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Published Sunday, September 21, 2008 in Local

Seabaugh seeking fifth term in Senate

By Sarah Fay Campbell

The Times-Herald

State Sen. Mitch Seabaugh has had a busy summer.

Since the 2008 Georgia General Assembly session, Seabaugh has chaired the Best Value Government Task Force and the Senate Firearms Law Study Committee. He also traveled to Hollywood to talk up Georgia's new film industry tax incentives and to try and bring film and video productions to Georgia.

Seabaugh, a Republican from Sharpsburg, is seeking his fifth term in the Georgia State Senate. He is being challenged by Democrat Betty Aaron of Palmetto.

Each year, at the end of the session, Seabaugh said he takes a week to decompress and a "week or two to really assess whether or not I want to continue serving the people in this capacity."

Looking back at the 2008 session, and looking forward to 2009, there are some issues he feels he can contribute a unique expertise.

One is the state's budget. The state is facing a $1.6 billion budget shortfall, and all state agencies are facing heavy cuts.

Seabaugh chairs the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Finance. "Working in that capacity, I try very hard to cut out wasteful and needless spending," Seabaugh said.

"I'm not afraid to cut budgets, but there seems to be a lack of that kind of willingness," he said. "I felt like my voice needed to be there, in being able to be more efficient with our state budget.

The value government task force, appointed by Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, is charged with finding ways that Georgians can get the most bang for their tax bucks.

In his appropriations subcommittee, "I work very hard to understand my agencies. I dig into their budget to find out what it is that they do, and to uncover those things that they are not efficient in, or are doing that are not essential aspects of government," Seabaugh said.

"Many times that gets me called to the principal's office." The principal, of course, is Gov. Sonny Perdue.

"A lot of my colleagues are not as willing to go to the principal's office," Seabaugh said. "I try real hard to do my homework. I do what I think is the right thing, and I'm not afraid to defend it."

Seabaugh said his father taught him two principles that have always stuck with him. One is: "You are either part of the problem or you're part of the solution."

When Seabaugh, whose background is in accounting, first started thinking about getting involved in politics, "I just felt like there was a better way of doing it, I felt like the principles that I held near and dear to my heart of lower taxes and less government were not being represented as well as they should be."

The other principle is: "Don't ever ask anybody to do something that you're not willing to do yourself," Seabaugh said. "Throughout my business career I've remembered that."

Ever since he first went to the Senate, he has tried to work on a tax expenditure limitation bill. The idea is to limit the yearly growth of the state budget. And if the state takes in more money than it had budgeted, it would be refunded to the taxpayers. An adequate "rainy day fund" is essential, but that is something that should be budgeted, Seabaugh said. The bill passed the Senate this year but didn't make it through the House.

"Unfortunately, it sometimes takes a long time for everybody to come around to understanding it's a good idea."

Seabaugh said he has worked, over the years, in "doing what we could at the state level to have the tools for people to be able to purchase affordable health insurance. Everything from tort reform to creating 'cafeteria style' health plans."

"And we have had success in the last few years in being able to do that."

Seabaugh currently serves as the majority whip.

As part of the Senate leadership, he is intimately involved in many of the big issues. And "I cannot say enough good things about what I consider the good working relationship that our Coweta delegation has with our other elected officials, the county, the cities, the school board," Seabaugh said.

Many of his Senate and House colleagues "have all kinds of issues with their elected officials," he said.

The budget crisis began to rear its head early in the 2008 session. As the House and Senate worked on the supplemental budget, the governor announced that revenues were down and changed his revenue estimate.

The General Assembly decided, instead of cutting the supplemental budget, to shore it up with the state's reserve fund.

Seabaugh said he was an advocate of submitting both a supplemental 2008 budget and the "big budget" for 2009 that was under the revenue estimate. "I asked all of my department heads to bring me additional 2.5 percent cuts ... to see what would make sense for us to go ahead and cut."

Reducing the budget in the beginning would have been so much easier than the cuts that departments are now having to make.

Seabaugh doesn't agree with the across-the-board cuts Perdue is requiring.

"What you need to do is go through and cut out everything that is not a fundamental purpose of government. And that is not going to be across the board in every agency," Seabaugh said.

"I believe personally that the challenges that we have in this state -- whether they be in health care, education or transportation -- are not that we have a revenue problem. We have a spending problem," he said. "We spend way too much money in areas that don't matter, and that takes away funding from areas that do matter."

He has taken some hits for voting against the transportation sales tax.

The concept was great. But Seabaugh's concern was with the regions. If Coweta were in a region with other big metro-Atlanta counties, Cowetans could vote overwhelmingly against the tax. But if the voters in the other counties went for it, Cowetans could be dragged along against their will.

"I think it is adamantly important that I protected the interests of Coweta County taxpayers so that they are not at a disadvantage when it comes to paying for transportation," Seabaugh said. "My vote was to protect Coweta citizens from having to pay a tax for projects that didn't benefit the citizens of Coweta County."

Seabaugh is more in favor of a compromise Transportation Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax plan that would keep control on a county level. However, counties would be able to use up to half of the money for regional projects.

Another reason he voted against it was that "we really don't know if the amount of funding that we have for transportation projects is adequate or not because we don't have a transportation plan." A comprehensive plan, as well as audits of the Department of Transportation and ways to improve efficiency, are needed first.

Seabaugh is also proud of his work on Georgia's film and video tax incentives. The incentives give producers of movies, television shows, music videos and the like a 20 percent credit on their Georgia income taxes. The incentive is one of the best, if not the best, in the nation, and should really draw the industry back to Georgia, Seabaugh said. And film productions provide good jobs for craftsmen, from carpenters and electricians to cosmetologists and caterers.

When it comes to an issue, "I work very hard to make sure all the points are at the table," Seabaugh said. "That is not the norm for an elected official, usually they have their way, and they try to force their way through," Seabaugh said. "I like having opposing viewpoints at the table."

Why should people vote for Seabaugh?

"I hope that I have demonstrated, since I have been elected, that I have very sound conservative principles. And I feel like I have been very consistent in applying those principles to the job I do."