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Senator Douglas speaks out for conservative values at Rockdale County town hall meeting.
The Rockdale Citizen, 11/21/09
State legislators of the Rockdale County delegation tried timeout hand signals during a contentious pre-legislative session discussion Thursday night in an effort to control irate outbursts from residents, a few of whom walked out the meeting.
Both state senators and the four House representatives for Rockdale County held a public forum to get a better idea of the public’s concerns before convening for next year’s General Assembly.
The small crowd of residents in the Rockdale Career Academy auditorium waxed and waned through the evening as lawmakers directly responded to questions on various economic, social and local issues.
But partisan comments sparked upset among some of the public. Of those contentious items was the federal health care bill and its price tag, estimated in the trillions of dollars.
It is “looting of the treasury,” according to Sen. John Douglas, R-Social Circle, who predicted taxes are probably going to go up.
“You can’t tax yourself into prosperity,” Douglas said.
Sen. Ronald Ramsey, D-Decatur, received jeers when he followed up Douglas’ comments by comparing the budget surplus in the Clinton administration and the country’s biggest deficits in the previous administration.
Local resident Don Williamson asked if any of the Rockdale delegation would vote to opt out of it, if possible.
Douglas said federal legislators are throwing around billions of dollars like they are $5 bills, and the first order of business would be to get Georgia out of the Health Care legislation.
“I think the health care debate in Washington is leading to absolute disaster for our economy,” Douglas said. “Because it looks like to me a train wreck of unimaginable magnitude.”
But “we are our brother’s keeper,” according to Ramsey.
“And we do have a reason, in my view, to put mechanisms in place so that everyone has equal access to health care,” Ramsey said.
Rep. Pam Stephenson, D-Decatur, encouraged every person to read the bill.
“We can disagree, but we have to know what we’re disagreeing on,” Stephenson said.
Ramsey suggested focusing on ways to improve local health care and decide on the federal bill when it come to states “in one piece.”
Local resident Mike Houchard wanted to know where officials stood on the proposed 1 percent transportation tax that did not pass last year.
The majority of the legislators agreed with a regional plan that would pool money from several counties to fund various transportation projects.
Rep. Randal Mangham, D-Decatur, said there is some animosity that the state may have to get past, where counties assume their tax money is going to be used to benefit other counties.
Rep. Dee Dawkins-Haigler, D-Lithonia, thought it was the wrong time to raise any kind of taxes.
“We want things, but we don’t want to pay for things,” Haigler said. “I mean, you can’t have it both ways.”
Local resident David Williams asked for no hike to property taxes.
“We have less money, so you’re going to get less money,” Williams said. “So just please think about what you’re doing before you go raise our taxes.”
Stephenson said it is time to start looking at how property taxes are being spent.
“We’ve changed the formula so many times that local government can’t even predict how much money they’re going to get,” Stephenson said of property taxes.
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