Wednesday, November 1, 2000

Do you know what you'll face when you enter the voting booth on Nov. 7? When you run into the 11 Yes/No choices for state constitutional amendments and statewide referendum questions, will you be prepared? The purpose of this note is to prepare you and help you out.

Among our citizens are many conscientious souls who read everything on the ballot, agonize about extensive material which is all new (and all Greek) to them, and then vote the best they can. They can spend half an hour behind the curtain, while you're standing in line, more or less patiently, in the expectation of soon casting your vote for Bush or Gore and finally going home. I can't spare you the frustration of having to wait behind these people, but my remarks may protect you from becoming like them.

If you're a veteran voter, you know we have to handle these odd questions at every fall general election. While our federal constitution, which dates back to 1789, has 27 amendments (including two worthless ones where one cancels the other), our Georgia constitution, which dates back to 1983, has a few hundred amendments already. Our Georgia legislators are incapable of writing a clean constitution and sticking to it. To help us keep our state constitution free of idiotic micromanaging amendments, it is best to approach all proposed amendments with the resolve to vote No unless a life-and-death matter is involved.

We have seven state constitutional amendments to consider this year.

The first one would allow immediate replacement of a legislator convicted of a felony. I don't see what good that would do. The convicted legislator cannot serve after being convicted, and the people who elected him can wait until the next general election (always less than two years away) to do a better job. We don't need a constitutional amendment to help voters who made a bad choice make another bad choice sooner.

The second one would provide for a homeowner's incentive adjustment for ad valorem property tax relief. Did you understand what I just wrote? Okay, I didn't either. This is some sort of hocus pocus designed to make us think our legislators want to reduce our property taxes but need our permission. When they raised the state sales tax from 3 percent to 4 percent in 1989, they didn't ask for the people's permission, so I don't see why they need it for weird adjustments. If they want to adjust the taxes, they can just plain reduce the rates. If you dislike monkey business, vote against this. But expect the rest of the state to vote for it.

The third amendment would somehow allow police and firemen injured on the job to collect their pay for up to one year. Don't you think they should have insurance for that? In fact, they probably ought to collect for more than one year. Doesn't the state provide insurance for state employees? Why would the Georgia constitution have to be amended to provide that? "No" would be a sensible vote. If the legislature wants to give police and firemen that benefit, it can do it without a constitutional amendment.

The fourth one would allow yet another special auto tag and a benefit for teachers killed or disabled by an act of violence in the line of duty. When a teacher gets killed, the loss to his family is the same whether it's a student, a tornado, or a speeding car that killed him. Our school systems should (and I believe do) provide comprehensive insurance for the teachers. Whatever emotional appeal this proposition might have, it is unsound and deserves a No.

The fifth one is a bit like the fourth one, except that our legislators want to give a benefit for state highway employees killed or disabled in the line of duty and don't propose a special auto tag. What's insurance for if it's not to provide death and disability benefits? If current benefits are not high enough, the legislature can raise them, but they sure don't need a constitutional amendment for that. Another No.

With the sixth amendment, we sink deeper and deeper into esoterica (weird stuff). The legislature wants our permission to classify marine vessels into different categories so they can provide lower rates for their friends and higher rates for the others. They don't word it that way, but that's the gist of it. Vote No unless you operate a shrimp boat and have friends in the legislature. (You can make friends there through political contributions.)

The seventh amendment seeks your permission to require seven years of experience rather than five for state court judges. This is nonsense. The quality of the experience matters a whole lot more than the length of time. There is no problem here, and nothing needs fixing. We don't have very many baby-faced judges in Georgia: most wear bifocals. Vote No with a clear conscience.

But that's not all. We also have four referendum questions. These are laws which the legislature had misgivings about, where it decided to pass the buck to the people. You'll observe that the legislature generally makes all the important laws itself, and saves the small stuff for us, the voters. Read what follows and see what I mean.

Referendum question A asks us to approve property tax exemptions for farming equipment owned by families. Guess what will happen if this passes? All the farm equipment now owned by corporations will be transferred to individuals, to beat the tax. This is harebrained. Vote No.

Referendum question B asks us to increase the property tax exemption for the tools of manual laborers from $300 to $2500. What exactly is a manual laborer, and how many manual laborers do you know who file tax returns for their tools? Another easy No.

Referendum question C is long and tortuous. Basically, it tells us that disabled veterans and their widows get a $43,000 property tax homestead exemption, and it seeks to grant the same benefit to widows of soldiers killed in combat. Very few people would benefit from this. A rich widow might benefit more than a poor one, and a widow with a rented home or in a nursing home would get nothing. People who are fed up with all our weird and complicated tax laws should be reluctant to approve things like this. Give the widow an adequate pension and let her pay her taxes like everybody else. I'd vote No.

Referendum question D asks whether Elks Lodges ought to be exempt from property taxes. I don't know anything about Elks Lodges. All charitable institutions ought to be treated the same. An easy No.

In case you've kept score, I'd vote No on every one of these 11 questions. If you want to do the same as I do, that ought to be easy for you to remember. If you make it a point of always doing the opposite of what I suggest, and some people usually associated with the school system like to do that just vote Yes. Not bothering to vote on any of this is equally fine.

Just don't slow down the line of voters behind you by reading that stuff in the voting booth and agonizing about your decision. At the zoo, you're admonished not to feed peanuts to the elephants, probably because it encourages them. In the voting booth, you shouldn't vote for that kind of stuff because it encourages our legislators to come up with more.

I have not yet seen an actual ballot, but there may be one additional question at the very end about our local school bonds. As I explained two weeks ago in The Citizen, a Yes there may be the better decision. Don't confuse that important local issue with the foolish diversions with which our state legislative buffoons sought to entertain us.

Claude Y. Paquin

Fayetteville

cypaquin@msn.com

Back to Opinion Home Page | Back to the top of the page