What business wants from Perdue, GOP in '07-'08
BYLINE: Ryan Mahoney
The national Republican Party took a beating Nov. 7, as Democrats took control of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate and picked up majorities in statehouses across the country.
In Georgia, though, the GOP solidified its hold on the state House and kept its 12-seat margin in the state Senate. Georgians also handed Gov. Sonny Perdue a second term and gave the state its first Republican lieutenant governor and secretary of state since Reconstruction.
That gives business groups hope their ideas will find an even more receptive audience at the Gold Dome over the next two years than in the past two. Both the Georgia Chamber of Commerce and the state chapter of the National Federation of Independent Business were still toasting the GOP's Georgia victories Nov. 8 while firming up their legislative agendas for the 2007 session.
The Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce declined to discuss its statehouse agenda until after its board votes on the matter Nov. 16. In the past, the chamber has advocated broadly on such issues as transportation, economic development, property rights and managing Atlanta's limited water supplies.
Both the Georgia Chamber and the Georgia NFIB, which represents smaller businesses, are pushing for more tax cuts.
In 2005, after Republicans added the state House to their majority in the Senate, lawmakers approved a $1 billion cut in the corporate income tax for companies based in Georgia. There is still talk of eliminating that tax altogether, but both groups said they're focusing instead on getting rid of the $273 million inventory tax and the $140 million tax on energy used in manufacturing.
Neither measure made it out of committee in 2006. Legislators have been studying both taxes, and many others, over the summer to determine which to eliminate or alter in 2007 as they seek a more consumption-based tax system.
Whatever their decision, they will likely face opposition from cities and counties -- which collect many of the taxes they want to tinker with -- and maybe even from Perdue, who has his own ideas on how to use Georgia's recent revenue gains.
And although U.S. Rep. John Linder's Fair Tax is effectively dead in Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi's Democrat-run House -- it would have done away with the national income tax in favor of a federal sales tax -- Georgia lawmakers could propose a sales tax on the state level in 2007 to replace either Georgia income taxes or local property taxes.
On transportation, the Georgia Chamber expects to lead several groups in their most ambitious push yet for more state money for congestion-relieving projects, especially in metro Atlanta, home of some of the nation's most hellish traffic.
That could mean asking voters for a new statewide penny sales tax (perhaps ditching the Georgia gas tax in the bargain) or seeking a regional sales tax for the metro only.
"The funding has not been adequate to keep up with the growth and congestion," said Georgia Chamber lobbyist Joe Fleming. "We need more."
Though he isn't saying anything yet, Perdue might be open to such an idea in his second term. In his first, the governor took criticism for not doing enough to address Atlanta's clogged highways. But with the budget stabilized and a mandate from the voters, business groups hope he will feel more comfortable tackling the issue, a major factor in where companies and their employees locate.
On health care, the Georgia NFIB will call for tax credits for employers that make health savings accounts available to their workers.
With Democrats' rise to power in Congress, new tax breaks for such accounts are probably dead at the federal level. But Georgia NFIB Director David Raynor thinks they could get a warmer reception here, even though a bill that would have given insurers incentives to offer the accounts never came up for a vote in the House in 2006.
"The No. 1 issue plaguing small-business owners has been the affordability and accessibility of health-care insurance," Raynor said. "We're hoping these can be entertained here."
The Georgia Chamber may move for reform of Georgia's certificate-of-need program, in which hospitals or doctors wishing to build or expand their facilities can find their efforts shanghaied by the laborious application process and opposition from rival providers.
The chamber is also likely to support even more funding for the state's nascent biotech sector and back allowing state pension funds to invest a portion of their assets in venture capital, a practice common in many other states and which Perdue supports. A bill authorizing it passed the Senate but failed to gain traction in the House in 2006.
Both groups consider tort reform, eminent domain and illegal immigration -- the three big issues of the 2005 and 2006 sessions -- more or less settled and said they want the state to continue its hands-off approach to regulating industry.
Whatever issues arise, with Casey Cagle at the helm as lieutenant governor, the GOP will have an even better chance of passing major bills in the Senate in 2007 than in 2006, when predecessor Mark Taylor allowed Democrats to gum up the works from the well.
And since Republicans now control 106 seats out of 180 in the House, they only have to convince 14 of 74 Democrats to vote with them on constitutional amendments, such the split of Milton and Fulton counties expected in 2008.