{"id":5988,"date":"2013-10-11T07:00:40","date_gmt":"2013-10-11T11:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=5988"},"modified":"2013-10-11T07:14:01","modified_gmt":"2013-10-11T11:14:01","slug":"county-lost-lost-now-has-120-days-to-negotiate-with-cities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/10\/county-lost-lost-now-has-120-days-to-negotiate-with-cities.html","title":{"rendered":"County lost LOST; now has 120 days to negotiate with cities"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nSo all our tax money the county spent on the\r\n\r\nalleged county attorney<\/a>\r\narguing\r\nbefore the state Supreme Court was wasted.\r\nThe remaining law seems to say by 120 days from Monday\r\nthe cities and the county need to come to an agreement.\r\n

\r\nKay Harris wrote for the VDT yesterday,\r\n\r\nLowndes LOST in limbo:\r\nSupreme Court tosses key amendment<\/a>,\r\n

\r\n

\r\nIn a ruling issued Monday, Oct. 7, the Supreme Court of Georgia\r\ndeclared a 2010 amendment to the Local Option Sales Tax Act\r\nunconstitutional, reasoning that the amendment would delegate a\r\nlegislative function of allocating tax proceeds to the judicial\r\nbranch of government, a violation of the Separation of Powers clause\r\nof the Georgia Constitution.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nFor Lowndes County, the ruling effectively renders the lawsuit moot\r\nthat was filed by the five cities against the county in September\r\n2012.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nThe Supreme Court’s ruling came in the case of Turner County vs. the\r\nCity of Ashburn over a dispute in splitting the proceeds from the\r\none cent sales tax, the same issue in the Lowndes lawsuit. By\r\ndeclaring the portion unconstitutional that would allow a judge to\r\ndecide how to allocate the tax dollars between the entities, the\r\nissue is now in limbo for several counties in Georgia.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nYou may recall that\r\n\r\nformer Chairman Ashley Paulk<\/a>\r\nwasn’t interested in discussing proposals from the cities,\r\nand said from before\r\n\r\nthe LOST negotiations began<\/a>\r\nthat he expected it to go to arbitration.\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nThis was the same Chairman Ashley Paulk who put SPLOST VII on the ballot\r\na year early<\/a> and\r\n\r\nlost it<\/a>.\r\nI wonder how much input County Manager Joe Pritchard had into these two losing decisions?\r\n

\r\n\r\nAt least SPLOST VI hasn’t expired yet\r\nand there’s time for the voters to go again on\r\n\r\nSPLOST VII in November<\/a>.\r\n

\r\nWhat happens now with LOST?\r\n<\/p>\r\n
\r\n

\r\nThe Georgia Supreme Court’s online press releases haven’t been updated since February,\r\nbut\r\nCourtney Highfield, writing for Fox31Online 7 October 2013,\r\n\r\nquoted part of the PR<\/a>:\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n“The scheme set forth in the 2010 amendment improperly\r\nauthorizes judicial resolution of the allocation and distribution of\r\ntax proceeds, an exclusively legislative power,” Justice\r\nRobert Benham writes for the Court.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n“In this case, we hold that, absent an abuse of discretion or\r\nother showing of illegality, the allocation of tax proceeds by and\r\namong the political subdivisions of a LOST special district is left\r\nto the discretion of those entities and is not a matter for judicial\r\ndetermination.”\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n“While this Court recognizes that the procedure set forth in\r\nthe 2010 amendment represents an attempt to frame a remedy for the\r\nmischief created by the impasse that may occur by requiring\r\ncompeting political subdivisions to negotiate and agree upon\r\nallocation of the tax ‘pie,’ and although we have considered\r\n‘the old law, the evil, and the remedy,’ nevertheless this\r\nparticular solution does not pass constitutional muster,”\r\ntoday’s opinion says.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nThe opinion points out that “this Court presumes the acts of\r\nthe General Assembly are constitutional and construes those acts as\r\nvalid when possible. But in this case, we are not invalidating a tax\r\nand not striking the LOST Act or its terms for how the tax may be\r\nlevied or for what purposes the proceeds may be applied. We are\r\nstriking only the 2010 amendment…which effectively grants judicial\r\nresolution of the allocation and distribution of tax proceeds, a\r\nprocess that we deem to be a clear violation of the separation of\r\npowers doctrine.”\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n“In sum, the trial court erred when it denied Turner County’s\r\nmotion to dismiss and sustained the constitutionality of the 2010\r\namendment to\r\n\r\n[Official Code of Georgia] \u00a7 48-8-89<\/a> and so its order\r\non said motion is reversed,” the opinion says. Furthermore,\r\nthe order that picked the cities’ plan over the county’s “is\r\nvacated.”\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n\r\nPeach Pundit posted a link<\/a> to the entire\r\n\r\n22 page decision by the court<\/a>.\r\nIt turns out\r\n\r\nSCOG blog<\/a> routinely posts the actual rulings with commentary.\r\n<\/td><\/tr><\/table>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nSince the counties continued not discussing past the 1 Jan 2013 filing deadline\r\nfor LOST, and collecting it only continued waiting for judicial arbitration,\r\nthe county now has to stop collecting the tax.\r\nThat doesn’t mean the county and the cities don’t get the revenue.\r\nInstead, property taxes will rise to match the missing $25 to $30 million\r\nto their general funds.\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nDoes this mean the county’s property taxes will rise proportionately\r\nto account for\r\n\r\nthe 58% percentage in the county’s position paper<\/a>, same as previously\r\nnegotiated in 2002?\r\n

