It is well known that the Constitution of the state of Georgia requires the legislature to adopt a balanced budget. A balanced budget is one where the projected revenues and the projected expenses are practically equal.

Could Fayette voters ever be induced to vote for a 100 percent sales tax?

Sure, they could. Here’s how to do it.

The week after The Citizen published my March 4 article about the practical difficulties involved in adjudicating traffic citations in our municipal courts, a Fayetteville citizen, Anne Copen, wrote about her own recent, and unhappy, experience in contesting a failure-to-stop citation.

Traffic infractions are criminal violations. To be convicted of a crime, a person must be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

To serve and to protect is the acknowledged mission of all the police departments who display it on their police cars. Frankly, it should be the mission of all the branches of government, including the judicial branch. Sadly for us in Georgia, consumer protection is a priority for neither our legislators nor, it seems, our judges.

“And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed.

In the 11 educational articles I wrote for The Citizen in the weeks preceding the November school SPLOST vote in Fayette County, I pretty much explained how local sales tax is collected in Georgia. I certainly made it clear that the state of Georgia keeps 1 percent of our local sales tax and the merchants get another one-half of 1 percent.

Time marches on, and Fayette County continues to add to its population of people who reach age 65 and thus become enrolled in Medicare. These words of advice are for them, as they are now in the period of the year, Nov. 15 to Dec. 31, where they have to choose between all their Medicare options.

We can’t watch television these days without being bombarded with political ads in the U.S. Senate run-off race between Saxby Chambliss, the incumbent Republican, and Democrat Jim Martin.

Here’s what I believe might be a smart way to decide whether to vote for or against increasing the sales tax to 7 percent to help out the Fayette County School System.

“I’m proud to pay taxes in America; the only thing is, I could be just as proud for half the money."

— Arthur Godfrey, 1950s TV show host, 1903-83.

The work of science is to substitute facts for appearances, and demonstrations for impressions.

— John Ruskin, English author and social critic, 1819-1900

What will we be reading about SPLOST on the electronic tablet that serves as our ballot, on Nov. 4?

No, it won’t be “Who was the longest reigning British monarch?” That was the $1 million dollar question for state school superintendent Kathy Cox on the TV show Who’s Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? We get only three choices: Yes, no, or pass.

The school board once wanted us to see the first PowerPoint presentation it prepared as justification for an extra 1 percent sales tax. Good students that we are, let’s continue the critical analysis we started last week.

The front page of the school system’s website (www.fcboe.org) prominently displays a logo for citizens to click if they wish to see a presentation on SPLOST. That seems to be all the information readily available from the school system.

If the school board is short of money today, it’s because of the hole it created for itself, and for the taxpayers, when it decided in the fall of 2000 to issue school bonds repayable in nine years.

After the second defeat of the effort to raise the sales tax in Fayette to pay for new schools, on Sept. 21, 1999, those who were pushing for the extra sales tax were understandably frantic. They were once again condemned (as a matter of state law) to waiting at least a year before staging another such vote, and many were misinterpreting the voters’ message to mean people were against building new schools.

In a previous article, I explained how the Fayette school board had scheduled SPLOST votes in March 1998 and in September 1999, and how a majority of the voters said No each time. The board wanted the 1 percent sales tax from SPLOST to build new schools.

When I was a student, in my late teens, I wanted a summer job. I needed money and I had my eyes on getting a car. These summer jobs were not exactly easy to get. One summer the only job I could get was a janitorial job, cleaning government offices as part of a crew from midnight to 8 in the morning five days a week. This nightshift work was rough!

“The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing.” — Jean Baptiste Colbert (French economist and Minister of Finance under King Louis XIV, 1619-83).

Our recent elections for county commissioners brought to light differences in thinking about providing pensions as an employee benefit for the people who serve us as county employees. That includes the entire Sheriff’s Department, courthouse employees, administrative employees and road crews.

Oh, what a relief it is, to turn 65 and qualify for Medicare!

As the baby boomers (born after 1945) head toward Medicare, they’ll join a group confronted with bewildering coverage choices they never realized were there. Every fall, starting Nov. 15, Medicare beneficiaries have to make decisions about their coverage for the next year. Of course, it’s happening this year, too.

In our state judicial system, Fayette County is one of four counties forming the Griffin Judicial Circuit. Commissioner Eric Maxwell is reported as having recently publicly wondered if the time is not ripe for carving a Fayette Judicial Circuit out of the present Griffin Judicial Circuit.