How They Do It: GA GOP Legislature Wrote a Special $100k Tax Break for GOP Gov. Sonny Perdue
The Republicans have been in control of the Georgia government for so long that they are behaving like, well, Republicans:
The evidence is conclusive: In 2005, Georgia legislators quietly smuggled language into an otherwise routine tax bill that gave one particular Georgia taxpayer a special tax deferral worth more than $100,000.
The taxpayer in question was Gov. Sonny Perdue, the man who signed the bill into law on April 12, 2005, and shortly thereafter signed his state tax return taking advantage of that special legislation.
That chain of events represents a serious abuse of public power for private gain, and the victims of that abuse were Georgia taxpayers.
Then things got interesting.
On March 22, HB 488 was mysteriously recommitted to the Finance Committee, then chaired by Sen. Casey Cagle (R-Gainesville). Back in committee, only one seemingly minor change was made to the bill — changes affecting capital gains taxes from the sale of property were suddenly made retroactive all the way back to Jan. 1, 2004, more than a year earlier. Although only a few knew it at the time, that minor change meant big money for Perdue, whose land transactions now fell under the new law.
Cagle, who has since become the Republican candidate for lieutenant governor, said in an interview Tuesday that the Department of Revenue had requested the change making those provisions retroactive.
However, that is contradicted by Graham, who says his department made no such request.
You may recall that Cagle recently defeated friend-of-Abramoff and acolyte-of-Pat-Robertson Ralph Reed in the primary election for lieutenant governor.
