Genuine debate over 'freeze' just what voters need
The Columbus Consolidated Government's more than 30-year-old property tax assessment freeze has been a subject of debate (using that term in its broadest sense) from before its inception. Arguments about it have played out in print editorials and broadcast commentaries, on talk radio programs and blogs and message boards -- and, of course, in court and on ballots.
It's likely to go before the voters again in November. Despite the freeze being upheld twice at the polls, Mayor Teresa Tomlinson is trying to sell voters on an alternative formula that she says both protects homeowners under the freeze and makes property taxes more equitable. Under her "Thaw the Freeze" plan, which she has presented at public forums around the city, all homeowners now covered by the freeze would keep it as long as they live in that home, and the local homestead exemption would be increased from $13,500 to $20,000.
Columbus attorney and former state Sen. Seth Harp believes otherwise. Not only does he support the freeze itself, in principle as well as in practice, but he argues that the mayor's plan creates a legal problem for the city. It would result in two separate homestead exemption rates, which Harp said the Georgia Constitution expressly prohibits.
As reported earlier this week, Harp has challenged the mayor to debate the issue, and Tomlinson has accepted the challenge. The event is tentatively scheduled for 6 p.m. Sept. 16, at site yet to be determined.
After so many years of Columbus residents talking mostly around, and past, and in spite of one another on this obviously divisive subject, this sounds like a forum and format long overdue: a true debate between two smart, prominent, respected, high-powered public figures on opposite sides of one of this city's highest-profile issues.
There can be few if any greater tributes to an alumnus of an institution than to have a building named in his or her honor -- an honor the University of Georgia will on one of its most distinguished graduates, Aflac CEO Dan Amos. Groundbreaking for Amos Hall, part of a new complex that will be home to the university's Terry College of Business, is scheduled for Sept. 18.
The Columbus insurance executive has certainly earned the distinction. He is a member of the UGA board of trustees and has chaired the University of Georgia Foundation. He also chaired a national capital campaign to fund the new complex, to be named the Business Learning Community, that raised more than $30 million above its target total; that money is now funding other programs and facilities on the Athens campus.
Dan Amos is rightly renowned not just for his success, but for his ethics and integrity as well. His alma mater could hardly have chosen a worthier alum to honor.
This story was originally published September 13, 2015 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Genuine debate over 'freeze' just what voters need."