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Profiles in Taxpayer Advocacy: Dougherty County Taxpayers Association John Stephenson April 1, 2010 From time to time, I’ll profile a local taxpayer advocate or advocacy organization to highlight their efforts fighting for lower taxes, less spending, and more transparency. For my first profile, I choose the Dougherty County Taxpayers Association (DCTA). Founded in June 2007, DCTA has been working to educate the citizens of Dougherty County, Georgia about their rights as taxpayers and engage them to better oversee county government tax and budget policies. In addition, DCTA has challenged the constitutionality of the county’s property tax system in court to make it fairer for taxpayers. There is no question that Georgia, like many states, needs steadfast watchdogs for taxpayers. While some purported fiscal conservatives in Georgia have attacked “broad-based” tax increases, they have quietly been raising fees, proposing “revenue enhancements,” targeting new excise taxes, and coming up with other tax-hiking gimmicks. But make no mistake; these are tax increases by another name. NTU and groups like DCTA are involved in ongoing efforts at the local and state levels to prevent these and other tax increases that burden hard-working Georgia taxpayers. Although DCTA is relatively new, already it has achieved some notable successes on behalf of taxpayers. DCTA has successfully advocated for reductions in Dougherty County property tax rates, halted an illegal $6 million “no strings attached” bond issue, and sought accountability for nearly $4 million missing from the local school lunch program. Currently, DCTA is researching corruption in the county government and in the city of Albany, Georgia. As part of their efforts, DCTA has drafted “A Contract With the Citizens of Albany & Dougherty County, GA” for elected officials and candidates to sign. In addition, DCTA sponsors legal workshops for property owners to educate them about how to challenge disputed property values. You can read about this effort and others on DCTA’s website by clicking here

Must read! Article published in The Albany Herald, January 30,2010

Welcome to the “New Minority”

According to IRS data, the bottom 50% of wage earners in 2008 paid a total of 2.99% of all taxes – almost none. The top 50% paid 97% after OBAMA’s 2009 cash pay-out to people who pay little or no taxes (so called refundable tax credits) and for the first time in history, over 50% of American citizens will pay no federal taxes in 2010.

What does this mean for America? When more than 50% of the citizens aren’t paying for the cost of government, it becomes impossible to win an election by promising to reduce government spending or wasteful services, when over 50% of citizens depend on it and vote for it.

In Dougherty County slightly more than 15% of the population pay advalorem taxes to support a government and services supporting approximately 97,000 citizens.

Is this not an insidious form of economic, if not electoral, discrimination when such a vast minority of citizens who control the majority of investment capital, technology, and taxable resources are denied a seat at the table of governance by lesser, if not non-productive, have nots? It is in essence “taxation without representation.”

The same intellectual and capital resources that built this community and nation are now outnumbered, out voted, and void of representation in our city/county commissions, as well as government appointments, now dominated by bureaucrats who have limited or no knowledge of business, commerce, economic or risk capital concepts.

Space does not allow me to list the numerous wasteful government projects (with which we are all familiar) that are sucking the very life blood out of this once vibrant community and driving its greatest human, technological and capital resources out of the area, (the “timeliners”), just biding their time for kids to graduate, a promotion, or retirement, etc. then leave this misery behind.

Most recently, our School Board out-voted 2 prudent members (5 to 2) to by-pass state statutes and appoint an unqualified superintendent with no experience to lead an already broken and inferior public education system that receives a major part of its financial support from 15% of its working citizens, who either have no school age children or pay thousands of dollars more to send their children to private schools. The desperate cries of “foul” from productive (minority) tax paying citizens falls upon ignorant deaf ears. “They know not that they know not and they know not.”

We should not fault directly the members of school boards or city and county commissions who make these egregious decisions, but instead fault the people who elected these incompetent people who serve in these responsible positions. As a “new minority”, our silence only encourages more of the same.

It is no different from Carlton Fletcher’s report of two jurors in the Don Buie trial who refused to be a part of “sending another black man to jail”. If not for a very courageous and ambitious chief assistant D.A., who cut a last minute plea “deal” with Buie’s attorney, Buie would have walked away a free man. Those responsible for his acts still go unpunished, even without a reprimand or suspension.

Albany is on track to becoming a microcosm of Detroit and East St. Louis, where productive tax-paying citizens have been driven from the area (by taxes, crime, failed public education, etc.) and left the remaining citizens as “pawns” of the state and federal governments and elected bureaucrats to languish in 40% unemployment and abject poverty. We as the “new minority” are voluntarily surrendering our resources without a fight, consumed by public apathy.

The only hope for our community is for this “new minority” to rise up, become engaged and involved, demand accountability of its tax dollars spent, encourage qualified truthful and dedicated citizens to run for office, and then elect them by insisting that 80% of us must out-vote the margins of those who (now the majority) practice economic and racial extortion that threatens the very fabric of our community.

Richard R. Thomas, a resident of Albany for

37 years, holds a B.S. degree in economics

and a M.B.A. in finance, and is President of

Corporate and Estate Analysts, Inc. an estate

Planning and Wealth Transfer Firm. He can

be reached at richard@ceafirm.com.