Funds should go to intended purpose

Published 7:30 am Friday, August 5, 2011

Folks, this is an easy one. A no-brainer to use the modern parlance.

In fact, it is so obvious that you would think even the state Legislature could get it right.

Apparently it couldn’t.

Back in 2005, the state passed a law known as Joshua’s Law that requires all 16-year-olds to pass a driver’s education course to get a license. To pay for the courses, the Legislature added a 5 percent surcharge on traffic tickets and other moving violations.

Since that law took effect, more than $57 million has been collected for the purpose of better educating our young, up-and-coming drivers.

Since it is a dedicated tax, set up to pay for a specific purpose, you would think that Georgia would have one great driver’s education program by now in every high school.

Unfortunately, according to a state audit, such thinking would be wrong.

That audit, which was released Wednesday, shows that only $8 million of the $57 million has gone to help pay for driver’s education. The rest has been spent on other things, primarily to help plug the state’s budget deficits.

As a result, according to the audit, at least three high schools have shut down their programs during the last couple of years and only 147 of the more than 400 high schools in the state even have driver’s ed. Additionally, there are 52 counties that don’t even have a program, forcing students to either go to another county for driver’s ed or take an online class.

This is the kind of finding that makes the average citizen contemplate going out and committing road rage because of his or her level of frustration with what goes on in Atlanta.

That is because no rational individual would argue with the statement that if the state says it is collecting money for a specific purpose, then the money needs to go for that purpose. To do otherwise would be called stealing in many circles.

Unfortunately, the Legislature has the ability to steal from funds that have been established for one purpose, use the money to pay for something else and not acknowledge that they are robbing from Peter to pay Paul.

That is the truly galling part about the whole thing.

No one argues that the state has had serious budget problems for some time now and that many programs have suffered funding cuts to help cover the more than $3 billion that has disappeared from the state’s coffers.

And if the Legislature had said we need to shift some money from the driver’s ed fund to help cover cuts in education, most people would have been fine with it. But taking $49 million from a $57 million fund is more than a little shift, however, and it has taken a state audit, not a legislator, to bring it to light.

Senate Majority Leader Chip Rogers told the Associated Press that he wants to make the issue a priority in the legislative session in January. He said lawmakers tend to view specially collected fees like the one in Joshua’s Law as another revenue source for the state’s cash-strapped programs rather than money that should be set aside for its intended purpose.

“It’s frustrating,” he said. “We’ve got to find a way that every dollar is spent helping kids learn how to drive.”

Yes, you do.

If there is money left over, by all means feel free to use it on other programs as long as you tell us what you are doing.

But make sure you don’t empty the cookie jar before you do what you said you were going to do with the money.