Bill to review, add tax breaks approved

State lawmaker gave final approval late Wednesday to a measure to review special-interest tax breaks while at the same time adding to the lengthy list of such state tax breaks.

Senate Bill 6 by Sen. John Albers, a Roswell Republican, started out as a bill to let the House and Senate tax committee chairmen pick a handful of special-interest tax breaks to review.

“Our bill has gotten a bit bigger,” Albers told colleagues before the Senate approved the measure 52-0. The House did likewise, 146-25.

Last week the House had turned SB 6 into what’s known as a “Christmas Tree.”

For decades, legislative leaders late each session string bills and proposals onto innocuous measures that nobody could be against. Such “Christmas Tree” bills have often been a collection of tax breaks.

Companies and industries hire some of the Statehouse’s top lobbyists to help pass tax breaks and get them renewed if those measures have a sunset provision — meaning they’ll expire after a certain amount of time if they’re not reapproved.

The state has seldom done a thorough review of tax breaks to see whether they do what lawmakers were told they would do. In recent years, however, legislators have sought to study a select number of tax breaks each year.

Albers’ tax review bill easily passed the chamber earlier this year.

The House tacked onto SB 6 legislation that gave or extended tax breaks in a host of areas: for shortline railroads, for medical device and pharmaceutical manufacturers, on concrete equipment and supplies, for people who get giant yachts refurbished, for mega-site corporate projects, for Lockheed Martin to better compete for military jet contracts.

The final measure did not end up including the renewal of a rural jobs tax credit program that Senate Finance Chairman Chuck Hufstetler, R-rome, has for years publicly called a “scam.” He said the multilayered lending program, once known in a different form as CAPCO, didn’t produce the jobs that were promised and will cost the state tens of millions of dollars.

But Rep. Bruce Williamson, a Monroe Republican who sponsored the tax credit bill, said the program has been “very successful” in helping businesses in 23 rural counties.