In case your interested, on Friday the Georgia Senate voted to kill the Homestead Tax Relief Grant for the coming year.

No big surprise there, right?  The state needs to balance its housing bubble-induced budget, so the $428 million saved should help.  We all pay a couple extra hundred bucks on our property taxes, but hey whatcha gonna do?

However, since most people won’t be thinking “Hey, whatcha gonna do?” when they see they gotta pay hundreds more in property taxes in a crappy economy, the senators at the GA capital are looking for ways to cover their behinds from angry taxpayers.

And who better to hide behind than local governments?!

So, on the same day that the Senate voted to nix HTRG, they also voted to increase the homestead exemption from $2,000 to $4,000, decreasing the amount of tax revenue sent to local governments already struggling to balance their individual budgets.

So, that means your local government will be in the unenviable position of choosing between cutting services and raising taxes right after the state has already done it by eliminating HTRG!  Hooray!

So, when you’re looking to spread the blame this coming year,  make sure to save a little extra for your state legislator.

…thanks mostly to Sonny and his threatened repeal of the Homestead Tax Relief Grant, which accounts for $700,000 of the missing funds.

So where’d the other money go?  Well, apparently the state made a calculation mistake, which coupled with a 2% cut from a QBE (Quality Basic Education) formula, accounts for another $212,000.

Anyone else see a common thread here?  The state can’t balance its budget (resulting in killing the HTRG – though Sonny would argue otherwise) + they have a tendency to make some big ol’ calculation errors? Sounds to me like the state could benefit from a little elementary school math lesson…or at least a middle school beat-down.

But enough of my rambling. Read the full explanation and implications from Superintendent Phyllis Edwards (supplied by InDecatur) after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »