Press Releases 2000

January 13, 2000

January 27, 2000

February 3, 2000

January 13, 2000

The 2000 Legislative Session began on Monday in the beautifully restored House Chambers. You need to see the restoration of the Capitol, it will make you proud.

The first week was dominated by the Governor’s budget message and the Governor’s state of the State. As expected, Education was at the corner stone of it. I agree with the statement that the Governor made in one of the other addresses I heard him make, that life is performance and education must become that way. I have long felt that we can evaluate objectively what a teacher and what a system is doing and I totally support the Governor’s efforts in that regard.

I am pouring through the bill that will support this which will be approximately 200 pages. I think that there are some areas where I will not be able to support it but generally we are heading in the right direction. Education is the number 1 responsibility of the state and I think with this initiative, we are re-assuming that responsibility.

One of the concerns that I have is that the Governor continues to increase the size of government and take from the elected officials. This educational initiative, once again, falls into what I believe a very serious constitutional and efficiency problem. More on this later.

Another concern that I have was brought to the surface as it was announced this week that the Governor has asked the GBI to look into the deaths of 12 children that have been under the care of the Dept. of Family & Children Services. I totally support this investigation and further agree with our minority leaders request for non-partisan task force to look into this. I think one of the things that we’re going to find is that as we have been growing government some of it has been funded by the growth of our economy but also some of it has been funded by cuts. Some of the calls that I get from constituents, some of the conversations that I’ve had with those who understand how DFACS operates indicates that we really have made some cuts in there that are services that nobody else is performing. An example would be these caseworkers where their case load has really almost increased unmanageable proportions. We’ve also removed much of the ability of the agency and/or the courts to remove children from a threatening environment. There’s another thing that I think we will uncover as we get into this investigation and that is that we have an increasing number of unfit parents.

This will also, at the root, of a lot of these additional monies that we’re spending in education. Unfortunately, for many of these children, we’re just gonna never successfully accomplish that until we have children born into a family where there is love, support and involvement. The fact of life is that in an increasing number of families, this is not happening. Teenage pregnancy, divorce, drugs and a whole host of things are creating parents who are unfit and unfortunately, they seem to have more children than most. Until we can solve this problem, situations such as the death of some of these children, situations such as the attempt at getting to these students will continue to fail.

January 27, 2000

Is the Honeymoon over?

After getting everything he wanted in his first session as Governor and writing record

popularity ratings, Governor Roy Barnes beginning to see things unravel. This is particularly been caused by the introduction of what has turned out to be an extremely controversial educational reform bill. As the expression the devil is into detail and as one begins to go through the 125 page document it becomes obvious that this is way beyond what anybody had really envisioned and much of it is being questioned.

As an example of the National Teacher of the year was invited to both the Senate and the House. When he blasted the Governor’s reform plan as the Senate, the invitation to come over to the House and speak was suddenly withdrawn and he was introduced from the Gallery. It’s obvious this administration does not like criticism.

Some of last year’s successes are also starting to be questioned.. Very little except an expensive Executive Director being hired and $19 million in budget requests has happened from the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority. There has been absolutely no improvement in the mobility of traffic nor in the improvement in the environment air quality.

This week we passed a supplemental budget request of $266 million to fund the deficit created by the State Merit Health Plan for a teacher/teacher retiree, State employees and State Retirees. A number of approximately 6 hundred thousand people if this isn’t proof positive that the State doesn’t have an answer to the Health Care, I don’t know of a more dramatic one. Please remember that last year the Governor created more bureaucracy by creating the Dept. of Community Health with the promise that we would reduce the cost of health care. Exactly the opposite has happened. Some of the remedies are quite obvious but a year into the administration they have yet to be deployed. Meanwhile, we’re asking every person in the State of Georgia to spend $50.00 to bail the plan out.

Yet another creation of the Governor’s last session that he wrote a state wide elected official was the creation of the Consumer Insurance Advocate. All that we’ve seen so far was is a lot of feuding between the elected Insurance Commissioner and the Governor appointed Consumer Advocate with obviously no improvement in Insurance.

On top of all of this one veteran observer of Georgia politics says that this is the most partisan executive branch that we’ve ever had. Further, he indicated for the first time we have Washington style politics in Georgia. As an example, he pointed to what he considers to be trumped up Ethics charges against State School Superintendent Republican Linda Schrenko.

We will get a good indication of how things are going as early as next week when we vote on this massive Education Reform bill.

