Final 2009 numbers show state revenue off $1.9 billion
Should we increase or decrease taxes?
AJC-Tax revenue collections were off a total of more than $1.9 billion in the 2009 fiscal year that ended June 30, Gov. Sonny Perdue’s office announced Friday.
Collections of state personal income, corporate income and sales taxes were off 11.1 percent for 2009, compared to 2008. In June alone, tax collections fell 17.8 percent from the same 30 days in 2008.
For the year as a whole, corporate income tax collections fell most dramatically, as the state took in 26.3 percent less from businesses in 2009 than in 2008. Personal income taxes fell by 12.2 percent while sales taxes were off 8.8 percent.
“It means it’s pretty much status quo, and that’s not a good thing,” said Alan Essig, executive director of the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, a private think tank. “With reserve funds and some savings the governor has prepared, we’ll pay our bills.”
One thing they won’t do is take a SERIOUS look at all administrative positions $100K & up, funding of entitlements and pensions that exceed 60% of working wages.
Services will be critically reduced, front line jobs eliminated and taxes raised first.
How about we reduce the cost of government by half starting with all the BS jobs created as favors to local officials and families. Cherokee County has a great example of this whereby the wife of the sheriff is being paid $37 per hour as a ‘contract employee’ handling ‘community outreach’ on behalf of the school district. Prior to this handout job that was not in the annual budget, she was either fired or quit a local bank depending on the who’s side of the story you believe…within a week, the school board offered her this heretofore unnecessary job.
There are thousands of these make work jobs throughout government…ending all of these would be a good start toward shrinking the bloated bureaucracy.
John,
Again you show your liberal inclinations by first punishing taxpayers before cutting the size of government.
Do you think Sheila Garrison should be getting $37 per hour from a school system that is laying off para-pros en masse?
Bart
You have no class!
John,
You cannot handle the truth!
Again I ask, Do you think Sheila Garrison should be getting $37 per hour from a school system that is laying off para-pros en masse?
I know you have your nose up Sheila’s husband’s ass, but there is no way any honest citizen can defend the circumstances in which the most powerful elected official’s wife in Cherokee County gets hired by the school board to raise money.
Show me the published ad where the school board sought someone to fill the position Sheila Garrison was hired to do and I will retract all criticism. Otherwise, admit you have no principles when it comes to defending the good ol boy sheriff of Cherokee County!
Come on John, answer the question! You’re the loudest voice on here about ‘pork’. This courtesy hire not only is pork, but worse, it diverts money from actual classroom needs.
The position was not in the budget, it was not funded and it was not necessary. You jumped all over Bush for hiring an unqualified ‘Brownie’ at FEMA…where is the outrage over Garrison?
That’s what I thought…John has a double standard when it comes to wasting taxpayer money…no problem as long as it goes to something or someone he supports.