Tax, fee hikes carry the day on ‘Crossover Day'

AJC 

But while the Senate was a model of efficiency, rolling through most of its 33 bills by 6 p.m., the House was in something of a tailspin. House members began the day with 36 bills on their calendar and then added 34 more. By 11 p.m. they'd only dispensed with 31 -- and this after starting at 9 a.m. The House, too, was hampered by the fact that Speaker David Ralston (R-Blue Ridge) was ill.

The first bill that passed the House would limit how many bears can be snared on a managed hunt. The bill also, among other things, would make it unlawful to export, farm or sell any freshwater turtle.

The more substantive stuff came after lunch, when the House voted to raise $169 million through a new hospital tax (or fee, depending on one's point of view) and an additional $96 million by increasing about 80 state user fees.

The debate on the two bills, HB 307 and HB 1055, respectively, led to a strange reversal of political stereotypes. Republican leaders argued for "revenue enhancements" and assiduously called them fees, not taxes. Democrats, meanwhile, and a few Republicans, slammed the measures as tax increases, although truthfully Democrats wanted to swap them for another tax increase, one on tobacco.

While debating the fees bill, House Appropriations Chairman Ben Harbin (R-Evans) said some of the fees hadn't been raised in decades, including a fee created in the 1950s in which counties are assessed 4 cents per forested acre for fire protection. Under the bill, that would be bumped up to 10 cents.

An airport fee for safety inspections, set in 1978, is $10. The inspections cost the state about $400. The new proposal calls for the fee to go up to $100 per runway, up to $400.

“These are things that should have been done years ago, but they weren’t," Harbin said.

He said the government has been basically subsidizing services for a small number of Georgians with the fees.

With the state searching for up to $1 billion in budget cuts and new sources of revenue, “we weren’t just looking under rocks, we were sifting through the sand,” Harbin said.

Rep. Richard Smith (R-Columbus), chairman of the House Budget and Fiscal Affairs Oversight Committee, said some of the fees haven’t changed in decades and don’t come close to covering the government’s costs for the services.

“This doesn’t fix the budget,” Smith said. “We’re just ensuring we can maintain a level of competent, efficient services.”

But Democrats lined up to call it what they said it is.

Rep. Virgil Fludd (D-Tyrone): “The bill is a tax increase. It can be called a fee, user fee, license fee, but in all honesty it is a tax."

The bill was amended at the last moment to gain the support of county governments, who were facing increased fees but receiving none of the increased revenue. In a compromise, a $50 fee on filings in State Court would go to the counties while the state would keep a new $100 fee on civil filings in Superior Court.

On the hospital tax bill, the House approved the move, 141-23, after first agreeing to exempt physician-owned surgical centers. That amendment lowered the revenue estimate by $6 million to $169 million.

But the debate wasn't as easy as the vote count. Rep. Mark Hatfield (R-Waycross) said he signed a pledge not to raise taxes and warned other lawmakers who also signed the pledge not to do so. Hatfield then took the unusual step of naming the names of many lawmakers who had signed the pledge. His doing so brought a gasp and a few boos from the House, where it's generally considered a no-no to name names.

"There's only one label you can apply to this rag of a bill," Hatfield said. "And that is a tax increase."

But, ultimately, the bill passed as lawmakers realized hospitals had chosen this method over less appetizing options such as the loss of sales tax exemptions for nonprofit hospitals and deep cuts to Medicaid provider payments.

"Are we going to vote on policy here or are we going to use it for politics in campaigns?" said House Majority Leader Jerry Keen (R-St. Simons Island). "Your hospitals have asked you to allow them to do this."

Relatively speaking -- aside from at least two heavy debates -- Crossover Day in the Senate went smoothly. Every bill that came up for a vote passed, including a controversial abortion bill.

Senators debated for more than three hours on the bill that would make it a crime to persuade a woman to have an abortion, or to perform an abortion based on the race or gender of the child. With a 33-14 vote along party lines, it was the tightest tally of the day.

The Senate also approved bills to establish a needs-based component of the HOPE scholarship, to limit membership terms of the state Transportation Board, and to open up for potential bids to lure the Sports Hall of Fame and the Music Hall of Fame out of Macon.

Posted via email from Jim Nichols for GA State House