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closeATLANTA — A local fight over the hotel-motel tax spilled onto the floor of the Georgia House of Representatives on Thursday as the Georgia sports and music halls of fame dominated a large portion of the House’s budget debate.
Local state Reps. David Lucas and Allen Peake both took the well to battle on the issue. Other legislators discussed the Macon-based halls of fame at length, despite the fact that the halls take up only about $1 million in the state’s $18.5 billion spending plan. Two legislators called the halls by name, targeting them for cuts beyond the ones they’re already taking as the state grapples with falling revenues.
Lucas, an east Macon Democrat, responded by proposing a floor amendment to add more museum funding to the state budget — an unusual step given the weeks of work put into the annual budget by the time it hits the House floor. His proposal was easily defeated.
But Lucas used the opportunity to strike back at Atlanta legislators he accused of trying to bleed the sports and music halls to death so they can be moved to metro Atlanta. It’s OK for Atlanta to have the World Congress Center, Lucas said. No one complains that Houston County has the state-funded Georgia National Fairgrounds and Agricenter, he said.
But Macon gets a couple of state museums and people try to take them away, he said.
“Now all of a sudden ... you tell little ole Macon, Georgia, you need to fund (the halls of fame),” Lucas said. “And they need to become self-sufficient or we’re going to take them.
“See, folks up here never wanted the museums down there,” he said of the museums’ location in Macon. “And so now they want the museums up here.” Peake, a north Bibb County Republican, followed Lucas to the well and told legislators to vote against Lucas’ amendment for extra state funding. He told them Lucas is blocking a push to add a penny to the local hotel-motel sales tax to help fund the halls.
He said Macon “will put skin in the game” by providing local funding. That’s something state budget writers have asked the area to do as they try to wean the two museums from state funding.
But that issue remains unresolved because Lucas, Peake and the rest of Macon and Bibb County’s legislators can’t agree on how to proceed.
Lucas wants to split the approximate $400,000 the new penny tax would generate among the halls, the Douglass Theatre and an effort to build a new football stadium and amphitheater in the downtown area.
Peake and other Republicans have said they just want the halls to benefit from the possible tax increase. That’s what the Macon City Council and the Bibb County Commission initially asked for by adopting resolutions that called on legislators to get the required state approval for the hotel-motel tax increase.
Peake has pushed a compromise position, which would remove the football stadium and amphitheater to leave a three-way split. Lucas has said no to that. Lucas said it’s the state’s responsibility to fund the halls, and he won’t support local funding unless local people get more benefit than the three-way split would provide.
Local legislators have been back and forth not just over the split, but over what it would take to actually pass one of the proposals.
Now it appears it would require new resolutions from the city and county to proceed with anything other than a two-way split.
Peake and Lucas both agreed on that Thursday. But that’s a dicey proposition with only two weeks to go before the Legislature wraps up this session and lawmakers leave Atlanta.
The two-way split could move forward this session with a majority of area legislators agreeing.
But Peake needs four of the six Macon and Bibb County legislators in the House to move that proposal forward. State Reps. Jim Cole and Tony Sellier said they’d vote yes, along with Peake. Lucas and state Rep. Nikki Randall said they’re no votes.
That leaves state Rep. Bubber Epps, a Dry Branch Democrat and the delegation’s newest member, as the swing vote. Epps said Thursday he’s not sure how he’d vote on any of the proposals.
“I will vote for the best effort we can get, majority-wise, out of the delegation,” he said. “Why can’t we get this delegation in one room and put our heads together? Quit drawing lines in the sand?”
If Peake can get the two-way split proposal out of the House or if one of the other proposals gets support from the County Commission and City Council and moves, it will have to pass the Senate, too.
Only Republican state Sen. Cecil Staton and Democratic state Sen. Robert Brown represent Macon and Bibb County in the Senate. That means they’ll both have to sign off on any proposal.
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