February 3, 2000

As we start the third week of the session, we are dominated by the issue of the Education Reform. Everything else seems to have almost come to a stop. It even resulted in the Governor giving us a second State of the State and again the issue was the Education Reform Act. As a matter of fact, this second speech it was mostly on the issue of tenure. It appears that he has drawn a line in the sand and says he must have it.

As I previously stated, I’m certainly want to see a fair system; fair to the kids, parents and to the teacher involved for removing a teacher that is ineffective. Today’s fair dismissal act is too cumbersome. Unfortunately, too much of the debate on this extremely expansive bill of approximately 149 pages is concentrating on this one issue.

I think an unfortunate bi-product of much of the debate going on with this bill is that the teachers have been cast in an unfairly bad light. As the Governor said, most of our teachers are good and some are great. It must be remembered; however, that the single greatest factor in regard to influencing a child’s education is the quality of the teacher.

This whole issue became all the more personal this week as I had to appear in front of the Appropriations Committee and was asked if I would vote for the supplemental budget if it had the $7 million in it for the Coweta Continuing Education Center (I represent parts of Coweta County). I indicated that I would for the first time vote for a budget if it included that. I did this because I recognized it could well be held against me to the point of being removed from the Appropriations Budget if I did not. Further, while I have voted for every budget and supplemental budget in the six years I have been here, I’ve never had anything of this consequence in it. Further, while I’ve made a vote of principle it really has had absolutely no bearing and will not until we have a republican majority in the House.

Also, this week I was asked to come to the Governor’s office along with four other legislators. Again, it was made abundantly clear that if I didn’t support the Education Reform Act that the monies for this Continuing Education Center would be in the budget. This is politics and I reluctantly accepted. Non the less, on the issue of the Education Reform bill I will not vote for an Education Reform bill that I don’t think is best for the kids of Georgia regardless of what happens with the monies for the Coweta Continuing Education Center.

Also this week I helped to organize a meeting of about 25 conservative legislators that met with Superintendent Linda Schrenko to see how we might influence this bill again with the intent of serving the best interest of the children of Georgia.

Also this week I received a letter from one of the school board members who represent the 3^rd Congressional district. He indicated that the State Board of Education voted unanimously (Democrats and Republicans) to support the Governor’s Education bill. Minor correction is that there’s only one republican on the State Board of Education. A second and much more consequential point is that the Board did not vote to support the Governor’s Education Reform bill. Instead it voted to support Education Reform; a huge difference! Finally, even if the Board had voted for the Governor’s Education Reform bill this would have been a very premature action of what should be a very responsible body of Board members given the fact that nobody has seen the final version and as a matter of fact when the vote was taken by the school board they didn’t even have the first draft of the bill. To me, this is irresponsible and one of the problems that we have with the State Board.

I will be holding a public meeting in LaGrange tentatively scheduled for Wednesday night at 7:00 p.m. to which I will invite Sen. Dan Lee and Rep. Carl Von Epps to hear your concerns and to answer questions that you have on this bill. I think the timing would be appropriate because hopefully by then we’ll finally have draft of the bill or we’ll have some of what we’ll have to vote on. Secondly, this vote will be held Thursday morning as it is tentatively slated.

February 7, 2000

Public Hearing-Education Reform Bill

Representative Jeff Brown announces a public hearing on Education Reform for Wednesday, February 9^th from 7:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. at the Callaway International Business Development Center at West Georgia Tech. State Superintendent of Schools, Linda Schrenko is the invited guest of Jeff Brown. Representatives Vance Smith and Carl Von Epps have been invited as well as Senator Dan Lee. A representative of the Troup County School System will also make a brief presentation in regard to their position on this bill.

The procedure for anybody who wants to speak is to sign in and indicate their area of interest such as tenure, school nurses, funding, etc., and to indicate whether they are for it, against it, or have a question in that area. Finally, we want to know whether they are a teacher/administrator, employer, with a post secondary education institution, taxpayer, etc. We will rotate amongst topics; pros, cons, questions and constituencies. Each person will have 3 minutes to state their opposition, support and/or question. Representative Brown is hopeful that we will have a better cross section of people attending this meeting than most such public hearings have had around the state which have been dominated by teachers. Representatives Brown, Smith, Epps, Senator Lee and Superintendent Schrenko will primarily listen. When questions are posed we will briefly answer them with the facts as we understand them.

We encourage a large turnout for one of the most consequential bills in the recent history of Georgia.

