Georgia Lawmakers Drop Plan To Use Sales Taxes for School Construction

By Peter Schmidt

Georgia legislators have scrapped a proposal to fund school construction through voter-approved local sales taxes after meeting resistance from municipal leaders who did not want to have to compete with school districts for funds.

The proposed constitutional amendment, Senate Resolution 159, was abandoned late last month when House leaders did not call it up for a vote. Instead, some of its backers settled for a proposal to study, rather than act on, problems in the state's tax structure.

Education lobbies had supported the original bill, which would have allowed school districts to propose local-option sales taxes, now reserved for county and city governments, to fund the...