Northwest Georgia cities and counties have set up meetings in the coming weeks to decide if they’ll re-impose the sales tax on energy used in manufacturing.

 

However, Chattooga County  Commissioner Jason Winters was quoted in Sunday's Rome News Tribune as saying he and City of Summerville  officials want to help existing manufacturers and lure others. Winters is quoted as saying, he's not sure how much money the county will loose since he's not sure what the individual power bills produce, but local industries have been reassured that the city and county will do everything they can not to implement the local excise tax.

The Georgia General Assembly removed the tax — it phases out during a four-year period, beginning in January — but left the option for a local excise tax.

If elected officials don’t take action by the end of the year, they’ll start seeing a revenue drain in 2013.

All but five Georgia counties have a permanent local option sales tax to offset property taxes. The loss also would affect SPLOST revenue and school construction programs funded through an education, or ELOST, levy, but state law caps the local tax at 2 percent.

The city of Calhoun has its own electric utility, so City Administrator Eddie Peterson has a good idea of the hit they’ll take. He says will lost about  $250,000 a year,” he said. “That’s nothing to sneeze at.”

Gordon County has a meeting with city officials scheduled for Sept. 4, County Administrator Randall Dowling said, and it appears possible they’ll decide to reimpose the sales tax.

The issue  is expected to be discussed by the Rome Council and the Floyd County Commission  next month. Bartow County’s meeting reportedly is Sept. 6, and Polk County reportedly is  setting up a session with officials from Cedartown, Rockmart and Aragon.

Whitfield County has not made a decision yet, Commission Chairman Mike Babb said, but “there’s not much interest” in reviving the tax. Dalton-Whitfield is one of the state’s major manufacturing centers, and Babb said some of the biggest plants spend $300,000 to $500,000 a month on electricity alone.

But the area is notoriously anti-tax. It has no SPLOST or ELOST, and a 100 percent Freeport exemption on business inventory went into effect in January — culling an estimated $1.6 million a year from local governments.

If counties opt not to impose a local excise tax, individual cities may choose to levy it on operations within their borders.