February 11, 2000

The “A+ Education Reform Act of 2000" HB1187 passed the House at 3:30 p.m. on Thursday, Feb.10, 2000 by a vote of 136-41 in favor of passage of the bill after a debate of approximately 4 hours. There were 12 amendments most of which I voted for but none of which passed. I voted against the bill.

There are 3 basic reasons that I voted no. The first is contained in the following letter that was sent to Governor Barnes and to Superintendent Schrenko shortly after the vote. (Insert letter to Barnes and Schrenko).

The second reason is that several hundred of my constituents objected to the bill. This included approximately 200 people who attended our public hearing Wednesday night in LaGrange where none of them voted to vote for the bill and everyone else as best I can tell voted against it. Only a handful of people (most whom are not constituents, asked me to vote against the bill and most of these people wanted me to so vote to improve the possibility the $7,000,000 staying in the budget for the Continuing Education Center in Newnan.

Finally I will have another chance to vote on the bill. Between now and when the Senate votes for the bill there will be changes to the bill also. Also, I hope to have more facts than I did this time.

Dr. Henry Blackaby was the Minister of the day prior to the debate on the Education bill. Since I have found his devotional “Understanding God” to be the best one that I’ve ever used, I paid extra attention to what he had to say. He quoted Governor Huckaby of Arkansas who said that the biggest expenditures in government are because of a lack of character. Blackaby went on to say that character is always a choice. I agree with both and feel that this pertains to the Education bill. If you think about it, unfortunately, the problems often starts when the child was conceived because the two people involved showed a total lack of character and the result was a child born out of wedlock. Statistically we know this child will have more problems in school than other children conceived after marriage. It continues with parents not being involved in their children’s education which I believe to be one of their key responsibilities. Instead they are self absorbed, chasing the almighty dollar, etc. Lack of character also defines some of our students who create tremendous problems for teachers, administrators and for their fellow students.

Lack of character is a way of describing the small percentage of our teachers who are incompetent. The Education Reform bill has been has been my main focus in the four press releases to date. However, I think this is appropriate given that public education is the number one responsibility of the State of Georgia and the bill being considered is going to have huge consequences one way or the other.

February 17, 2000

We passed the supplemental budget by an overwhelming vote as we always do. For the first time I voted for it because, as I previously reported, I felt that this would enhance the chances of the funding for the Central Education Center in Newnan to remain. It is disheartening to see us adding hundreds of millions of dollars of bonded indebtedness when we have a huge surplus. Further, we are using this surplus to continue to reach of state government into far too many facets of our lives.

The Chattahoochee River was very much in the new this week. Once again the City of Atlanta demonstrated its inability to effectively manage. Belatedly we learned of a large spill caused by human error. Secondly, I am in possession of a letter from the Atlanta Regional Commission citing real problems ahead for the entire Chattahoochee River basin including West Point Lake if the negotiating team for Georgia continues its present direction. Some feel this letter contains reasonable grounds for the Governor to replace the negotiating team immediately.

A day before getting the above letter I went to the well (the podium) to argue against HB 1362 which sets up 10-30,000 per year. (Jeff I did not know what to do here) subsidies to farmers for taking land out or irrigation on the Flint River. I spoken with Dr. Art Holbrook about this and agree that this is a very premature measure that it is being done without the results of a $750,000 study that is budgeted and that it sets precedent that is not appropriate. Further, there is no questions the farmers on the Flint are going to lose out if we have drought conditions but so are thousands some of farmers, business owners and property owners on the Chattahoochee. Why should they not receive compensation? None the less, the bill passed overwhelmingly. It appears that the bill is not any where near as likely to pass in the Senate. Unexpectedly the ARC letter referenced above should help to defeat this bill because it makes many of the same points that I did.

Finally speaking of the Chattahoochee, I think it is outrageous that Michael Davis, Asst. Secretary of the Army who attended our public meeting on November 10, 1999 has yet to respond even to thank us for the meeting. Unfortunately we are possibly seeing raw politics at its worst because of the Clinton Administration’s dislike for Congressman Bob Barr. I’m idealistic but feel that bureaucrats such as Davis report to the public not to the President.

We have been blessed with a lot of visitors from my district at the Capitol including 60 3^rd graders from Whitesville Elementary School, 45 seniors from the Troup County Senior Center, 20 2^nd graders from West Georgia Christian Academy and a number of pre-school teachers, now have the Education Center which has a wonderful film on the history of the Capitol. Also, they now see the beautiful results of the Capitol restoration that has brought it back to its original 1880s grandeur. I encourage you to visit the Capitol. If you’re coming while we are in session, please let me know.

