State Representatives Give Update On General Assembly

Matt Shinall
The Cartersville Daily Tribune News
February 4, 2010


The Georgia General Assembly began its annual session just over three weeks ago. State representatives covering Bartow County commented on their hopes for the assembly and progress thus far.

The three men representing Bartow are Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Cassville; Rep. Paul Battles, R-Cartersville; and Rep. Tom Graves, R-Ranger. These elected delegates will spend a total of 40 legislative days deciding the fate of proposed bills and evaluating budget concerns.

With the appointment of a new speaker of the house, Rep. David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge, the Georgia General Assembly underwent a change in leadership. With this change came new committee assignments and the appointment of new chairmen for those committees. These changes created a slow start to the beginning of the 2010 General Assembly, as Loudermilk said last week.

"We're just really getting going now because of the change in leadership. It's been kind of a slow start," Loudermilk said. "We really haven't had much going on other than just starting to move some bills through committees and working on the budget."

Expectations were for progress to pick up this week. During this session not only will there be a budget passed for fiscal year 2011 but Gov. Sonny Perdue has proposed a supplementary budget for fiscal year 2010 to augment the original FY10 budget of $18.6 billion. FY10 will end on June 30.

For the formation of future budgets, legislators look to proposed revenue figures to estimate limitations and abilities. Battles said the state of those numbers are a factor as they contemplate the budget.

"The revenue figures that we get are not too encouraging. Some of the things that we're definitely concerned about is making sure that we're not burdening our citizens with more tax to pay, then trying to stretch the revenue dollars that we do have and meet as much of the needs that we have in these agencies that we do fund," Battles said.

Due to the slack revenue numbers and a plethora of agencies vying for funds, Battles feels that a budget cut of $1 billion to $2 billion will be seen.

"Education is number one. It takes up -- combined of those two things kindergarten all the way throughout the university system -- takes up about 56 percent of our budget, and then, of course, we have health care and all the other agencies that rely on the state for funding and we are looking at a considerable reduction in the budget," Battles said. "I think we're all trying to work hard to make sure that our priorities get funded as much as possible, but there will be some deep cuts in this year's supplemented budget for the next six months. And for the next 2011 budget we're still going to see some real reductions in our revenue.

"The representatives agreed on the importance of economic stimulation and job growth in the state. Efforts have been made throughout the house to remedy some of the current economic woes through the promotion of the private sector."

The main thing that we're going to be spending most of our time on is stimulating the economy through conservative ideas to enhance small business. Jobs are going to be the number one focus. We've even created a new committee -- I serve on that committee -- that is going to be focused on small business and job creation," Loudermilk said.

Leading much of the charge for small business success is Graves, who has introduced the Jobs, Opportunity and Business Success Act of 2010. The act is made of two bills, HB 1023 and HB 1024, designed to increase incentives for small business owners by providing tax credits and cuts as well as eliminating certain regulations. "

My number-one priority is creating an environment in which the private sector can expand so that jobs are created for Georgians and that's going to involve removal of the barriers or burdens to job hiring, which includes taxation, litigation and regulation," Graves said.

He expounded on the JOBS Act of 2010, saying it has been well received and his hopes for these bills are high.

"With nearly half a million Georgians out of work, our focus is to initiate policy that allows the private sector to expand, as opposed to the Washington mentality of expansion of government," Graves said. "Georgia has so many great things working for it. The entrepreneurial spirit, the creativity of the people, the desire and the drive to succeed, and we're going to harness that and empower that and allow that entrepreneurial spirit to carry us through these through days and bring us out before any other state. As a result we'll be a beacon for the rest of the country."

Battles has also written a bill that has been submitted and seen approval from many at the capitol. The proposed bill would allow school systems to refurbish school buses, opposed to the current system which mandates the purchase of new buses from a deemed source.

He stated that the cost of a new bus varies but averages around $85,000 to $90,000. The cost to refurbish a bus, he said, typically costs less than $30,000. This difference quickly adds up when it is taken into consideration that there are 180 public school systems in the state."

It has been well received and I've gotten support from the Senate side on that bill. It certainly will have a tremendous effect if systems will use the refurbishing of buses versus purchasing buses. It literally can be millions of dollars a year in savings," Battles said.

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