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August 16, 2011

Pennington, tea party leaders speak out against tax vote change

From Staff and Wire Reports

Dalton Mayor David Pennington told Georgia tea party activists on Monday that Georgia “needs tax reform, not a tax increase.”

Members of the Georgia Tea Party Patriots and local elected officials gathered at the state Capitol to speak against a plan to shift a public vote on a 1 percent transportation sales tax to the November 2012 general election from the July 2012 general primary.

Supporters of the move say more voters will turn out for the November general election, allowing more Georgians to have a say. But tea party leaders say it’s unfair to change plans simply to maximize the tax hike’s chance of passing.

“I find it interesting that our conservative state Legislature increased taxes dramatically three years ago when they stopped funding the homeowners tax relief grant,” Pennington said. “Then they passed the hospital bed tax, which is really a tax on small businesses’ health insurance plans. Then they did away with the back-to-school sales tax holiday, and we saw Georgians flock to South Carolina and Tennessee over the past two weeks. Now, they want to change the date from the July primary, when we’ll have a heavily Republican, conservative vote, to the general election so they can get the Obama Democrats to help them pass what could be the largest tax increase in Georgia history of some $1.6 billion (a year).”

Atlanta Tea Party Patriots co-founder Debbie Dooley said she would be keeping score to see how legislators vote.

Tea party leaders said they won’t support the move unless lawmakers add an amendment mandating that all local tax votes must take place during the fall general election.

The transportation tax plan, adopted earlier this year, divides the state into groups. Elected officials in those local community groups must come up with a list of local transportation projects, and voters will then vote on whether to hike their sales tax by 1 percent to fund them.

House Speaker David Ralston said the tea party is a political force to be reckoned with in Georgia.

“But I don’t doubt the ability of the people of Georgia to make this decision,” the Republican from Blue Ridge said. “That’s the bedrock of what we passed.”

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