By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
OCT. 13, 2020 | Man alive! Do the people of Georgia face a lulu of a constitutional amendment this year? The amendment should embarrass the Georgia Legislature. It asks Georgia voters to compel the Legislature to do what it ought to be doing in the first place. Ha!
For 28 years, since the 1992 General Assembly, Georgians have been charged $1 for every new vehicle tire sold in Georgia. That “tire management fee” was supposed to be used only for the recycling of the tire taken off your vehicle!.
Instead, the Legislature has unlawfully re-appropriated these dedicated dollars and placed this money in the General Fund, unlawfully using it for their own purposes. And in the meantime, hills of old tires pile up all around the state, bereft of any funding program to recycle them.
It’s a travesty the Legislature has brought on itself, and does not help to reduce the mounds of tires that are sold each year.
The people of Georgia should not have to vote on such a useless amendment. Not only that, the Legislature, always money hungry, should not have illegally put aside these dollars for their own pet projects.
In effect, instead of funding the recycling of tires, the Legislature has used this as a hidden tax increase foisted on Georgians every year since 1992. And those legislators say they don’t impose new taxes on us!
Don’t let our Legislature act in bad faith any more! Why should we have to amend the Georgia Constitution to get them to do what they said they would do in 1992?
This is no party proposition and failure. Both Republicans and Democrats have conspired to funnel aside the tire fee so they could shuffle these dollars to projects. By the way, the tires that are included are not only automobile tires, but tires used on, trucks, heavy equipment, motorbikes, boats and other trailers, aircraft and recreational vehicles. The fee was not imposed on used tires or tires with a rim size of less than 12 inches.
What to do? Vote against Amendment 1, and send it back to the Legislature to fix without a Constitutional Amendment. Essentially, all needed is for the Legislature to keep its hands off the Tire Fund, and dedicate those money to recycling of tires.
TWO OTHER amendments face voters this year.
Amendment 2 should get a “Yes” from voters. Up until now if a person has been harmed by any state, city or county government, that person could not seek remedy in a lawsuit against any of those governments. And sometimes, indeed, it is a government that harms individuals. Should that government not be fair in settling an argument with an individual, the individual is up the creek without a paddle. Right now, they cannot bring a suit against the government.
This amendment, House Resolution 1023, would allow governments “…to waive sovereign immunity and allow the people of Georgia to petition the superior court for relief from governmental acts done outside the scope of lawful authority or which violate the laws of this state, the Constitution of Georgia, or the Constitution of the United States.”
In other words, this allows citizens to have a right to sue the government when it wrongs them.
Let this item pass.
The third amendment would allow non-profit charities relief from paying property taxes if “…such real property is held exclusively for the purpose of building or repairing single-family homes to be financed by such charity to individuals using loans that shall not bear interest.”
That sounds reasonable. Vote for its passage.
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
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