From the Rome News-Tribune, Feb. 21, 2010 --

EVEN for Georgia, where odd legislative proposals have long been commonplace, this current General Assembly session is shaping up as something remarkably weird. There are so many deeply flawed notions kicking around as to leave citizens utterly bewildered as to what they are actually about.

Let’s look at a few.

1. GOV. SONNY Perdue’s plan to turn four elected statewide offices that oversee specific parts of government into gubernatorial appointments is supposedly for efficiency. This executive form is familiar (the president’s Cabinet) and would involve the school superintendent plus the labor, agriculture and insurance commissioners.

Even conceding that much of the electorate may not quite know what most of these officials do, and that many who wind up picking an agriculture commissioner believe that peanuts grow on trees, it is rarely, if ever, a wise thing in a representative democracy to reduce the people’s power.

Supposedly to make its point, the governor’s office pointed out these four officials currently supervise 6,000 employees and a budget of $7.5 billion (most of it in education). Another way to look at it is that those figures reveal the potential for political party patronage.

It would be a heck of a good way to build a political machine guaranteeing Republican rule forever, not that such is viewed as being at much risk now.

This would require voter permission at the polls and is a good example of why voting “No” on simple-sounding items is considered by many to be the safest, and only, way to respond.

2. GREATER ROME has new schools and classrooms built or under construction all over its landscape, thanks almost entirely to local voters backing special-purpose, local-option sales taxes (SPLOST) for that purpose.

House Resolution 1203 and House Bill 1020 would amend this tool, now limited to actual physical things, so as to allow a SPLOST to be of longer duration and used for “maintenance and operation” of schools. Schools do need more and better reliance for their local funding, now limited to property taxes, but this is an awfully transparent gimmick.

“Maintenance” could be light/heating bills; “operation” could be teacher’s salaries.

With the state in dire budgetary straits, and schools sucking up half of its revenues and being slashed severely already, it is easy to foresee that, if passed (the voters would have to approve), this shortly would be the only way left to keep schools open after the state abandons even more of its financial support. It also means communities could never again afford to build a new school.

Perhaps the products of our schools are not yet consistently top-notch, but voters who graduated from them didn’t fall out of the back of a turnip truck.

3. EVEN legislators are frowning, and the attorney general has decreed it “likely” unconstitutional, but Perdue wants lottery money now earmarked for HOPE and pre-K to also cover some $33 million in college grants and scholarships long provided out of the now-dwindling general state treasury.

The people previously locked up the lottery money in a safe so precisely this sort of thing couldn’t be done to it, so what the heck is the governor thinking?

Well, he’s already said that if this isn’t done he may just zero out the money and let deserving students and their families fend for themselves. Proposing a blatantly illegal “solution” gives him and his party some cover — the attorney general is a Democrat, is he not?

If one is going to deliberately commit murder it’s always smart to make it look like somebody else’s fault.

4. THE PROPOSAL to pay for all those local highway improvements that the state claims not to be able to afford via additional “regional” sales taxes has many flaws, previously analyzed here. Now the governor has made it much, much worse.

Under the plan, the idea was groupings of counties would select possible projects and then the tax would be imposed by majority vote — if Floyd County said no it still would have to pay, which stinks as it could be easily outvoted by counties with different priorities.

Now, when asked, the governor has indicated that he and his new highway planning czar, whom he selects, would have a strong voice in what roads get put on the ballot. How strong? Perdue responded: “I wouldn’t use the word veto power.”

That’s sure a novel interpretation of an idea that’s being disguised as involving “home rule.”

5. USUALLY when some utterly balmy law is proposed that violates civil rights and individual privacy it comes from some back-bencher looking to gain attention. That’s what makes House Bill 1163 really alarming.

Proposed by Rep. Ben Harbin, R-Evans, it would require that anyone seeking unemployment or other state benefits (Medicaid? HOPE scholarships?) would first have to take a drug test. That anyone means everyone, of course.

Harbin’s no lightweight. He is chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.

Those who test positive would still get the benefits. After all, denying support for the jobless might well evict families and starve children. One supposes the intent here is to assure such funds don’t go to purchase narcotics — although nobody much worries about booze and smokes and wild, wild women, do they? Those who flunk would have to enroll in a treatment program (who pays?).

Whatever is thus “saved” would likely be eaten up by the considerable costs of testing all applicants but the best part is this: Refuse to take the test as a matter of principle and belief in American freedom and you’ll be barred from those benefits for two years (heck, unemployment pay doesn’t even run that long!).

Since every cloud has a silver lining, here’s the one in stuff like this being seriously considered: With politicians offering such “solutions” all of the state’s very real problems start to almost look minor.