Fayette County Republican Party Exec Board attempts to force opt-in votes for HB581

Late last week the Fayette County Republican Party Executive Board issued a Resolution that they sent to all of the local governing boards and The Citizen. The Resolution states that opting into HB581 is expected by all local politicians and those that don’t can expect to get their funding and all support cut off by the party.

The Executive Board according to their spokesperson is “a group comprised of Republican elected officials, past elected officials, and party leadership developed a list of vital issues that are being ignored by elected officials.”

HB581 can’t be summarized in a single paragraph or two, as it is a complicated piece of legislation. To get the gist of it, we spoke with a community leader, who chose to remain anonymous, considering the hot-button nature of this topic. He refers to the legislation as “a complicated and ridiculous bill.” This community leader said that it creates limits to homestead property tax assessment increases based on the consumer price index set by the Georgia Revenue Commissioner each year, aka. Inflation rate.

The writers of HB581 knew that there would be tax revenue trouble with limiting property tax assessmenta, so they built a provision into the bill that allows for a FLOST (flexible local option sales tax) of a penny per dollar. The problem with the FLOST is that if the FLOST revenue exceeds the exemptions, there has to be a rollback of the millage rate. That rollback doesn’t just benefit homeowners, it benefits corporations, who bear much of the tax burden.

Plus sales taxes are paid by everyone, regardless of income, so it tends to give more of a burden to lower income folks, if we consider that a wealthier home would have paid more property taxes to offset it. So the FLOST isn’t such a good answer, if a city or county wants to continue to see good revenue from their corporate tax citizens.

According to the community leader, there will probably not be an impact to revenues in the first one or two years of HB581. But future revenues depend on compounded home values. And that’s where he says that there may be more austerity cuts in services around cities or counties, or if the school system opts in, larger class sizes and fewer teachers.

Forever is a long time to be limited in how we calculate property tax growth in our area. And inflation may work for calculating some things, but will it get us our cost of living increases for teachers each year that keeps good staff working?

So we can begin to see that opting in, even though voters agreed on this piece of legislation by over 60%, may not be wise for our local authorities. Even so, some local bodies have already agreed that they are opting in, including Peachtree City City Council, according to City Manager Justin Strickland.

Back to The Fayette County Republican Party. I asked them why this was a hill to die on. Why they would risk the future success of the party’s incumbents to adhering to this piece of legislation. And that especially stands when so many of these municipal candidates are nonpartisan. If they affiliate with the Republican Party, shouldn’t that help them, rather than hurt them or dictate their local decisions?

I heard back from Vice-Chair Nancy Holland. For the Fayette County Republicans, they think limiting tax revenue assessments is a way to force accountability. She wrote, “The greatest power the local governments have is the ability to take money from us in the form of taxes. Taxpayers, especially Republicans, demand accountability on taxation. There are a significant number of taxpayers who are questioning the actions of our local elected officials, and for good reason. Many are worried about the continual tax increases and the willingness of our local governments to throw money at non-essential projects.”

Holland also touts that the Republican Party believes in fiscal responsibility. She said, “If a candidate runs as a ‘conservative’ and does the opposite, do they deserve our support?”

Holland asserts that a local DOGE to eliminate “ridiculous expenditures” makes sense. She didn’t give any examples of our local governments and the school board funding that falls under this opinion.

I asked, “How do you propose that school systems make up the difference in revenue considering austerity cuts from the states…do you support them raising the millage rate?”

Holland stated, “The Fayette County Republican Party is not telling the Board of Education how to run its facilities and operations. That is up to the Board of Education members, and they need to listen to their constituents and review every line item in their budget.”

The Citizen asked, “Coweta Schools have opted out; Spalding County has opted out. Does it seem like the wise decision to “require” your Fayette Republicans to choose to opt in?”

She answered, “This resolution was passed by the FCRP Executive Board because it’s time to let Fayette County citizens and elected officials know where we stand on HB581. Rhetoric from our Republican elected officials without action is unacceptable.”

Ultimately, the party believes that ignoring HB581 and opting out is akin to having an “unresponsive government. Some of our elected officials keep adding major and non-essential expenses while hiking taxes with little regard on how it impacts the taxpayers. A local DOGE movement would be a great thing.”

Accountability in budgeting makes sense for Fayette, Coweta and Spalding. Whether it’s wise to limit potential tax revenue to governments who may already be doing all the right things seems like it could be punishing good behavior. What will our future selves say when services have to be cut, recreation budgets are hampered, schools have limits to the number of teachers they can afford? Part of what makes our area so desirable are the ample services and great schools.

Electing competent officials and then expecting them to do wise things with our money makes sense. According to our anonymous community leader, arbitrarily cutting their funding for services we want may not serve us.

Currently our city and county budget processes are fairly transparent. The Citizen encourages citizens, including the approximately 60% of our local population who are Republicans, to point out problems to us when you find them so we can research on your behalf. Expect to see more about this from The Citizen in the future.