This is sad news:

Veteran Fayette County state Rep. Dan Lakly died this morning of a massive heart attack, state officials said.

Lakly, 65, a Peachtree City Republican, was chairman of the House Information and Audits Committee. He was known as a fiscal conservative who frequently questioned state spending practices. He was also willing to be on the losing side of one-sided votes, such as in 2005 when he opposed popular legislation outlawing smoking in most enclosed work sites and public places. He compared the banning to Nazi Germany.

Lakly, a Yugoslavian immigrant’s son, served on the Peachtree City council in the 1980s, then from 1989 to 1992 on the Fayette County Board of Commissioners.

He was elected to a seat in the General Assembly in 1992 when Republicans were a minority in the House. He was beaten in the Republican primary in 1998 by Kathy Cox, now the state’s school superintendent, when he sought re-election that year. Six years later he made a comeback, winning a Fayette County seat in the House just in time for his GOP to take over the chamber.

Legislative staffers said he apparently fell and hurt his wrist over the weekend and had surgery. They said he was expected to be released from the hospital this morning.

Like the article says, he was a staunch fiscal conservative, and even sponsored an amendment to scrap “Go Fish” spending out of the FY 2008 appropriations bill.

Keep Rep. Lakly’s family in your thoughts and prayers.

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The State of Texas is making open government a priority:

Texas this month joined a handful of states and the federal government in posting detailed financial information on the Internet. Anyone with strong eyeballs and an investigative spirit now can search for pork or find out if their neighbor’s business sells widgets to the state.

The “Where The Money Goes” feature on the comptroller’s Web site — at www.window.state.tx.us — is the result of legislation by a group of thirtysomething, tech-savvy lawmakers.

Rep. Mark Strama, D-Austin, a technology consultant who founded the first company to register voters online, wrote the bill that required the online database.

He modeled it after federal legislation passed last year. Texas joins Kansas, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Hawaii and Missouri in setting up searchable spending sites.

State Rep. Jill Chambers proposed similar legislation that would have applied to the executive branch of state government, it was vetoed by Sonny Perdue.

And…despite the hard time we give Glenn Richardson, he is promising to implement zero-based budgeting next year and he should be given credit for that.

If you ever get a chance to read the state budget in each section you will see one word…”continuation.” The legislature renews a budget each year with really knowing what they are spending it on. Even the Speaker acknowledges that “[he doesn't] know what we’re going to find.”

Another thing the legislature should do is require the legislator asking for a Local Assistance Grant to put his name next to the earmark in order to provide some sort of transparency and open government to the citizens of this state.

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Georgia’s support of golf doesn’t stop at the Golf Hall of Fame:

Golfers pay about $40 to play at Hard Labor Creek, a state park about an hour east of Atlanta. Taxpayers chip in another $5 per round at the money-losing golf course.

That’s a bargain compared with a round of golf at Brazzell’s Creek in Reidsville. Taxpayers subsidize players at the South Georgia course to the tune of $29 per round. And the little-used golf course is undergoing a $3 million upgrade, trading nine holes for 18, paid for by, yup, taxpayers.

Georgia’s seven state-run golf courses lost $1 million in fiscal year 2006. Since 2002, losses have averaged $941,000 a year.

“It’s pretty ridiculous, isn’t it?” said former state Sen. Robert Lamutt, an east Cobb Republican who railed against golf course spending while serving in the General Assembly. “Is that government’s job? To take [tax money] from me, by force of law, to give to somebody down in South Georgia so they can have a golf course?”

Of course supporters of this type of pork spending say it’s “economic development” and one Republican State Senator defends it:

Supporters say the links serve as economic development tools that attract duffers to rural, economically stunted areas of the state. They note that state parks and historic sites are also subsidized by taxpayers. And, they add, all Georgians deserve the same quality-of-life amenities available to their more urbanized brethren.

“A decision has been made that recreation is a thing of merit for tax dollars,” said Sen. Jack Hill, the Reidsville Republican whose district includes Brazzell’s Creek. Or “we can let the marketplace provide all recreation and we can have private state parks. You can’t separate state parks and golf courses, in my mind.”

Surprise…Sen. Jack Hill is Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Hill was originally elected as a Democrat in 1990. He switched parties a few years ago when it was no longer politically convenient to be a Democrat.

Why are taxpayers subsiding golf courses? The private sector can likely run it more efficiently and for a profit and if the course goes under, there wasn’t a market for it. That doesn’t give the state an excuse to step in. It means that the golf lovers of that area will have to find somewhere else to play.

And…Alan Essig, a left-leaning economist with the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute (of course they are labeled as “nonpartisan” article, nothing could be further from the truth), who seems to believe that Georgians aren’t already overtaxed and that our government doesn’t spend enough money as it is, believes that there is “nothing fundamentally wrong with having publicly funded parks or golf courses.” Alan Essig has never seen a spending program that he didn’t believe was “fundamentally wrong.” Essig represents everything that is wrong with the current view of government.

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