We did have a bill in regard to increasing the liability insurance the owner of a dangerous dog has. Quite frankly, I am far more worried about dangerous dogs than I am about animal cruelty. Nonetheless, I will vote for the animal cruelty bill if it has some common sense corrections made to it and it comes to the House floor for such a vote. I truly believe that people with pets have responsibilities that many of them tend to totally ignore such as keeping them on their property, stopping them from annoying neighbors with barking and leashing them so that they won’t attack people as we recently saw in Troup County.

I continue to work to get between the and Superintendent Linda Schrenko to debate the Education Reform bill. Schrenko has accepted the challenge of the debate but the Governor has declined. I’m working to try to get him to do it. I think that the state deserves it since the claims from the two camps are totally opposite in many regards.

This week I introduced HB1479 which would _______. Also, I introduced HB ____ which would further strengthen the Teenage Driver Responsibility Act which has significantly reduced teen deaths due to driving in our state. This bill would suspend the license of a first year driver if they got two or more moving vehicle violations during the first year of driving. Also, it strengthens the attendance provisions which counselors are telling me are being badly abused where presently if you miss 10 straight days you force suspension of your license. What some of the students are doing are missing 9 coming in for the 10^th and then starting over again. My requirement would be that if you miss 25 days in year you will lose your license.

March 1, 2000

As I listened to yet another bill being presented by a Democrat who was reading a script and knew next to nothing about it. I thought of other examples of power politics. The Senate is again engaged in extreme partisan politics as they are even blocking local legislation of Republicans. Committee Chairs, all of whom are Democrat in the House and Senate, are using their power to block, move or change legislation. One of the most blatant examples was the Chairman of the Senate Education Committee making 38 changes to the Education Reform bill with no input let alone vote by his committee. The Governor is able to get scores of bills through the legislature, many of which expand the influence of the Executive Branch, with little resistance because the legislature is Democrat. Many lobbyists and bureaucrats are solidly aligned with the Democrats.

In November the voters will have a chance to change this as all 180 House and 56 Senate seats are up for reelection. There is a good probability that the Senate results will be have a Republican majority. Unlike the House the Senate only needs 7 more Republican more seats to have a majority they can count on to vote for change. One of these 7 gains could well be Guy Middleton regaining his seat in NE Georgia. He did not seek reelection but instead ran as a Democrat for Lt. Governor. He has since switched parties. Locally you’ve already read of Steve Langford’s switch and announcement for the Senate. Interestingly, about 98% of the party switches are from Democrat to Republican.

A Republican majority in the Senate would mean that Lt. Governor, Mark Taylor, would no longer serve as President of the Senate. Further, most if not all of the 23 committee chairs would be changed. Perhaps I am a bit idealistic but I’m convinced the whole process would become more democratic. Yes Republicans are individuals who can succumb to greed, power, etc. but at least at the start, given the Republican positions of less government, lower taxes, more personal responsibilities and freedom, empowerment of the family and belief in free enterprise system, the state will head in a new direction.

Democrats constantly counter the above types of comments by telling us how great things are in Georgia, thanks to their leadership. Indeed we have much to be thankful for much of this is due to a favorable climate, non union status, labor that is cheaper than much of the the and most importantly the initiative of many great Georgians outside of government i.e the founder of Coca Cola. Being fair, state government has helped and in some times Republicans have helped. However, state government run by Democrats for over 130 years have done a very poor job in some of it’s state governments major responsibilities including public education, health care, the environment, planning for enough water to meet future needs, crime prevention, urban sprawl and unfair tax burdens and tax expenditures.

This is probably the most partisan weekly legislative update I’ve written in 6 years but it’s a reporting of what has and could happen. To those who would say we need more non partisan politics please remember that the majority of our legislation is non-partisan. However, since the start of U.S. government we have had partisan politics. In those 200 years no other country had done as well. Net/net partisan politics is part of the democratic process so be careful before suggesting to change it. Finally once the party is threatened suddenly they want non partisan politics. Guess why?

March 9, 2000

With only two weeks left of the Legislation session the activity has increased significantly. In the first three days of this week we voted on 81 bills, 23 resolutions and a $4.4 billion budget. As a matter of fact on Wednesday, the last day the House consider a House bill, we covered 38 bills and 16 resolutions in 5 hours. While recognizing Miss Georgia, Rhodes scholar from Emory University and Bill Elliot a race car driver from Dawsonville..

