A follow-up on the Georgia House of Representatives Minority Leader Rep. DuBose Porter.
Yesterday I did a 8-5-09 post that quoted DuBose Porter as saying:
Georgia should go to the downstream states and to residents of south Georgia and begin new discussions. “Everyone has a right and an interest in a reasonable use of water-that is ancient common law, and it provides a solid basis for working out the problems of rights to our rivers.”
Of course DuBose was talking about Georgia's water plan (or lack thereof in substance) that was recently adopted by the legislature. I can't say I took the above comment by DuBose out of context because the comment was the only one in the article about South Georgia, although there was another paragraph about the water plan that I will share below.
However, I was no doubt a bit out of line in chiding DuBose by commenting:
DuBose, forget your hints to Georgia politicians about coming south to take our water and your lawyer talk about common law water rights. Dublin might not be in South Georgia, but it's next door in Middle Georgia, and both areas share the Floridan Aquifer, which you are inviting metro politicians and Georgia voters to come take. Forget it.
When it comes to discussions with the Other Georgia, Georgia no longer discusses. It dictates.
The other paragraph in the InsiderAdvantage Georgia linked above noted:
[Rep. Porter] added: "The problem is that Georgia's water plan is designed to fail by pitting local water board members against one another so that the powers at the top will continue to have final say. Georgia's water plan lines are drawn by political boundaries, rather than the natural boundaries or science of water flow within our watersheds. As long as lines are drawn separating people that should be working together Georgia will continue to get the short end of the stick in the water wars.”
DuBose knows where he is from, and who brung him to the dance. And he was a leader in advocating the Other Georgia's interest, stake and indeed livelihood in the water plan legislation.
And DuBose has done a good job in picking up the pieces since becoming Minority Leader in the House of Representatives when the Philistines and hawks took over.
Besides both of us consider ourselves friends and moderate Democrats, and we also attended the same college, Davidson College in Davidson, North Carolina.
DuBose's role and feelings about Georgia's water plan, along with other information about this party leader, are included in this December 2007 article by Dick Yarbrough in InsiderAdvantage Georgia:
A couple of weeks ago I visited with Georgia House Majority Leader Jerry Keen (R-St. Simons) to get his views on the upcoming legislative session. Last week, I stopped by to see what House Minority Leader DuBose Porter (D-Dublin) had to say about things. Porter is co-owner and editor of the Dublin Courier-Herald, one of the papers in the state that publishes this column. He didn’t seem to mind my grilling him, and I didn’t mind doing it.
Porter is one of the genuinely nice people I have met in politics. He no doubt has some people who disagree with his political positions, but I can’t imagine that he has many enemies. That is quite a contrast for state Democrat loyalists who had to endure the disastrous slash-and-burn political reign of former State Democratic Party chair Bobby Kahn. Kahn makes enemies like China makes lead toys.
During the Wrath of Kahn, Democrats lost control of the Legislature and the governor’s office for the first time in the state’s history. (Like all loyal Southerners, I don’t know what happened during Reconstruction, and I don’t care.) Today, the GOP enjoys a 22-member advantage in the 180-member Georgia House of Representatives. Porter says, “We allowed the Republicans to define who we were, and we forgot that a lot of new people had moved into Georgia that didn’t know of our accomplishments.” He’s being kind.
Today’s Democratic legislators, by and large, are either urban and minority, or white and rural. Not a whole lot of representation in the fast-growing suburbs. Porter says that these divergent demographics aren’t as big an issue as they are made out to be: “The main thing is that we agree on the core issues.” The “core issues” sounded somewhat like the list Keen had given me: water management, health care and transportation, but with two notable differences.
“I want to see education higher on the list in the next session,” Porter said, “and I want the Republicans to restore the funding cuts they made to public education and other critically important programs, like mental health.” Porter says more than $1.3 billion has been cut from the state’s education formula over the past four years, and with Georgia sitting on a $1.4 billion surplus, now is the time to put the money back. Otherwise, he says, local school districts have no choice but to ask for more taxes to cover the ongoing shortfall.
Not surprisingly, Porter doesn’t think much of House Speaker Glenn Richardson’s plan to eliminate property taxes while expanding taxes on sales, uses and services. “Remember,” he says, “the tax code says you can’t deduct sales taxes if you itemize your taxes, and more than 40 percent of Georgians do. If you eliminate property tax deductions, we will be sending an additional one billion dollars straight to the federal government.” Porter also doesn’t like the state redistributing collected taxes to the local governments. “Government works best the closer it is to the people,” he says.
Porter does agree with his counterpart Keen that water management is going to be a major issue in the upcoming session, and that it won’t be as much a Democrat vs. Republican issue as a tussle with the Atlanta suburbs. He gives high marks to Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin for her efforts to fix the city’s longtime water problems. Interestingly, he sees a developing alliance of North Georgia counties, rural South Georgia and the City of Atlanta opposing the out-of-control (my term, not his) suburban Atlanta counties and their compliant, developer-dominated county commissions. “Where are these counties going to get their water for new development?” he asks. “They may think they will be able to ‘borrow’ it from less-developed counties, and that isn’t going to happen.”
Suffice it to say, Porter and the Democrats plan to be a major influence in what happens in the upcoming session. Remember that Gov. Perdue and the Republican legislators finished the last session in a major squabble, and I suspect there are some lingering bruised feelings that will carry over to this session. Porter intends to keep his disparate crowd united and thus able to affect key legislation. This is one nice guy who doesn’t intend to finish last.
