{"id":4074,"date":"2013-06-14T04:49:15","date_gmt":"2013-06-14T08:49:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=4074"},"modified":"2013-06-14T05:00:26","modified_gmt":"2013-06-14T09:00:26","slug":"video-of-oral-arguments-in-lost-ga-supreme-court-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/06\/video-of-oral-arguments-in-lost-ga-supreme-court-case.html","title":{"rendered":"Video of oral arguments in LOST GA Supreme Court case"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\nHere’s the Georgia Supreme Court’s own video of\r\n\r\nS13A0992 Turner County v. City of Ashburn et al.<\/a>\r\n\r\n\"Walter<\/a>\r\n\r\nTuesday, June 4, 2013.\r\nIt starts with the attorney for Turner County, Walter Elliott\r\n(who is also Lowndes County Attorney)\r\napparently arguing that the courts shouldn’t intervene because\r\nonly legislative bodies should decide on taxes.\r\nThe judges didn’t seem to understand his argument.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nOne judge wondered how disputes would be settled then.\r\nElliott said the local elected bodies would decide or the tax\r\nwouldn’t be levied.\r\nAnother judge pointed out that legislative bodies could delegate\r\nadministrative functions.\r\nLater the same judge asked how to distinguish this case from\r\na child custody case as far as criteria and a court being\r\nable to decide.\r\nElliott claimed that was a judicial function, but allocating\r\ntax dollars was not.\r\nThe judges didn’t seem to be buying the city attorney’s argument later, either.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nFunny how the Supreme Court of Georgia videos its sessions,\r\nbut the Lowndes County Commission does not.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nHere’s\r\n\r\nthe subject of the case<\/a>:\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\nIn this dispute between the governments of Turner County and three\r\ncities over how Local Option Sales Tax (LOST) proceeds should be\r\ndistributed, the county is appealing a superior court ruling which\r\npicked the cities’ plan for distribution over the county’s.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n\r\n

\r\nGA Supreme Court’s written summary of these arguments\r\n(\r\nDave Miller, WALB, 3:48 PM EDT 4 June 2013<\/a>):\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\nARGUMENTS: Attorneys for the county argue the superior court erred\r\nin denying the motion to dismiss the case because the “2010\r\namendment violates the separation of powers clause of the Georgia\r\nConstitution by conferring upon the judicial branch the legislative\r\nfunction of determining the benefit of the tax.”\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nThe statute unconstitutionally “confers upon the judicial branch\r\n\u2018the legislative discretion’ of allocating the proceeds of the tax\r\nbetween (a) the county for the benefit of all county property\r\ntaxpayers and (b) the cities for the sole benefit of city property\r\ntaxpayers,” the county’s attorneys argue in briefs. The statute is\r\nalso unconstitutional because it: “empowers a city to cause a tax to\r\nbe imposed beyond the territorial jurisdiction of the city in\r\nviolation of the due process clauses” of the Constitution; “empowers\r\na city to require a county to levy a tax for county purposes in\r\ncontradiction of the board of commissioners’ exclusive jurisdiction\r\nover the levying of taxes for county purposes;” and “limits the\r\npower of the judiciary by restricting the decision of the assigned\r\njudge to adopting the best and final offer of one of the parties.”\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nUnder the amended statute, neither the levy of the tax nor the\r\nallocation requires the approval of the board of commissioners of\r\nthe county. Rather, the mayor and city council can cause the tax to\r\nbe levied, and the judge has the power and authority to allocate the\r\nproceeds, the attorneys argue. They contend the judge erred by\r\nadopting the cities’ best and final offer because he based his order\r\non a consultant’s report and failed to include mandatory findings of\r\nfact in the order. And the judge was wrong to preclude the\r\npresentation of evidence by witnesses, the attorneys argue, ordering\r\nthe submission of consultant reports and limiting the hearing to\r\nargument by the parties’ attorneys.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n\"Tommy<\/a>\r\n\r\nAttorneys for the cities argue the trial judge made the correct\r\nruling in upholding the constitutionality of the statute. The 2010\r\namended statute made the judge the arbitrator but does not vest in\r\nhim the power to determine the distribution of the tax. “It\r\nspecifies that the parties, through negotiation, arbitration and\r\nthrough their respective best and final offers, shall determine the\r\ndistribution of the tax, and the arbitrator has nothing to do with\r\nthat process,” they argue in briefs. “It is only where the parties\r\nsubmit best and final offers which reflect their disagreement that a\r\njudicial function comes into play.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nThe arbitrator had before him what essentially were two offers, each\r\nspecifying how the proceeds were to be divided.” He then selected\r\nthe offer which he determined best satisfied the criteria laid out\r\nin the statute. The county has misunderstood the nature of this tax,\r\nthe cities argue. “It is not a county tax,” their attorneys argue.\r\n“It is a district tax, thus the power granted to the city is to\r\ninitiate a district tax, not to compel a county to implement tax for\r\ncounty purposes which the county may thereafter not repeal.”\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nBefore the legislature amended the statute, if parties did not\r\nagree, the tax lapsed. “It thus often developed that a party whose\r\nneed for the tax might be less than the other parties’ imposed its\r\nwill on the others by threatening to allow the tax to lapse, thus\r\ncompelling the other parties to give in so as to preserve a much\r\nneeded source of revenue,” the cities’ lawyers contend. “This was\r\nthe evil which the 2010 amendment sought to cure.” The county now\r\ncomplains that this has violated “some right it somehow had to have\r\ncontrol over LOST,” the attorneys argue. “It seems to believe that\r\ncomplete authority over taxation is vested in counties and that the\r\nGeneral Assembly cannot divest them of this authority.” They also\r\nargue that the judge did provide findings of fact, as the statute\r\nrequires, by determining “that the best and final offer of the\r\nplaintiffs the City of Ashburn, Georgia, the City of Rebecca,\r\nGeorgia, and the City of Sycamore, Georgia more closely comports\r\nwith the requirements and intent” of the amended statute than the\r\ncounty’s offer.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nFinally, there is nothing in the record supporting the county’s\r\ncontention that the judge precluded the production of evidence or\r\nlimited the hearing to attorneys’ arguments. The county “made no\r\nmotions, obtained no orders of the arbitrator, and made no effort\r\nwhatsoever at the hearing to present witnesses or evidence,” the\r\ncities’ lawyers contend.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nAttorneys for Appellant (County): Walter Elliott, James Elliott\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nAttorneys for Appellees (Cities): Franklin Coleman, III, R. Kelly\r\nRaulerson, James Davis\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n-jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Here’s the Georgia Supreme Court’s own video of S13A0992 Turner County v. City of Ashburn et al. Tuesday, June 4, 2013. It starts with the attorney for Turner County, Walter Elliott (who is also Lowndes County Attorney) apparently arguing that the courts shouldn’t intervene because only legislative bodies should decide on taxes. The judges didn’t […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[14,2,20,544,88],"tags":[6435,5859,8704,8701,8699,6433,8702,8710,8775,6432,7,8734,495,60,6434,6,624],"class_list":["post-4074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-government","category-law","category-lost","category-lowndes-county-commission","tag-ashburn","tag-county","tag-economy","tag-georgia","tag-government","tag-knowledge-exchange","tag-lake","tag-law","tag-lost","tag-lowndes-area","tag-lowndes-county","tag-lowndes-county-commission","tag-supreme-court","tag-tax","tag-turner","tag-valdosta","tag-walter-elliott"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-13I","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4074"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4074\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4080,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4074\/revisions\/4080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}