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Gov. Sonny Perdue has asked the Georgia
attorney general to rule on whether local school districts can use
taxpayer money to pay for lawsuits against the state.
Perdue sent the request to Attorney General
Thurbert Baker on Tuesday, a week after the Consortium for
Adequate School Funding in Georgia withdrew a 4-year-old lawsuit
claiming the state has an unfair system of paying for education.
Consortium executive director Joe Martin
said the state is trying to put a "chill" on efforts to
file another lawsuit by telling districts not to pay the group's
dues - which are used for attorney fees - until the issue is
resolved.
On Wednesday, Georgia schools Superintendent
Kathy Cox sent a memo to the 50 mostly rural districts involved in
the 2004 lawsuit cautioning them against using public school funds
to pay dues until Baker can rule on the matter.
"We were bewildered when we saw the
message from Kathy Cox," Martin said. "The obvious irony
is the governor depends on the attorney general for legal advice.
To ask the attorney general for legal advice on a case in which
the state is a party certainly raises a question."
Perdue spokesman Bert Brantley said the
governor had been looking at the issue for some time and his
request to Baker has nothing to do with the status of the lawsuit.
"The timing of it has nothing to do
with whether or not lawsuit was dropped or refiled," Brantley
said.
Cox's spokesman, Dana Tofig, said the
superintendent's memo was intended to let school districts know
they might be breaking the law.
"The superintendent wants to make sure
public education funds are being used for public education and
being using in accordance with the law," Tofig said.
The consortium filed the lawsuit in
September 2004, and attempts by the state to halt it landed the
case in the Georgia Supreme Court the following year. The state's
highest court ruled that the case could go forward.
The case was set to go to trial in October,
but the consortium announced Sept. 16 that it was withdrawing the
lawsuit over concerns that a new judge assigned to the case would
not give a fair hearing. Fulton County Superior Court Judge
Elizabeth Long oversaw the lawsuit for years, but the case was
recently transferred to Judge Craig L. Schwall after budget cuts
eliminated Long's position.
Martin has said he plans to file the lawsuit
in another state court, but he has not given a timeline for it.
The lawsuit claimed that small, poor
counties don't raise enough from local taxes to compensate for
more than $1 billion in cuts to state education spending in recent
years. The state's attorneys said Georgia is providing what the
law requires.
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