There are various reasons why we can vote on bills so fast. One is that the committee process works and we have a perfected bill that is easy to vote on. Another reason is that some of the bills are “no brainers or feel good bills that ??? a quick tea vote. ??? on day 33 they tend to avoid controversial bills. Finally and disappointedly, some of the bills are not given the consideration they deserve and these can result in bad legislation . All of this said, let me comment on HB1189, the Qualified State Tuition Program. This bill overwhelmingly passed the House on Wednesday. It will allow parents as well as grandparents to save $5,000/child for a college fund without having to pay taxes.

I continue to be disappointed in how some members of the House vote on some bills. These representative watch for their que before voting. We had one interesting illustration of that on Wednesday in regard to a resolution that would be a precursor to sales a tax on goods purchased on the internet. The initial vote was 89 for it and 7o against it. Since it lacked a constitutional majority of 91 given that we have 180 members, the bill did not pass. The author of the bill immediately asked for reconsideration which received a majority vote. We then voted again and the vote this time was 115 for the bill and 55 against; all of this within a 5 minute time frame. What happened is that the Majority Leaser made sure that people saw how to vote by speaking a few words. This will be much easier to do as increasing numbers of us use computers on the House floor. With this technology you can immediately inform a group and even poll them within minutes.

I do not typically spend much time talking about the passage of bills in the House. One reason for this is that they can fail in the Senate, never to be heard of again. At other times they get changed so significantly between the House and the Senate that my comments on them when they came through the House would not be pertinent to what ultimately happens. Also, the Governor will veto some of these. Yet another consideration is that the media generally does a pretty good job of letting you know about key bill votes as they progress through the legislative process.

In the Presidential Primary held on Tuesday there were 229,000 votes cast for the Democrat presidential candidates and 641,000 for the Republican candidates. Republican voters outnumbered Democratic voters in 146 of the 159 counties. Some are saying that these results indicate that Georgia will elect more Republicans to the legislature this Fall. While this may happen, I do not agree that the primary was an indication if for no other reason than in the last election for the House of Representatives in 1998 Republican House candidates received 150,000 more votes than did Democrats but only won 78 of 180 seats. Now you begin to see the power of redistricting that we will have to do in 2001 based upon the 2000 census.

A post script to last week’s partisan observations is that a front page story on Monday told of Governor Barnes keeping a score card on each legislator in regard to their support of his agenda. One well known political scientist said that this “reveals an extreme tendency toward retribution. Also, this week Ethics charges were brought against the Majority Leader in the Senate and the Majority Leader in the House for a conflict of interest.

March 15, 2000

Tuesday evening I spent about 3 hours attending the conference committee on the Education Reform bill. I left at 10:00 p.m. but it went on for another 5 hours and finally resulted in an agreement between the three House and Senate negotiators.

The conference committee process was certainly not very assuring of good legislation being developed for the most important thing that state government has to do which is public education. The negotiators consisted of 2 lawyers, 2 businessmen, a CPA and a Special Education teacher from a failing school. The only other people that were allowed to speak during that process were the Governor’s advisors. Reportedly, the three advisors to the Governor have not spent a day in public education as a teacher or administrator. Further, frequently during the course of the negotiations the Governor who was in his office until 2:30 a.m. constantly was calling in with direction. The conference committee spent a lot of time swapping ignorance or sharing stories but mostly doing what the Governor told them to do.

I basically voted against this bill first and foremost because I think it is very premature. Nothing would have happened except to make it a much stronger bill had we waited until next year. Second, the Department of Education has largely been left out of the process as have teachers because this is a bill largely written and driven by the Governor. Third, it is a shame when you need the buy in of teachers to pull this off, that the Governor has alienated them from the start. Fourth, this bill is primarily a power grab by the Governor and takes significant powers and responsibilities from the elected State School Superintendent. Fifth, the curriculum changes and testing procedures which are key to true reform have not been developed. There are numerous other reasons such as the inevitable resulting local property tax increase; cuts to science, technology and foreign language, fails to improve discipline, increases paperwork and delays taking action on failing schools for year, etc. A number of us in the legislature and or education believe the Governor has been given a lot of incorrect or complete information upon which he based much of this bill.

We saw another consequence of our cities and country not coming to an agreement in HB 489 (Service Delivery Strategy Law) as the Department of Transportation with ding for the paving at 6.6 miles of roads in LaGrange, Westpoint, Hogansville and county roads.

