By Joel Martin

Senior writer

State Rep. Randy Nix of LaGrange got a flogging from Troup County commissioners Friday because of their disgust over this year’s legislative session.

The five commissioners are miffed about House Bill 233, which imposes a two-year cap on property tax assessment increases, but doesn’t apply to the state’s .25-mill share of the county’s tax collections.

“You kept that quarter-mill and protected yourself, and hung us out to dry,” Commissioner Ken Smith told Nix at a board work session.

Counties will have to track two assessed values for every property in the tax digest - one for county, city and school tax purposes, and the other for state property taxes.

The county faces a $2 million revenue shortfall in fiscal 2010 without increasing the property tax rate and “there’s no way to calculate the so-called freeze and how it will deflate the digest,” Commission Chairman Ricky Wolfe said.

Nix said he didn’t have any input in drafting the bill, but Georgia ranks seventh in the nation in home foreclosures and “that’s what the Legislature was looking at, to do everything as a state body to reduce property taxes.”

“If you check with the voters of Troup County, most of them would very quickly tell you they pay enough in taxes,” he said.

“I’m getting grilled really good here, but I’m not the only one who voted for this,” he said.

Gov. Sonny Perdue, who has until May 13 to decide whether to sign the bill, “will see what the unintended consequences might be and the impact, and make a decision,” Perdue spokesman Chris Schrimpf said Friday.

Also this year, the Legislature did away with a long-time state grant that provided an $8,000 homestead exemption. That means most homeowners in Troup County will have to pay an additional $237 when taxes are due in November to make up for the county government and school system’s $3 million loss.

“It’s going to be pitiful when (Tax Commissioner) Gary Wood sends out bills,” Wolfe said. “All I know to tell people is to contact you (Nix) and the other legislators because that’s where the decision was made.”

Nix said there was no way to continue the grant because of the state’s revenue problems, but it might be restored when there’s a surplus.

“Was that an entitlement?” Nix asked. “Was that guaranteed forever? The tax money would have to come from somewhere else” if the grant hadn’t been eliminated. “I think that’s pretty responsible.”

Commissioner Buck Davis noted that the Hogansville Health Department has reduced its operations from two days to one day per week because of state cuts. West Point, which has a greater demand for services, has been reduced from three days to two.

Wolfe, the commissioners’ representative on the Board of Health, said the cuts are happening at a time when the need for health services has never been as high since the Great Depression.

The state may claim to have cut its budget by 8 to 10 percent, Wolfe said, “but in reality it’s nothing but a shift of costs from the state to the local governments.”

Wolfe said a legislator, whom he declined to name, was asked recently why the state keeps passing down the cost of services and he replied, “Because y’all take it.”