Georgia should go to the downstream states and to residents of south Georgia and begin new discussions. “Everyone has a right and an interest in a reasonable use of water-that is ancient common law, and it provides a solid basis for working out the problems of rights to our rivers.”
Of course DuBose was talking about Georgia's water plan (or lack thereof in substance) that was recently adopted by the legislature. I can't say I took the above comment by DuBose out of context because the comment was the only one in the article about South Georgia, although there was another paragraph about the water plan that I will share below.
However, I was no doubt a bit out of line in chiding DuBose by commenting:
DuBose, forget your hints to Georgia politicians about coming south to take our water and your lawyer talk about common law water rights. Dublin might not be in South Georgia, but it's next door in Middle Georgia, and both areas share the Floridan Aquifer, which you are inviting metro politicians and Georgia voters to come take. Forget it.
When it comes to discussions with the Other Georgia, Georgia no longer discusses. It dictates.
The other paragraph in the InsiderAdvantage Georgia linked above noted:
[Rep. Porter] added: "The problem is that Georgia's water plan is designed to fail by pitting local water board members against one another so that the powers at the top will continue to have final say. Georgia's water plan lines are drawn by political boundaries, rather than the natural boundaries or science of water flow within our watersheds. As long as lines are drawn separating people that should be working together Georgia will continue to get the short end of the stick in the water wars.”
DuBose knows where he is from, and who brung him to the dance. And he was a leader in advocating the Other Georgia's interest, stake and indeed livelihood in the water plan legislation.
And DuBose has done a good job in picking up the pieces since becoming Minority Leader in the House of Representatives when the Philistines and hawks took over.
Besides both of us consider ourselves friends and moderate Democrats, and we also attended the same college, Davidson College in Davidson, North Carolina.
DuBose's role and feelings about Georgia's water plan, along with other information about this party leader, are included in this December 2007 article by Dick Yarbrough in InsiderAdvantage Georgia:
A couple of weeks ago I visited with Georgia House Majority Leader Jerry Keen (R-St. Simons) to get his views on the upcoming legislative session. Last week, I stopped by to see what House Minority Leader DuBose Porter (D-Dublin) had to say about things. Porter is co-owner and editor of the Dublin Courier-Herald, one of the papers in the state that publishes this column. He didn’t seem to mind my grilling him, and I didn’t mind doing it.
Porter is one of the genuinely nice people I have met in politics. He no doubt has some people who disagree with his political positions, but I can’t imagine that he has many enemies. That is quite a contrast for state Democrat loyalists who had to endure the disastrous slash-and-burn political reign of former State Democratic Party chair Bobby Kahn. Kahn makes enemies like China makes lead toys.
During the Wrath of Kahn, Democrats lost control of the Legislature and the governor’s office for the first time in the state’s history. (Like all loyal Southerners, I don’t know what happened during Reconstruction, and I don’t care.) Today, the GOP enjoys a 22-member advantage in the 180-member Georgia House of Representatives. Porter says, “We allowed the Republicans to define who we were, and we forgot that a lot of new people had moved into Georgia that didn’t know of our accomplishments.” He’s being kind.
Today’s Democratic legislators, by and large, are either urban and minority, or white and rural. Not a whole lot of representation in the fast-growing suburbs. Porter says that these divergent demographics aren’t as big an issue as they are made out to be: “The main thing is that we agree on the core issues.” The “core issues” sounded somewhat like the list Keen had given me: water management, health care and transportation, but with two notable differences.
“I want to see education higher on the list in the next session,” Porter said, “and I want the Republicans to restore the funding cuts they made to public education and other critically important programs, like mental health.” Porter says more than $1.3 billion has been cut from the state’s education formula over the past four years, and with Georgia sitting on a $1.4 billion surplus, now is the time to put the money back. Otherwise, he says, local school districts have no choice but to ask for more taxes to cover the ongoing shortfall.
Not surprisingly, Porter doesn’t think much of House Speaker Glenn Richardson’s plan to eliminate property taxes while expanding taxes on sales, uses and services. “Remember,” he says, “the tax code says you can’t deduct sales taxes if you itemize your taxes, and more than 40 percent of Georgians do. If you eliminate property tax deductions, we will be sending an additional one billion dollars straight to the federal government.” Porter also doesn’t like the state redistributing collected taxes to the local governments. “Government works best the closer it is to the people,” he says.
Porter does agree with his counterpart Keen that water management is going to be a major issue in the upcoming session, and that it won’t be as much a Democrat vs. Republican issue as a tussle with the Atlanta suburbs. He gives high marks to Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin for her efforts to fix the city’s longtime water problems. Interestingly, he sees a developing alliance of North Georgia counties, rural South Georgia and the City of Atlanta opposing the out-of-control (my term, not his) suburban Atlanta counties and their compliant, developer-dominated county commissions. “Where are these counties going to get their water for new development?” he asks. “They may think they will be able to ‘borrow’ it from less-developed counties, and that isn’t going to happen.”
Suffice it to say, Porter and the Democrats plan to be a major influence in what happens in the upcoming session. Remember that Gov. Perdue and the Republican legislators finished the last session in a major squabble, and I suspect there are some lingering bruised feelings that will carry over to this session. Porter intends to keep his disparate crowd united and thus able to affect key legislation. This is one nice guy who doesn’t intend to finish last.
posted by Sid Cottingham | 7:36 AM
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