Happy New Year my Friends! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season. The dawn of the New Year closes a disappointing chapter in our state’s great history. 2007 brought with it a devastating drought and oh yeah… there’s Speaker Richardson’s plan to butcher the way we pay for things we need, like schools for our kids and roads for our cars. With a new session of the General Assembly convening this week, the water crisis and Richardson’s tax plan will certainly be the 800 pound gorillas in the Capitol chambers.

Above all else, the relentless drought has exposed the state's poor leadership and utter lack of planning. The latest potential remedy is a seriously flawed plan offered by the state Water Council. The proposal would carve out a set of regions that would be used to drive local water planning. The problem is the boundaries do not coincide with the state’s river basins and would do little to protect downstream communities. Frankly, this solution would be like putting a band-aid on a broken leg.  

Early this century the state was coming off the heels of another extreme drought, and the then Democratic leadership responded with a comprehensive proposal that called for serious solutions, including the construction of more reservoirs. However, when the current administration and legislative leadership took over the plan was quickly scuttled.

As Yogi Berra once said “it’s like déjà vu all over again.” And what does Governor Perdue do? He prays. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a big believer in the power of prayer, but in this case it’s like praying for a passing grade on a final that the governor never studied for. He could have put his faith to work like Noah and used the crisis to call a special session of the General Assembly to enact a plan to both increase supply through new reservoirs and require development planning and conservation. Instead, he holds a vigil and points fingers at environmentalists and the Army Corp of Engineers.

The other gathering storm is House Speaker Richardson's push to repeal state and local property taxes and replace them with a sales tax. Richardson’s so-called “GREAT” plan (Georgia’s Repeal of Every Ad Valorem Tax) has gone over like a turd in a punch bowl and has garnered opposition from all corners of the state because it would strip counties, cities and local school boards of the power to collect property taxes, sending all of Georgia’s tax revenue straight to state coffers. In other words, the plan essentially puts local governments on an allowance, placing allocation power in the hands of a representative from Paulding County. With gubernatorial aspirations, I suspect Speaker Richardson’s plan is simply a veiled attempt to curry support with some of the fringe elements in his party’s base.

Yes my Friends, it’s shaping up to be an interesting session, but I’m hoping that we can roll up our sleeves and get busy solving not just our water woes but other serious concerns like transportation, healthcare, and the budget cuts that have crippled our education system. At any rate, stay tuned!

I want to know what you think. Please contact me with any issues you have so we can work together to make our government responsive to our needs. Again, you can always contact me with your thoughts and ideas via e-mail, This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it   or through my website at www.becauseyourvoicecounts.com, or by calling me at home, at 770-696-4777.

Again, thanks for all you do. 

Curt