State Rep. Ben Harbin continues his role as Porkmaster as local assistance grants (the Georgia version of earmarks) are added on in conference committee, hidden from public view until an hour before the budget is voted on:

The spending included 470 local assistance grants that were not revealed to the public until hours before the 2008 legislative session ended. The $6 million in grants were just about the last thing budget-writers add to budget before approving it on the final day of the session.

In addition, lawmakers sprinkled millions of dollars in big-ticket items such as local construction projects throughout the budget, many in the districts of prominent lawmakers such as Speaker Glenn Richardson (R-Hiram), House Majority Leader Jerry Keen (R-St. Simons Island) and Senate Majority Leader Tommie Williams (R-Lyons).

The budget for fiscal 2009, which begins July 1, includes more than $1 billion in local construction projects.

Even Gov. Sonny Perdue, who has not been on the best terms with House leaders, got $2 million for a new library in his home Houston County and $7.3 million for a local horse barn and practice ring.

House Appropriations Chairman Ben Harbin (R-Evans), who helped secure money for his hometown Little League program as well as more than $75 million in projects at the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta, defended the local spending.

“That money belongs to the taxpayers, and if we can get it into those communities, and it benefits those communities, it benefits the whole state,” Harbin said.

That money does belong to the taxpayers, and they deserve to keep it instead of going to pay for what are nothing more that vote buying projects in legislator’s districts.

Here is an example of some of the projects paid for by your tax dollars:

This year many communities received money to promote tourism, improve parks and restore old buildings. For instance, Jeff Davis County in rural Southeast Georgia got $10,000 in the budget to promote local tourism. The county is represented in the Senate by Williams, and in the House by Majority Caucus Chairman Jay Roberts (R-Ocilla). Alma, another Southeast Georgia town and home to Republican Rep. Tommy Smith, got $8,000 to replace seats at a local theater. Douglasville got $20,000 to help with economic development and tourism. Tybee Island got $30,000 for a theater restoration project.

You can view more of the Local Assistance Grants by looking at the budget, which you can find here. The LAGs begin on page 29. I am not complaining about projects that concern public safety, like funding for police or fire departments…I am point to projects like $20,000 to restore the Baxley Livestock Barn & Arena or $35,000 to renovate restrooms and bathrooms at park in Madison County.

LAGs aren’t the only problem, as the article notes. The budget was full of pork projects in other parts of the budget. And, like I wrote above. The process of adding these projects was not subject to any public scrutiny, as Georgia Republican appropriators used similar tactic of their Democratic counterparts on the national level by inserting the projects in the budget in conference, this was something floated by House Majority Leader Jerry Keen before the 2008 session. This prevents amendments from the floor that could potentially strike some of the more frivolous projects.

There is no transparency in the budget process and Republicans in the state legislature are working to make sure it stays that way.

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Goes to Eric Johnson:
We are off for a week for Easter and to let the Senate Appropriations Committee work on our version of the FY09 budget. Easter is about Grace. We need it.

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As I previously wrote, six legislators voted against the $300 million amended budget today.

They are:
- Steve Davis
- Bobby Franklin
- Tom Graves
- Doug Holt
- Barry Loudermilk
- Martin Scott

They wrote a letter explaining there actions, here is the text courtesy of Steve Davis:

During the 2007 session of the General Assembly, the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to return surplus revenues back to the taxpayers of Georgia. The House stated that as fiscal conservatives, we owe this money back to the taxpayers to whom it belongs.

We members of the House of Representatives stand by the principles of lower taxes, limited government and the belief that surplus revenues, beyond the constitutional requirements, belong to the hardworking people of Georgia and should be returned to their rightful owner. The 2008 supplemental budget spends surplus revenues in further expansion of our State Government.

We believe the ever upward creep of spending encourages people to expect government to solve all their problems. We desire to reorient state spending so that it reinforces the critical virtues of self reliance and personal initiative that made America great.

We applaud the hard and unenviable work of our Appropriations Committee and its Chairman who have been working with a system that is designed to spend, not return surplus taxes. Our votes against HB 989 are not a negative comment upon the Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, House Leadership, the Governor or members of the Appropriations Committee.

Therefore, in standing with true conservative values in which we believe, we the undersigned have voted against the continued spending of excess collected revenues.

Please drop these legislators an e-mail and thank them for their votes and support of the taxpayers.

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The amended FY 2008 budget passed this morning, six legislators voted against it.

One interesting note, there was a rule change in the House that prevented amendments from being offered:

Rule 108.3 No amendment to any appropriations bill shall be in order if the amendment has the effect of both reducing one appropriation and either increasing another appropriation or adding a new appropriation. No amendment to any appropriations bill increasing any appropriation or adding a new appropriation shall be in order unless there has previously been adopted an amendment reducing some other appropriation so as to make funds available for such new or increased appropriation; and no amendment to any appropriations bill shall be in order which would cause the bill to violate the balanced budget requirements of the Constitution.

This is something that I’d expect out of Democrats, in fact I believe that Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D-WI) did try something like this on the federal level. He also wanted to wait until conference to insert earmarks into appropriations bills. A similar idea was floated by Georgia House Majority Leader Jerry Keen.

There already isn’t much transparency in the budget process here in Georgia. I guess debate is pointless too.

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When lawmakers arrived today, the amended FY2008 budget was sitting on their desks. The budget has to sit for 24 hours after presentation and will be taken up during the tomorrow’s session.

No copies have been distributed. As soon as one comes available, we’ll get it posted.

[UPDATE] You can view the amended FY2008 budget here.

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Continuing their recent stories on government waste, WSB-TV shows your federal tax dollars at work…researching eye movements while watching porn at Emory University.

