House Party Jumpers Already Moving Up the Ladder

AJC's Election's Central is reporting that Governor-elect Nathan Deal's House Floor leaders will include newly-minted Valdosta Republican Amy Carter.

**It looks like the General Assembly's Webmasters have been hard at work updating the legislature's website as Carter's bio reflects her recent decision to caucus with the Republican Party.

Rusty: I'm just Me

As the tally in the balance of power continues to correct itself in the run up to the 2011 session, Baldwin County’s Caucus of One says the 2010 election, and its aftermath, have changed little in Georgia politics.
“It doesn’t matter if I’m a Republican or a Democrat, if I can’t produce, people will elect someone else,” the state House’s loan Independent Rusty Kidd (Milledgeville) said about his campaigning season. “’It doesn’t matter what you call yourself, as long as you can bring something home for me.’”
Talking on the day news broke that Minority Caucus Chair Doug McKillip (Athens) was the sixth Democratic Representative to quit the party and caucus with Republicans, Kidd said legislators are joining the majority on the other side of the aisle to remain relevant in the modern era.
“Politics are going to be controlled by the Republicans, so [these Democrats] feel they need to be Republicans to play the game,” he said. “Republicans don’t just own the bat and the ball, they own the whole club.”
But Kidd says his years under the Gold Dome, both as a lobbyist and a one-year incumbent returning for his first full term in office, have afforded him the ability to transcend the partisan jockeying and be a vote to win or lose on any piece of legislation.
“I’ve been building good relationships with Republicans and Democrats for 20 years,” he said. “They just look at me as Rusty, I’m not cast out by the R or the D behind my name.”

A holistic approach to government

"I personally moved to a diet based heavily on fruits and vegetables on the advice of my doctor and have seen firsthand how proper diet can lower cholesterol, which has been a serious problem in my family for generations."
State Senate Majority Leader Chip Rogers (R-Woodstock) to the AJC about the decision that led him to seek work as a lobbyist with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.

Democratic hemorrhaging continues under Gold Dome

AJC's Political Insider writes that state Rep. Doug McKillip, the House Democratic Caucus Chair from Athens, announced that he will now caucus with the Republicans.
As the Athens Banner-Herald's Blake Aued notes in the post, Republicans now enjoy a 114-66 advantage in the legislature's Lower Chamber, six votes away from the coveted Super Majority that will make House Republicans unstoppable.
“As an independent-minded Republican, I can accomplish a great deal for my constituents and my city,” [McKillip told the ABH].

Details Emerging on Tax Commission Strategy

“Republican rhetoric has a great opportunity to be put into practice,” Deal said. “We believe in smaller government and less spending. Guess what? We got lower revenue, there’s going to be smaller spending. And when you have less spending, you’re going to have smaller government. Those are the realities of the world in which we live.”

The Associated Press has the details of Governor-elect Nathan Deal's trip to speak to the Georgia Farm Bureau Convention at Jekyll Island and what he had to say about the soon-to-be-released findings of the General Assembly's special Tax Commission. And let me tell you, he's not talking about tax increases.

Rep. Tony Sellier

Former Telegrapher and Lucid Idiocy blogger Travis Fain is reporting that state Rep. Tony Sellier (R-Fort Valley) died last night.

Senate Appropriations Chair Allocates time to local business leaders

The Georgia Senate’s Chief Budget Writer told area business leaders to prepare for another hardscrabble session under the Gold Dome in 2011.
State Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Jack Hill (R-Reidsville) told an audience at Georgia College & State University’s monthly Executive Forum that rising revenues may not be enough to subdue a double whammy of dwindling shortfall reserves and disappearing stimulus dollars in the state’s 2012 budget.
Reading notes from a presentation he delivered last week to incoming freshman in the General Assembly’s Upper Chamber, Hill said state budget writers will be faced with the same challenges as last session, but fewer options once the state deplete its revenue shortfall reserve and allocates its last federal stimulus dollar to pay the $17 billion it will take to run the State of Georg ia through Fiscal Year 2011.
“Our spending has gone down,” Hill said. “But not as much as our revenues have gone down.”
Despite US Census Bureau statistics that show Georgia’s population growing 20 percent over the last decade, Hill said legislators will struggle to fund state government at FY2005 levels at a time when the state employs 2.3 percent fewer people than it did in 2000.
Growth in local school systems, the Board of Regents, the Technical College System of Georgia and the state’s Medicaid obligations may exceed revenue growth, Hill said.
In light of that potential reality, Hill said Governor Perdue is asking state agencies to submit the same worst, worster and worstest budget scenarios this year as pessimists predict a possible $1.3 billion deficit in FY2012.
Hill advised the audience to think earnestly about the hard choices elected officials will have to make this coming year and help their legislators decide on paths that will help Georgia meet its long term goals.
The former Senate Higher Education Committee Chair talked about the one-sided view of lottery-funded HOPE scholarships for students attending public state universities and asked the audience to think twice before defunding what might possibly be one of the “best things the state has ever done.”
In keeping with the dire predictions Hill provided the audience, he made no grand promises for the legislature’s Tax Commission, which is tasked with re-imagining Georgia’s outdated tax code saying he was not sure legislators could muster the political fortitude to pass meaningful reform, such as reinstituting the state’s penny sales tax on groceries.
But on an upbeat, Hill had great things to say about state Senator Johnny Grant (R-Milledgeville). Grant, who was seated in the audience reacted to Hill’s platitudes by jokingly asking him if he would like the check now or later.