The Speaker's plan for swapping property taxes for an enhanced state sales tax might have been a fiscal disaster this year if it had been in place.

James Salzer writes in the AJC's Political Insider:

The original plan proposed by House Speaker Glenn Richardson last year - swapping property taxes for an enhanced state sales tax - might have been a fiscal disaster this year if it had been in place, according to critics of the plan.

Sales tax collections were down 8.6 percent during the final quarter of fiscal 2008 compared with the same period in 2007. Sales taxes are currently the second most important source of revenue for the state, just below income taxes. With the economy slowing, sales have fallen faster than income.

That is exactly the scenario that critics of Richardson’s plan warned of.