Home > Legislative Tracker > Modest Reform of Local Industrial Development Authorities

Other Legislation:
Modest Reform of Local Industrial Development Authorities

Our Position: support
Bill Number: SB555
Sponsor: Sen. Jeff Chapman
Legislative Session: 2006

A remarkable fact emerged in 2005: Georgia has almost one thousand local industrial development and downtown development authorities.  Under HB 218, offered last session, the negotiations of all of these bodies were to be shrouded in legalized secrecy, even though they are created by local governments, and have the ability to go into debt, ultimately at the expense of the local community if their proposed project fails to work out as planned.  Sen. Jeff Chapman expressed some interest in this situation last session, and asked the Sierra Club, which brought the matter to his attention, to prepare some suggestions as to possible remedies for the obvious potential for abuse under the current development authorities laws.  The result of that work is SB 555.  The bill is not a sweeping rewrite of the current law, but does address some obvious problems.  The bill abolishes all those authorities which have been created and have since fallen into disuse.  It rewrites the currently very loose code of ethics for authorities to remove all the exceptions that have allowed insider deals.  It requires that any authority deal to get the county or city government to cut taxes be aired at a public hearing, and that the local government vote be held at a date well after the public hearing.  Finally, the bill requires much more reporting and disclosure of authority activity than is currently required. SB 555 is open government legislation. Its passage should be a matter of pride to legislators.

Status

Action Needed

Background

SB 555 is a modest attempt at reforming industrial development authorities, or IDA’s.  It would have abolished any IDA that was “on the books, “ but which was inactive, so as to remove these many “time bombs” sitting out around the state, awaiting the arrival of a hustler with a landfill or medical waste incinerator proposal.  It would have forbidden self-dealing among members of the IDA board, and it would have forced county and city governments which created the IDA’s to hold hearings on any tax abatements sought by IDA’s as part of any development projects, before the tax cuts were approved. The bill passed the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously on March 9, and was placed on the Senate Rules Calendar for DAY 30, Monday, March 13.  The weekend before the 30^th DAY “crossover day”  was used by the Association of County Commissioners and the State Chamber of Commerce to destroy the bill.