted groundwater to earthquakes. It’s great that SO is turning away from coal. I don’t think it’s so great to trade dirty air from coal for dirty water and earthquakes from fracking.

Secondly, many of these shale gas deposits are in places where there is no sufficient pipeline infrastructure necessary to move the gas to the places it’s needed to generate the electricity. Pipelines will have to be built. It will take time. We need to resolve that issue, too.

Meanwhile, rooftop solar Continue reading →

Gov. Deal freezes state gas tax

Why is the governor freezing an 8/10 cent gas tax just before voters are expected to decide on a 1 cent transportation tax? Why do we need T-SPLOST when we could use that gas tax instead?

According to the Governor’s own press release:

Friday, June 8, 2012

Gov. Nathan Deal announced today that he will stop an increase in the motor fuel tax scheduled to go into effect on July 1. Using the formula established in state law, the Department of Revenue determined that average gas prices over the past six months call for the motor fuel tax to rise to 12.9 cents per gallon from 12.1 cents per gallon.

With that 0.8 cent gas tax, why would we need the 1 cent T-SPLOST sales tax? That 0.8 cent gas tax would have gone into effect just before the 31 July 2012 primary election, when voters till vote on the T-SPLOST referendum. T-SPLOST, which is a one cent sales tax. And a gasoline tax is paid by people who actually use the roads, not by every pedestrian who buys food.

The governor’s PR also said:

“We’re seeing a slow and steady rebound in Georgia’s economy, with our unemployment rate going down and state revenues heading up, but Georgians are still paying gas prices that are high by historical standards,” Deal said in a statement. “The state should not add to that burden at this juncture.”

But we should increase everyone’s food prices with a T-SPLOST tax? How does that make sense?

The governor’s PR also says:

The governor of Georgia has the power to suspend collection of a tax, but the action requires ratification from the General Assembly.

Oh, but this freeze only lasts until January, and the General Assembly doesn’t meet until then. How convenient!

-jsq

SPLOST with Lowndes County and the cities @ SPLOST 2012-06-11

The second of two meetings on the Lowndes County Commission According to the calendar for Monday morning, 11 June 2011, is about SPLOST, and also involves all the cities in the county.

SPLOST Meeting/ (6/11/2012)

The Lowndes County Board of Commissioners along with the City of Valdosta, City of Hahira, City of Dasher, City of Lake Park and City of Remerton will be holding a SPLOST meeting on Monday, June 11, 2012, at 9:30 a.m. in the Multi-Purpose Room on the 2nd floor of the Administration Building.

SPLOST is not to be confused with LOST (created by the legislature), nor with ESPLOST for educational purposes, and certainly not with T-SPLOST for transportation.

Unlike the work session, which has no description of what it's about, there is at least a link on the county Quick Links for SPLOST, which says:

Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (SPLOST)

As of July 1, 1985, Georgia law enabled local jurisdictions to use SPLOST proceeds for capital improvement projects that would otherwise be paid for with General Fund or property tax revenues. SPLOST stands for Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax. This is a one-cent sales tax, which the State of Georgia allows counties to collect to fund specific improvement projects. SPLOST must be approved by voters in a general referendum in order to be enacted and last for a maximum of 60 months (five years) or until the total amount of revenue specified in the referendum is reached. The SPLOST projects and the amount of money raised by SPLOST were identified prior to voting on the SPLOST referendum. The proceeds of the tax must be spent for capital (non-operating) items by the county government and participating municipalities within the county.

That page also includes a list of SPLOST projects completed by January 2010.

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Videos @ SGRC 2011-09-19

Almost all the speakers from Lowndes County or Valdosta opposed T-SPLOST at the 19 September 2011 public hearing, as you can see in these videos.

Some of the videos have already been blogged separately, along with some closely related posts:

And finally, beware! Most of the discussion in these videos is about specific lists of non-discretionary projects. There’s also 25% of the T-SPLOST money that could be spent on discretionary projects, which are already being specified by the local governments, and which may include many of the same projects that were on the original unconstrained project list but got bumped off the constrained list.

Here’s a video playlist:

Videos
T-SPLOST Public Meeting, Southern Georgia Regional Commission (SGRC),
Corey Hull, Travis Harper,
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 19 September 2011.
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).

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Aviation Projects, and Valdosta is a substantial donor –Larry Hanson @ T-SPLOST 2011-09-19 @ SGRC 2011-09-19

Larry Hanson, Valdosta City Manager, asked for the regional council to reconsider aviation projects, especially considering that the tax was supposed to be for projects of regional significance. Then he pointed out

Out of that $503 million about 40% of it or $212 million is projected to be generated here in Lowndes County. And when you look at what's being returned, for instance to the city of Valdosta, it's $47 million. It is certainly one thing to be a donor, but that's a pretty substantial donor.

He said he appreciated all the other counties, but much of the money would go to counties that are not contiguous to Lowndes County and are not part of the Valdosta Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), which includes the four counties of Lowndes, Brooks, Lanier, and Echols. He continued:

Lowndes County is about 26% of the region's population and we generate about 38% of the revenue, and we're not quite getting that back in terms of the distribution.

You may wonder why a City of Valdosta official was speaking for Lowndes County. County Manager Joe Pritchard was there at the start of the meeting, and I think County Engineer Mike Fletcher was, as well. County Chairman Ashley Paulk came in late and summoned Pritchard and Fletcher outside the glass doors of the meeting room. They stood there for quite some time, peering in, and then vanished.

Here's the video:

Aviation Projects, and Valdosta is a substantial donor –Larry Hanson @ T-SPLOST 2011-09-19
T-SPLOST Public Meeting, Southern Georgia Regional Commission (SGRC),
Corey Hull,
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 19 September 2011.
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).

-jsq