Georgia Governor Eyes Homeowner Tax Relief Grants For $

August sees Georgia's administration shaping the state's budget for fiscal year 2009. The governor has recommended that the Homeowner Tax Relief Grants be eliminated, in order to help make up for the shortfall in other expected revenues. Homeowner Tax Relief Grants are $428 million in grants to county, city, and school district budgets to reimburse those taxing authorities for the grants provided to owners of property with a homestead exemption. If the General Assembly does not eliminate these grants from the FY09 budget, somewhere in the state budget additional cuts will have to be made up to this $428 million.

Tax bills are being mailed in many counties this month that include the HTRG. If the General Assembly and the governor eliminate these grants, then the county commissions, city councils, and local boards of education will either 1) absorb the reduction in expected revenues because the state grant will not materialize, or 2) have the tax commissioner send a second bill in the Spring to homeowners to pay what was originally credited to their total bill.

A few pending state legislation issues are summarized here, identified by the House Bill number (HB), House Resolution number (HR), or Senate Bill (SB).

HB 901, SUPPORTED BY GEORGIA PTA
Parent Protection Act. Employers must allow employees to take unpaid leave, up to 24 hours annually, without fear of retaliation to respond to an invitation from the school for a conference or for medical appointments for themselves, their children, or their close relatives. Schools and day care centers must provide 3 days notice of such conferences.

Georgia PTA has worked hard to help remove the barriers that keep parents from coming to the school because of their work schedules. Also, PTA supports the opportunity to enable students to get vaccinations and medical care when needed because a parent can take them to the doctor. A substitute was presented to the subcommittee which allowed mediation before a person could go to court if the employer failed to give time off. The subcommittee did not have time to analyze the contents and it will be taken up at a future meeting. Georgia PTA again testified FOR this bill.

HB 979 OPPOSED BY GEORGIA PTA
Enabling legislation for HR 1246. Freezes property values and permits an increase per year up to 2% on residential property and 3% on all other property. Eliminates motor vehicle taxes on personally owned vehicles, 50% in 2009 and 100% in 2010. This will cause a budget shortfall of $672 million in the second year. Repeals the 1/4 mill of state property taxes, about $20 on a $200,000 home, costing about $90 million to the state.

PTA OPPOSES. There are no replacement revenues for any of this. So how will the drop in revenues be reflected in the state budget of which K-12 has about 40% and all of education has about 55%? The FY08 and FY09 budget revenues estimates have been cut by the governor by $310 million due to recession, most of it in K-12 education. This bill will exacerbate the pinch at the local and district levels.

HR 1246 OPPOSED BY GEORGIA PTA
CA to replace property taxes on motor vehicle taxes billed to the owner but to be paid by the state through a grant, about $672 million. Real property assessments are frozen at the 2008 level. The ? mill of state property taxes is repealed, about $88 million. Enabling legislation is HB 1158. Senate substitute language: removes the car tag tax repeal, removes the quarter mill state property tax repeal, keeps the assessment freeze as of 2008 but limits the annual valuation rise for all properties to the U.S. index of governmental spending which runs about 1 percentage point higher than the CPI, requires a referendum to decrease the 20 mill cap on school taxes should a school district decide to limit its options, and has appended the entire contents of SR 20 which limits the state appropriations to the level of last year modified by population increases and the inflation index also applied to the local tax digests.

PTA does not support either of these versions. The House bill removes the local tax revenues for motor vehicles collected at the local level which now stay within the jurisdiction, and replaces them with state appropriations which has proved to be unreliable for adequate revenues for schools. The Senate version limits the amount that can be appropriated from the state budget for anything, and education is the biggest part of the state budget. So underfunding of previous years which has not yet been remedied will never be restored and new necessary programs or grants (technology, texts and other instructional materials, transportation) will not be available. All the state promises to do with the Senate version is keep up the underfunding as it is affected by population increases and inflation.

SB 458 OPPOSED BY GEORGIA PTA
A voucher for students who are in schools or school districts which are not accredited or lose their accreditation. Students in schools which are in “needs improvement” status for the seventh or later years will have these same voucher choices. Choices for the student are to transfer to another school within the home district or within another district which is accredited, or to transfer to a private school, either sectarian or nonsectarian, and take a voucher for the amount that would have been earned from state funds for the student's program. This part is very similar to the voucher program passed last year for special education students. The vouchers under SB 458 will cease if the school or school system becomes reaccredited, or if the school is removed from the “needs improvement” status.

PTA supports public school choice, but OPPOSES any variation of a voucher.

Public education funding is a big issue. An essential role of state government is to provide an education to its citizens in order to maintain a population capable of participating in a democracy. As globalization of the world economy continues, it is evident that Georgia's economic development and prosperity depends on developing an educated workforce.

More than anything else, a good education depends on interested and involved parents, and legislators don't affect that much. But, money helps as well, and government affects that a lot.

A quality education requires consistent and adequate state funding. Georgia PTA continues to ask for restoration of more than $1.4 billion in cumulative Quality Basic Education (QBE) funding cuts that have shifted state obligations to local taxpayers, causing many Georgia school systems to exhaust reserves, cut programs, lay off employees and/or raise property taxes. Full funding of mandated programs and reforms at the time they are enacted is a state responsibility, as laid forth in the state's constitution and statutory requirements.

Budget Cuts from the Gold Dome

In answer to an expected $1.6 billion shortfall in the state budget, Governor Sonny Perdue called for 6% budget cuts across all departments for the fiscal year 2009. Schools will absorb only a 2% cut. Tax collections were down 1.1% for the 2008 year and the state had to use $600 million in reserves to make ends meet. The adoption of the amended fiscal year 2009 budget in the 2009 session will reflect the cuts made by the administration, and does not require lawmaker approval.

Meanwhile, a trial begins October 21, 2008 in a case where the Consortium for Adequate School Funding in Georgia is suing the state to force it to address funding shortfalls.

Still developing … watch the current work on Georgia House Bill 1050 (HB 1050). This bill would require that the Quality Basic Education Formula is fully funded by the General Assembly. It eliminates some of the conditional clauses by which the General Assembly can choose not to fully fund the formula.

Free Education Really Means Tax Funded.

So, schools are getting off easier than other state agencies in the budget cuts. Still, such cuts have the potential to reduce the effectiveness of school planning and administration. Keep an eye on other sectors of the economy that qualify for tax exemptions and credits, and consider if education might also be entitled to such incentives.

Related to this issue, Georgia PTA's legislative priorities in 2008 (in part) ask parents to:

• Support public K-12 schools with adequate state funding, reflective of the actual costs of providing the state defined services. Support equitable distribution of state funding to K-12 schools, currently calculated on property tax wealth in each school system.
• Support using public funds for public schools only. Oppose any effort to use public funding for private or sectarian schools.
• Support the local property tax and the educational SPLOST sources of tax revenues for local school district spending priorities.

Show Your Kids Your Secret Power

If you learn about issues in our educational system that you'd like to see changed, you have a little leverage. Legislators and state officials (including the school board) are elected by the citizens. Are you registered to vote?

Details on how to register and on how to find your elected representatives:

www.sos.georgia.gov/elections/polllocator/