The Minister of the Day detailed six similarities between policicians and ministers. He included that we both want to make a difference but our constituents/congregation does not want us to make much change. Also, we both rate rather low ?? Occupations they trust but both our constituents/congregations want to trust us. I work hard to earn your trust.

Once again, with this bill, I saw why politicians can often do pretty much what they want. While a number of people, educators in particular, were outraged about the bill and blistered us with protests; however, in the last several weeks this had largely stopped; not because they now agree with the bill but instead they gave up.

At just about midnight on Wednesday, the 2000 session concluded. As usual, this was an extremely hectic day with somewhere between 70-90 bills passing, which is absurd. It’s obvious that poor legislation is often the result of such a process. The citizens of Georgia would be better served by limiting what we do on the last day but this is not going to happen until we have new leadership. The most significant event of the last day for me was attending the press conference for the LaGrange Internet Television Initiative. It has been gratifying to be a small part of this. The initiative should have a profound impact on our community.

The 2000 session was dominated by the Education Reform bill but unfortunately we did not do a very good job on it. Some good news is that we raised the Homestead exemption to $15,000 which will reduce property taxes. There were some high profile bills that will have very little effect on most of us including increased penalties for animal cruelty and for hate crimes. There is a tax incentive plan called One Georgia to help economic development in some of our more rural and economically depressed areas. You will see differences in regard to registering motor vehicles and getting your driver’s license as these will be combined into a Department of Motor Vehicles which most other states have already done. Some abuses in the cemetery and funeral home industry will be corrected by a bill that was passed, not a very noteworthy session.

I was disappointed that the higher education savings account bill did not pass the Senate. This would have been an outstanding way of saving monies for college education without paying taxes on the savings. Personally, I was very disappointed that my bill to codify the post secondary options program failed. This had earlier received a lot publicity when the Governor threatened to stop it for some of our brighter high school students who attend colleges for some of their course work. It was obvious from the beginning that the Governor was not in favor of this. It’s paradoxical that he wants to increase educational standards and yet for our brighter students has taken a significant step backwards unless he reverses himself. In that regard, I will be working with LaGrange College and the school systems to try and have that happen.

The inaccurate information on the Education Reform bill continued. In a letter that the Governor passed out to House and Senate members before last Thursday’s final vote on the bill he indicated that there was State funding for 85,000 teachers in Georgia but that there were only 50,000 actually hired and that the balance of this was used for creating additional administrative positions. This just isn’t true and it defies common sense. Also, Monday as we passed the $14.4 billion pork loaded budget the comment was made that there is $800 million additional in it for education reform. Even accounting for the $155 million to help pay for higher health insurance premiums of teachers because we have a poorly run state health care plan for our employees and teachers, I can not find even half of the claimed $800 million. The announcement from the Troup County School System that they’ve created a new administrative position to comply with some of the accountability provisions of this bill is accomplishing exactly the opposite of what the Governor wanted to do which is to reduce the number of administrators. I’ll try to make these my last negative comments in regard to the Governor’s Education Reform bill. It’s time for us to get behind education reform, find the strengths of this bill and work them, correct the weaknesses and fill the voids. In that regard I had a brief meeting with Linda Schrenko, State Superintendent of Schools, on Wednesday and told her I wanted to work with her to develop curriculum which is so desperately needed for true reform.

While the debate between Troup and LaGrange High School about their respective Advance Placement classes has had its low points it is good to see local citizen promoting educational excellence.

Dr. Art Holbrook told me the meeting Congressman Barr arranged this week with the Corps of Engineers went exceedingly well. Good to have Senator Max Cleland on board. Except for the Tri State Compact negotiations the prospects for improved condition at West Point Lake have not looked better in a long time.

During the balance of the year before we go back into session in January you can contact me at (706) 884-3232 ext. 203 or email jbrown@legis.state.ga.us.

Representative Jeff Brown will speak to the Troup County Republican Women’s Organization on Tuesday, April 11^th, 2000. The meeting will be held at the Taste of Lemon Restaurant in LaGrange and start at 12:00 p.m. Representative Brown’s speech will be at approximately 12:30 p.m. The title of the speech is Summary of the 2000 Legislative Session. This will be followed by questions.

Any one interested in attending the lunch should call the Taste of Lemon Restaurant at (706) 882-5382 to make reservations. For more information, please contact Representative Jeff Brown at 706-884-3232, ext. 203.