WSB will also be doing stories on hidden taxes (this Thursday at 6pm) and how these tax cost us each $3,000 a year and a story on monkey research (next Monday at 5pm), a $1.2 million to study how monkeys interact.

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We here at Georgia Porkbusters encourage our readers to vote their conscience, but we respectfully encourage you not to vote for Mike Huckabee.

Mike Huckabee a taxpayer’s nightmare. During his tenure as Governor of Arkansas, taxpayers saw their tax burden jump from 30th in the nation in 1997 to 13th in 2007.

The non-partisan FactCheck.org has pointed out that Huckabee’s fiscal record is not at all what he makes it out to be:

The Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration found that 90 tax cuts were enacted in legislative sessions from 1997 through 2005, while Huckabee was governor, and those cuts reduced tax revenues by $378 million. But Huckabee fails to mention the 21 tax increases that occurred under his watch and that raised revenues by substantially more. The total net tax increase under Huckabee’s tenure was an estimated $505.1 million, says the Department of Finance and Administration’s Whitney McLaughlin, adding that the figure has been adjusted for inflation.
[…]
[A]fter adjusting for inflation, we found that spending in fiscal year 1998 (the first budget for which Huckabee was responsible) was actually $10.4 billion, while spending at the end of 2006 was $15.6 billion. That’s a big increase, but it’s a far cry from doubling state spending.

Huckabee uses class warfare rhetoric to rail against free trade and corporations. The Cato Institute gave Huckabee a grade of “F” in fiscal policy in 2006 (16 Democrats received higher grades), and a “D” for his entire tenure as Governor of Arkansas. He supported the 2003 Medicare drug benefit and was the only GOP hopeful that didn’t support Bush’s veto of SCHIP.

This is a candidate that supported an increase in the minimum wage in his state, as well as an increase in the federal minimum wage. He believes that it is a biblical duty to fight global warming and supports cap-and-trade policies. Not to mention that he rails against Wall Street and the salaries of CEOs, going so far as to deem them to be “immoral.”

This is a candidate that supported an increase in the minimum wage in his state, as well as an increase in the federal minimum wage. He believes that it is a biblical duty to fight global warming and supports cap-and-trade policies. Not to mention that he rails against Wall Street and the salaries of CEOs, going so far as to deem them to be “immoral.”

To learn more about Mike Huckabee, please visit the Club for Growth’s examination of his fiscal record to find out why he is called Tax Hike Mike.

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I received this press release from Lynn Westmoreland’s office:

U.S. Rep. Lynn Westmoreland announced today that he will not pursue earmarks in this year’s budget process as part of his fight to overhaul what he considers Congress’ wasteful pork-barrel spending. Westmoreland’s earmark moratorium will be in effect until the process is reformed, and taxpayers have more confidence that their money is spent wisely, he said.

“I believe that Georgians have lost faith that members of Congress are spending their money wisely; they want to see change, and they want to see leadership,” Westmoreland said. “I have two main goals. First, I want to lead by example and I want to send a serious message to the people in Georgia ’s 3rd District that I share their concern about Washington spending. Second, I want to work to reform how Washington does business. And you can check the record: I’m no Johnny Come Lately to the cause; I was saying the same thing when my own party controlled both houses of Congress.”

The number of earmarks passed by Congress jumped from 3,000 in 1995 to 15,000 in 2005. Last year, Congress passed more than 11,000 earmarks at a cost of more than $15 billion. U.S. Comptroller General David Walker, head of the government’s accountability office, said the earmark process “corrupts the process.” He has testified that the Pentagon has received $20 billion in earmarks that it doesn’t want.
[…]
“This move does not come without sacrifice. My district is one of the fastest-growing in the nation. We have serious infrastructure needs and those of us from the district are more attuned to those needs than bureaucrats in Washington . I will continue to advocate for competitive federal grants to address those needs in my district. In those programs, every one’s on equal footing and the money is allocated based on merit, rather than on who can pull the most strings on Capitol Hill. We need more balance in how federal money is spent across the country, but at the end of the day, we simply need to spend less.”

According to the Political Insider, Tom Price has made the same pledge.

Despite the stance of Westmoreland and Price, it seems that that Republicans in the Senate have given up the fight against wasteful spending and ignored warnings that one of the reasons the GOP suffered losses in 2006 was because of out of control spending.

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Consider this a very small victory:

“I am not as big of an advocate of the state investing in museums as I was last year,” said state Rep. Ben Harbin (R-Evans), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.

Harbin pushed the General Assembly for extra money last year for the Golf Hall of Fame in Augusta, which is near Harbin’s home town. Perdue vetoed all funding for the Golf Hall, although he continued state payments to museums in his Middle Georgia region.

“Obviously, we don’t need as many museums as we used to,” Harbin said. “There is a point where we have to ask, ‘Should the state be investing in museums.’ “

I’ve picked on Ben Harbin quite a bit, but this sounds promising.

The bad news is the Governor wants to spend more of your money on a project that isn’t necessarily needed.

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The full budget request by the Governor is now online at the Planning & Budget office. It’s a very large file (7MB) and 440 pages, but you can download it directly here.

I already posted some of the requests yesterday. This report just goes into more detail.

Let’s just say that the state isn’t getting out of the Hall of Fame business anytime soon:

• $125,000 for the Golf Hall of Fame
• $50,000 for the Civil War Commission
• $50,000 for the Aviation Hall of Fame
• $862,240 for the Music Hall of Fame
• $811,230 for the Sports Hall of Fame

Like I said the other day, we’ll see more, especially in Local Assistance Grants, once the House Appropriations Committee gets their hands on the budget.

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