\r\n\r\nAs\r\n\r\nGretchen said to WCTV<\/a> a year ago:\r\n

\r\n

\r\n<\/a>\r\nIt’s sort of sad because it is a waste, if you will, of taxpayer\r\ndollars. That the elected officials can’t get together and come to\r\nsome agreement to say that they all understand how the money has to\r\nbe divided up. Yeah, it’s sad that more money has to go to lawyers\r\ninstead of being spent on services.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nNow \r\nit looks like the county and the cities have 120 days from Monday\r\nto make up their minds, assuming that this part of\r\nO.C.G.A. \u00a748-8-89 wasn’t also thrown out:\r\n

\r\n

\r\n(5) If a new distribution certificate as provided for in this Code\r\nsection is not received by the commissioner, the authority to impose\r\nthe tax authorized by Code Section 48-8-82 shall cease, and the tax\r\nshall not be levied in the special district after such date unless\r\nthe reimposition of the tax is subsequently authorized pursuant to\r\nCode Section 48-8-85. When the imposition of the tax is so\r\nterminated, the commissioner shall retain the proceeds of the tax\r\nwhich were to be distributed to the governing authorities of the\r\ncounty and qualified municipalities within the special district\r\nuntil the commissioner receives a certificate on behalf of each such\r\ngoverning authority specifying the percentage of the proceeds which\r\neach such governing authority shall receive. If no such certificate\r\nis received by the commissioner within 120 days of the date on which\r\nthe authority to levy the tax was terminated, the proceeds shall\r\nescheat to the state, and the commissioner shall transfer the\r\nproceeds to the state’s general fund.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nSo our local legislative bodies need to be negotiating the LOST pie\r\nwhile trying to convince local taxpayers to vote for SPLOST VII\r\nin the November election.\r\nThe\r\n\r\nalleged county attorney<\/a>\r\nwas quoted in the VDT story but didn’t mention this part.\r\n

\r\nThe Times story concludes:\r\n

\r\n

\r\nThe Times will continue to follow the issue in the coming days to\r\nlet readers know what the potential impact of the Supreme Court’s\r\nruling may be.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nShould be interesting.\r\nMeanwhile, maybe the county and the cities,\r\ninstead of squabbling over the tax pie,\r\ncould work on\r\n\r\nincreasing local prosperity<\/a>.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"So all our tax money the county spent on the alleged county attorney arguing before the state Supreme Court was wasted. The remaining law seems to say by 120 days from Monday the cities and the county need to come to an agreement. Kay Harris wrote for the VDT yesterday, Lowndes LOST in limbo: Supreme […]","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":[601,2,602,603,544,88,604,52,54,133],"tags":[6366,679,658,8790,8701,8699,8791,135,8702,8792,8775,12,7,8734,2186,8793,8724,7043,60,7044,6,8726,8742,6650],"class_list":["post-5988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dasher","category-government","category-hahira","category-lake-park","category-lost","category-lowndes-county-commission","category-remerton","category-splost","category-valdosta-city-council","category-vdt","tag-arbitration","tag-ashley-paulk","tag-collection","tag-dasher","tag-georgia","tag-government","tag-hahira","tag-kay-harris","tag-lake","tag-lake-park","tag-lost","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-lowndes-county-commission","tag-negotiation","tag-remerton","tag-splost","tag-supreme-court-of-georgia","tag-tax","tag-tax-pie","tag-valdosta","tag-valdosta-city-council","tag-vdt","tag-walter-g-elliott"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-1yA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5988","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=5988"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5988\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6000,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5988\/revisions\/6000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}