Jeff Brown announced today that he qualified for his fourth two year term for Representative for District 130 in the Georgia House of Representatives. The area covered by this starts with the Long Cane precinct and comes through LaGrange and covers northern Troup County including Hogansville. Also he represents three southern precincts of Coweta County including Grantville and Moreland.

Brown said, “this is probably the most crucial election in the history of Georgia. High on the agenda for the next 2 years is redistricting which will be decided by the House and Senate members. It will greatly influence who this state sends to Congress particularly since we anticipate adding possibly as many as 2 new Congressional districts. It also marks the beginning of implementing the very controversial Education Reform bill. While most of us agree that significant reform is needed in public education, this reform must go in a better direction than will otherwise happen. Also, there’s the issue of balance of power as the Governor assumes more and more powers previously reserved for the legislature.”

“I have been pleased to be a part of a number of positive legislative actions in the past six years. Taxes such as the intangible tax and state sales tax on food have been removed. Also, we’re in the second year of increasing Homestead Exemptions to $50,000. A key bill that passed two years ago was the Tax Payers Bill of Rights that will stop the past practice of using re-appraisals as a tax increase. Also during this time, the academic standards of the State University Systems have significantly increased which will serve this state well in the years ahead. Crime has been reduced primarily due to tougher sentencing laws passed by the legislature. Also during this time, I have attempted to respond to every constituent request regardless of their party affiliation or income level.”

Finally Brown says, “in addition to the agenda items referenced above, there are a number of other areas that will receive legislative attention in the next session. There’s the continuing issue of the quality and quantity of water that so greatly affects us in West Point Lake. Health care reform is long overdue and my committee and task force accomplishments should help to improve this. Also, private colleges need to receive fair treatment with HOPE Scholarships monies. This will save tax payers significant monies since it costs over $9,000 per student to send a student to the public University System today.”

During the six years that he has served Brown has been on the Health & Ecology, Human Relations & Aging Committee and the Industry Committee. He feels that these are three very crucial committees that affect constituents in numerous ways. He has also been a Deputy Whip, Chairman of the Health Policy Task Force and on the House Republican Policy Committee.

Prior to his election as a Representative Brown served for 4 years on the LaGrange City Council. Before that he was Chairman of Troup 2000. He’s a member of Rotary, has been an Elder at the First Presbyterian Church, serves on the Hi Tech Task Force, West Point Lake Advisory Task Force and the Industrial Development Authority. Earlier he served on the Telecommunications Committee. Brown was a Business Manager for Milliken. In 1983 he founded Comprehensive Search. He feels his background should bode well for the continuing economic development of LaGrange.

Brown is married to Shirley Scott Brown who serves on the LaGrange Zoning & Planning Commission and is President of the Chattahoochee Valley Art Museum. They have a son Greg who is a graduate of LaGrange High School and Presbyterian College. He is a District Manager with the Vecta division of Steelcase in Atlanta. For more information call Jeff Brown at 706-884-3232.

Since the state legislature has a significant involvement in State Merit which in turn has received a lot of publicity in the LaGrange area because of the decision of West Georgia Medical Center, I am offering some additional insight into this situation. I think it’s important that the tax payers of this area understand that you are underwriting about 75% of the cost of health insurance for state employees, teachers, and retirees from both groups. This group totals approximately 500,000 people in Georgia and almost 3,000 in Troup County. Further, in the last two years, taxpayers in Georgia have had to supplement the State Merit Health Insurance plan for almost $400 million dollars of expenses exceeding the premiums. Therefore I feel that the taxpayers of Georgia not only need to be aware of how approximately 1$ billion dollars of their monies are being spent but also they should expect of their elected official efforts to bring these expenses in line.

It was with this primary intention that a contract was negotiated with First Georgia of which West Georgia Medical Systems is one of the participants. It also needs to be understood by the taxpayers that choice in medicine does cost money contrary to some of the claims of our politicians particularly at the federal level. This is illustrated well by the fact that the premium for a PPO is about half the cost of what they call an indemnity plan where you basically have unlimited choices. First to those State Merit employees who are complaining about the lack of choice let us point out that you could pay the extra money and have the choices and therefore have your orthopaedic doctors and surgery at Southern Orthopaedic Center.

