Kemp, House Republicans headed for showdown over rural spending?
I’ve long thought Georgia was headed toward a rural reckoning that would boil down to money (as everything ultimately does), but I figured it might keep until the next reapportionment. That’s when legislative power will almost certainly consolidate solidly and irrevocably in Metro Atlanta. I may have been wrong.
Now comes James Salzer with the lead story in today’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution and a detailed rundown on Governor Brian Kemp’s proposed cuts to important rural programs, including some developed by the House Rural Development Council.
This is a little odd, of course, because Kemp, Georgia’s third Republican governor, rode into office on a tsunami of rural votes, and the operating presumption has been that Job One for Kemp & Co. would be to take care of rural Georgia.
The fact that we’ve already got this public a split on rural spending between the second and third floors of the Capitol is at least mildly surprising. The House Appropriations Committee, which was the source of most of the grousing quoted in Salzer’s story, is made up largely of rural and small-town legislators from outside the Metro Atlanta area.
By my rough count, only about 30 of the committee’s 80 members come from Metro Atlanta, and most of those are from the suburbs. Only a handful come from inside the perimeter. In contrast, the committee’s leaders hail from places like Auburn, Ashburn, Musella, Nashville, Thomasville, and Moultrie.
To some degree, this may be little more than the annual kabuki theater the General Assembly performs — some might say stages — around the annual budget. But it feels like more than that.
Watch this space.
