By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
MARCH 5, 2019 | Ask any statewide association what they spend most of their time on when the Georgia Legislature is in session. We’re certain 95 percent of them will tell you one overall answer: “Negative lobbying.”
After all, dimwits in the Georgia Legislature continue to offer their pet bills year after year. Sometimes they become law. Such pieces of legislation sometimes can be well-intended, but just not thought out.
More often than you think, these measures can also be specifically aimed at some business or industry because this legislator, or their associates, came out on the wrong end of a deal, and this legislator seeks to punish that industry for it. Don’t think it doesn’t happen. It does, time and time again.
Right now a bill moving along in the Georgia House of Representatives seeks simply to tell cities and counties what they can do concerning housing within their jurisdiction. It’s House Bill 302.
Even the bill’s author, Rep. Vance Smith, a Republican from Pine Mountain, has questions about the bill. He wonders: “How far do we go in telling a private property owner and a citizen what they can and cannot do aesthetically with their home? That’s the basic premise that I’m looking at it from.”
But more than anything else, does the Georgia General Assembly have any business trying to dictate such mundane matters as housing looks to the many cities and 159 counties of Georgia? Since we have these municipalities and counties, should not they be the governmental entity that would be the guidance on what and how individual homes should be built?
It also raises two questions: does the Legislature have so little to do that it will reach down into the purview of cities and counties to dictate?
Such legislation also shows why GwinnettForum lists as one of its Continuing Objectives that the Georgia General Assembly needs to meet once every two years, not annually.
One local mayor, Lilburn’s Johnny Crist, commented for publication on House Bill 302, after polling 14 Gwinnett mayors. He found: “The No. 1 response from the mayors is, ‘You’ve got to be kidding.’ The reason our cities are the places you want to live is because of design standards.
“We spend millions of dollars to put utilities underground. Why? We don’t have to. But it attracts. It builds quality, which attracts builders to come build in our city. Non-standards are against the very issue that we’re about. I’m telling you, (paint) color is not a burdensome regulation. Style is not a burdensome regulation.
“Standards protect our property values. Standards protect our economic development plan in our city. This would be a race to the bottom. Builders will build cheap, they’ll build mass, and they’ll leave town. And they’ll make us mayors to clean up the mess.”
By the way, the Georgia Municipal Association and the Association County Commissioners of Georgia also oppose House Bill 302. But so far, it’s clear sailing, coming out of the House Agricultural Committee and headed for the Rules Committee.
Hopefully the negative lobbying can stop such measures. But it and such bills demonstrate why we suggest the Georgia General Assembly needs to meet less often. After all, we get nervous, wondering what they will propose.
Legislation, such as HB 302, is just another reason to consider the Legislature should meet once every two years. If the big state of Texas can gets its legislative business done meeting once every two years, why not Georgia?
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
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