As a conservative republican who pretty much believes in the free enterprise system I have been in a real quandary since I’ve gotten heavily involved with the health insurance serving a legislator. All studies that I have seen of any significance indicate that the free enterprise system unfortunately doesn’t work in health care. The main reason for this is that in free enterprise we have a primary driving mechanism of supplying the ___. Basically this says that as the demand goes up and exceeds the supply the prices will increase and the reverse of this caused decreasing prices. In health care there is almost a universal phenomenon that as the supply goes up so does the demand. Another factor is that government through plans such as State Health Insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, etc. pay approximately 50% of the cost of all health care. There is not another such example in free enterprise. Therefore, the contention of free enterprise that has been raised during this debate is really not founded on fact. Interestingly, there is really no free enterprise operating in Orthopaedic surgery in the area so basically Southern Orthopaedic is the only place where outpatients Orthopaedic work is done given that they have an agreement with the one active Orthopaedic surgeon at Clark Holder Clinic.

There is another interesting fact here that now with the arrival of the Houston Clinic which certainly is well credentialed as are the people as Southern Orthopaedic, we do have some competition.

Mark Callahan did an excellent job of bringing other factors into view particularly as it relates to indigent care and monies that exceed what the government pays the hospital for Medicaid and Medicare. Let me just point out that I have yet to see figures any where near this for the Southern Orthopaedic Surgery Center. As a matter of fact, this state has a certificate of need program to protect our hospitals in particular from competition that, if you will, takes the cream and leaves the unreimbursed or the low reimbursed care to the hospital. Obviously a formula like this not only dries up the cost for those people who will either have to pay for health care on their own or for companies that pay all or part of their employees health insurance cost. We’ve seen around the state that this can often lead to bankruptcy of the hospital. We certainly don’t want this since one of our great assets in Troup County is the West Georgia Medical System.

I think with all of the debate about health care and the fact that we really don’t have a solution I don’t believe that we have one with the national debate we might want to use this as an opportunity to have additional letters to the editor if people have facts that either supplement mine, contradict mine and let you ultimately decide. The one think I do know is tax payers in this state cannot continue to supplement State Merit any more that the fact that we’ve already paid for 3/4 of the premium and when you do such then I don’t feel that the people receiving it should have all of the choices that a plan that is paid for either by a company or by employees does.

It appears that we have not been given accurate or truthful information by the Corps of Engineers in regard to the upcoming navigational window. We were told that the equipment could only be transported by barge so from the start there was an awareness that they would have to have a navigational window. Secondly, we know factually that the Southern Company has already told the residents of Lake Harding area that there will be a draw down for this purpose. Therefore, why are we being told that a navigational window is being contemplated? Is it not an accomplished fact?

The Secretary of the Army for Civil Works, Dr. Joseph Westphal, has stated that the Corps of Engineers can not justify navigational windows for barge traffic on the Appalachola and Chattahoochee rivers as being cost effective. Who will justify drawing down West Point Lake by as many as 8 feet for one barge?

It is interesting and perhaps beneficial that finally the residents of Lake Harding are sharing at least once in the burden of maintaining the Appalachola, Chattahoochee, Flint rivers system (ACF). I have long questioned why all lakes on the system do not share this responsibility. If Lake Harding had been so involved the Corps would have probably already changed its management practices because there are a number of influential and higher income people who have homes on Lake Harding who would not have tolerated what those of us living on West Point Lake have endured.

Let us not forget that despite a few inches of rain we’re still in a three-year drought. The Corps earlier this year committed publicly that there would be no more navigational windows while we were in a drought. How could they have made such a statement knowing the above?

Regardless of the decision on this particular navigational window, the Corps is about to start its annual lunacy of drawing down West Point Lake to as low as 623 feet for some theoretical spring rains. We all know that this causes erosion, increases the danger of using the lake, is unsightly which hurts us economically, effects the fish population, runs the risk of not being able to get back to full pool as soon as we hoped given the drought conditions and reduces the options that the Corps has for managing the whole system (once the water is released, it is never to be captured again). All of these problems are avoidable by keeping the lake as close to full pool year round as possible. If we could survive a record rain fall in July 1994 when Hurricane Alberto hit, with the lake at slightly above full pool, it’s obvious that we do not need the draw downs that we have gone through every year. At the time of Alberto, despite rains reported as much as 47 inches on the ACF System, West Point Lake only increased by 1.22 feet with no flooding downstream.

Thank goodness, we’re finally getting some action on challenging how the Mobile office of the Corps of Engineers runs the ACF. Those of us that have been involved in this have said that it appears that the Savannah office does a superior job of running their system than does the Mobile office. I believe the Mobile office exercises typical bureaucratic inertia, does not challenge their past methods and forgets that they really work for the tax payers and therefore need to serve our collective best interests.