Thursday, January 17, 2008
News Snoring through the State of the State
Posted by Scott Henry @ScottTheHenry on Thu, Jan 17, 2008 at 2:27 PM
As a speech, Sonny Perdue's State of the State address yesterday was just fine: vaguely inspiring, pleasantly reassuring, and it even had a good laugh line poking fun at the Legislature for dragging last year's session into April.
As the governor's big opportunity to set an agenda for the state, however, the address was a nonevent. Perdue unveiled no sweeping initiatives, policy shifts or new programs – not even a Go Fish, much less a GRTA.
Truly, this guy doesn't believe in breaking a sweat.
Most of the measures he did mention – a $53 million state fund for trauma care, $120 million for state-funded reservoirs – are somebody else's handiwork and are already in the works. And he dredged up last year's proposed $142 million tax cut for seniors, which his own party killed.
Still, there were a couple of interesting bits. Perdue has wasted few chances to tout his handpicked DOT head, Gena Abraham, presumably to tell her detractors in the House to back off. Now, he says he wants to place her in charge of the State Road and Tollway Authority as well. Wonder if he's told that agency's current director, Rosa Clausell Rountree, whom he also hired.
The guv also mentioned a $50 million state loan fund for rural governments to use for transportation projects. Talk about thinking small.
Most interesting, and offered almost as a throwaway, was a plan to kill state property taxes. Representing only a sliver of our annual property tax bills, it typically provides about $94 million in revenues to the state.
That was about it. He didn't discuss the traffic congestion that's strangling Atlanta's suburbs, only that he "expects to see great changes in Georgia transportation." And he was equally stingy with details on most other topics.
But he and Speaker Glenn Richardson were cordial, in a formal sort of way, with no name-calling or fisticuffs. That's something, I guess.
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"The guv also mentioned a $50 million state loan fund for rural governments to use for transportation projects. Talk about thinking small." Geeze, 50 million in "loans." GDOT is wasting half that to excessively widen a two mile stretch of Forest Hill Road, that only needs a few turn lanes, in Bbib County.
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