Georgia wins all around: Gov. Perdue decides no special session, but to line-item veto the property tax rebate.

From the AJC Political Insider:

Citing the futility of working with Republican House leaders in a special session, Gov. Sonny Perdue on Tuesday withdrew his veto of a $700 million mid-year budget bill, but said he would give a line-item veto to the $142 million property tax rebate it contained. That money, he said, would go into reserves instead.

Perdue blamed the unwillingness of Republican House leaders to drop their desire to override his veto, and engage in discussions of a compromise, if the General Assembly were to gather again. “I began to see the futility of a special session,” the governor said. “Leaders, in my opinion, don’t act in such a way.”
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I cannot think of a better solution of this dilemna for the Governor than what he has done.

As I have been noting, I had wanted the Governor to line-item veto the $142 million tax rebate rather than the whole midyear budget, but I did not know he would come to see this line-item veto of the tax rebate as a safe way to cut his own losses, benefit needy Georgia children, and in the process leave House Speaker Glenn Richardson as the ultimate loser.

Not thinking he would do this, I preferred to have a special session in the hope of getting some of the needed funding in the vetoed midyear budget restored. As I wrote in a 4-22-07 post:

As I noted in an April 11 post, the $142 million property tax rebate for Georgia homeowners was technically an appropriation, and as such, the governor had the power of the line-item veto.

That post goes on to say that if this rebate is included in the midyear budget -- which of course it was -- I hoped the governor would veto it.

It would have been interesting to see what would have happened if the governor had done this rather than vetoing the whole budget bill. The midyear budget would not have been perfect by a long shot, but what should the governor have expected when he had had so little input and involvement during the current legislative session, unlike past sessions.

Since, in addition to the $142 million tax rebate, the midyear spending plan also included more than $160 million for school districts, $81 million to keep the children's health insurance program PeachCare afloat, and $8.5 million in much-needed funding for the State's public defender system, the funding for these projects is now restored.