Nathan Deal, the Republican incumbent, says his efforts to grow jobs and the economy have paid off for schools. His education track record also includes work for passage of a 2012 charter school amendment and a bipartisan deal to shore up the lottery-funded HOPE scholarship and pre-k programs.
His challenger, Democratic state Sen. Jason Carter of Atlanta, contends that Deal has shortchanged Georgia’s children. He’s most critical of $1 billion-a-year-plus austerity cuts to education recommended by Deal in the first three of his four state budgets.
Carter, who voted for those three budgets, is promising that, if he’s elected, he will increase education spending through a three-pronged approach that involves growing the economy, cutting government waste and going after tax cheats. …
Georgia made probably its biggest push to go after tax cheats when Sonny Perdue was governor and Bart Graham was revenue commissioner.
“This is a messier process than (Carter) is suggesting,” said Barbara Neuby, a political science professor at Kennesaw State University who specializes in public budgeting and finance. “There is no automatic money that comes in once letters go out.”
That’s because collection would be handled through regulatory enforcement. The same laws that give state agencies broad powers to enforce taxation give people the right to appeal, Neuby said.
