Perdue has $100,000 Question
Gwinnett Daily Post
Editorial Board

The passage of a House bill 488 months ago that saved the governor $100,000 raises the question of who else in the state Republican hierarchy has benefited from specially crafted legislation.

Gov. Sonny Perdue and his lawyer friend state Rep. Larry O'Neal must drop down to the level of the average Georgian to understand how overtly suspicious HB 488 appears. Here's what we understand happened during the 2005 legislative session:
State Revenue Commissioner Bart Graham wrote seemingly routine legislation that, among other provisions, would allow those who sold Georgia property and then purchased "like" property in another state to defer paying capital gains taxes. Existing law already allowed the deferment when both the sale and purchase of property occurred in Georgia.

However, after the bill had gone through all the channels in the House and those in the Senate with the exception of a vote on the Senate floor, O'Neal, who had introduced the bill, appeared before the Senate Finance Committee on March 22, asking that the tax deferral provision in the bill be retroactive to land purchases in 2004, rather than effective in 2005.

A week later, the Senate approved the bill, and O'Neal presented the revised bill for a vote by the House at 9 p.m. March 29 - two days before adjournment. The bill passed, and Perdue signed it into law a day after it landed on his desk and three days before 2004 taxes were due.

Coincidentally, in 2004 the governor had invested $2 million he gained from sale of family property in Houston County in land he purchased in Florida, which would have resulted in a $100,000 tax liability were in not for the last-minute change the following year.

Unfortunately for Georgians, either the memories of everyone involved in the legislation have gone dark or they aren't talking.
Regardless of why O'Neal, who as a lawyer has helped Perdue with land deals, proposed the provision be retroactive, the governor surely must now see what everyone else sees - special legislation saving him $100,000, which is far more than most Georgians earn over two years.

While a handful of other taxpayers may have been eligible for the 2004 savings, we doubt any of them became aware of the obscure provision - as the governor did - before filing their tax returns in 2005. What a coincidence.

If it's all pure luck that a last-moment change to make legislation retroactive precisely solved a big tax liability for the governor, Perdue should use that same luck to benefit Georgia.
In the meantime, unless Perdue reverses his 2005 decision of claiming the special tax deferral, voters are left only with questions and the conclusion that his friend O'Neal worked the system - with or without the governor's knowledge - to benefit the state's millionaire chief executive officer.

Published in the Gwinnett Daily Post on 100506

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