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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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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That is the amount of the new budget proposed by Governor Sonny Perdue:

For the budget year beginning July 1, 2008, and ending June 30, 2009, the governor proposes a budget of $21.4 billion, an increase of about $1.2 billion - or 5.6 percent - from the present spending level.

The Governor is purposing:

• $50 million for loans to local governments for transportation projects
• $53 million for the state’s trauma network
• $30 million to buy undeveloped land for environmental protection
• $17 million in subsidies to provide insurance to employees of small businesses
• $21 million to improve the state’s mental hospitals
• $52 million to dredge the Savannah Harbor
• $25 million to improve the infrastructure of Jekyll Island
• $14.2 million for VIP, a program to get parents involved in their children’s education

You can view the rest of the Governor’s recommendations here.

We won’t really have much to go on as far as pork goes until the House Appropriations Committee meets.

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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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With the surplus in Georgia now being reported at $1.2 billion, we should be pressing the state legislature for a tax break. American for Prosperity is pushing for the legislature to return any funds leftover back to the taxpayers. They have a petition that you can sign at this new website (actually, its a couple weeks old):

In May of 2007, $142 million dollars that had been dedicated to tax relief by the General Assembly was placed into the Revenue Shortfall Reserve by executive action. We, the taxpayers of Georgia, ask you to commit that these funds are not spent in the General Fund as is allowed by law (OCGA § 45-12-93), but pledge that the monies will be dedicated toward tax relief for Georgians.

By state law the surplus is already maxed out at $800 million. This leaves our legislators with far too much of our money in their hands. Idle legislators hands spend time spending our money, especially when there is a significant surplus.

Please sign the petition so we can send a message to our legislators that we want our tax dollars returned for our own personal prosperity instead of them pissing it away on vote buying pork projects.

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