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OVER AND OVER AGAIN
If you get the impression from watching
Gov. Sonny Perdue that he keeps flogging the
same issues over and over again, you're not
crazy—you're very perceptive. Perdue is just not
one of those politicians who has a lot of fresh
ideas. The policy initiatives he proposes tend to
be things that Zell Miller or Roy Barnes did years
ago when they were governor. Perdue generally
takes those old ideas, slaps a different title on
them, and tries to present them as if they were
something new.
"It's a 'rename it and claim strategy," Rep.
Bob Hanner called it. Many of our lawmakers fol
low a similar strategy. It doesn't matter if
something is already on the law books
or has been previously approved by
the state's voters. They will continue
to introduce it as "new" legislation
and try to pass it all over again.
Take, for example, Perdue's con
stitutional amendment to authorize
the payment of state funds to
religious organizations that provide
social services, such as community-
based programs for senior citizens.
There is no need for-this amendment
because church groups have been getting
money from state agencies for years to provide
these services. The Georgia Supreme Court ruled
last year that government contracts with reli
gious organizations for non-sectarian purposes
do not violate the state constitution. But Perdue
stubbornly insists that his faith-based amend
ment is needed because somehow, somewhere,
some court will declare that these arrangements
are invalid.
The governor's real intentions of course, are
obvious: his amendment would open the door to
using government funds for private school vouch
ers. The faith-based measure is defeated every
year because Democratic lawmakers, who are
concerned that vouchers will damage the public
school system, team up to deny it the necessary
two-thirds majority. Democrats have offered sev
eral times to vote for the governor's faith-based
amendment if he'll just add a sentence that pro
hibits the use of state funds for school vouchers.
Perdue always refuses.
Another Perdue favorite is the "HOPE Chest
Amendment," a measure that would specify in
the constitution that Georgia Lottery funds can
only be used for HOPE scholarships and the pre
kindergarten program. He says this amendment
is needed to keep lottery funds from being used
for other purposes. The only problem is, Georgia's
voters approved an amendment in 1998 that
does almost exactly what Perdue now proposes: it
provides that the first priority for lottery funds is
HOPE and the pre-K program. Only after those are
fully funded can lottery funds be used for class
room technology or capital outlays.
You can see the same mindset among some
of our legislators. Back in the 1990s, the General
Assembly passed and Zell Miller signed a law
declaring that same-sex marriages were
illegal. It might as well have never hap
pened. In 2004, Republican legislators
introduced and passed the same
prohibition on same-sex marriages
and civil unions—only this time
in the form of a constitutional
amendment (it was subsequently
approved by Georgia's voters).
It was also during the last de
cade that lawmakers passed a bill
that declared English to be the offi
cial language of Georgia. That normally
would have settled the matter, but then,
you're dealing with Georgia legislators. Rep. Tim
Bearden is back this year introducing a consti
tutional amendment that would—you guessed
it—declare English to be the official language
of Georgia. Bearden's amendment, as noted, is
already the state law.
What makes this measure even more absurd
is the fact that Bearden works for a real estate
company that prints some of its marketing ma
terials in Spanish—a language that is decidedly
not English. Bearden also represents an incorpo
rated city named Villa Rica—two Spanish words
that translate roughly as "wealthy village."
Regardless of the ultimate fate of the
"English-only" amendment, rest assured this is
not the last you'll see of it. Even if it was chis
eled in stone on the state capitol, it would not
be long before someone introduced it again.
Tom Crawford
Tom Crawford is the editor of Capitol Impact's Georgia
Report, an Internet news site at wwvi.ciclt.net/garpt/that
covers government and politics in Georgia.
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