CHICKAMAUGA, Ga. -- The Georgia General Assembly will convene in Atlanta on Jan. 8, and Rep. Jay Neal of Chickamauga is preparing for the 2007 session, which will again see him and fellow Republican lawmakers with a majority at the Capitol.

In his freshman term Neal served on the Children and Youth Committee, the Economic Development Committee, the Natural Resources and Environment Committee and as vice chairman of the Public Safety Committee.

He said he hopes to retain those appointments for the upcoming term. Republican Speaker of the House Glenn Richardson will announce the 2007 committee appointments sometime during first week of the session.

Running unopposed in 2006, Neal was re-elected in November to a second term for House District 1, which includes LaFayette, Chickamauga and Fort Oglethorpe.

Neal is pastor of Gordon Lake Wesleyan Church in LaFayette. He is a licensed realtor, and purchased a partner’s share of the agency he works for in LaFayette. In October his company became an independent franchise of Weichert Realtors, a national realty company based in New Jersey.

In an interview with the Walker County Messenger at his office in LaFayette, Rep. Neal recently discussed the prevalent issues and his outlook for the upcoming legislative session.

As you essentially weren’t occupied with an election this past year, was there anything you dealt with legislatively in the off-season, and how are you preparing for the upcoming session?

Right now a lot of what I’m doing is getting my business prepared for me to be in session and away in Atlanta much of the time.

Earlier this year I chaired a study committee looking at the development of an official state children’s budget, and we should have the final report ready before we go back into session.

One of the things we looked at is the position of Georgia’s children in comparison with other states. There are many areas where they’re ranking from 44th or lower, which is not acceptable. There are some people who believe the answer to that is to spend more money, but we first looked at how effective we were being with the current spending. One thing we found was that there’s a lot of duplication of services, with situations like having one department handling the appropriations (funding) and another setting the policy. This makes it difficult to be accountable for the spending and for what is being accomplished.

Developing a children’s budget would certainly have to encompass a huge range of issues, from infant mortality rates to SAT scores. What else tops the list?

Children’s health is certainly at the top, with everything from the percentage of kids without health insurance to obesity rates. And many behavioral issues bring law enforcement and the Department of Corrections into consideration in dealing with criminal activity.

It’s a very complex situation, to the point that even some experts who testified before the committee couldn’t pinpoint exact solutions. The volume of what needs to be streamlined is huge, and it’s not something that’s going to be cured in one session of the legislature.

Georgia is now the fourth fastest-growing state in the U.S. in terms of population. What are the pros and cons of that, and as a pro-business conservative, how do you think that growth should be balanced?

I think (the growth) reflects the quality of life in our state. People are looking for a good place to live and to work and Georgia presents opportunities for that.

But we’re already experiencing some problems as a result of our growth, especially in transportation, and especially in the metro Atlanta area. The people keep coming, and they’ve got to be able to get from home to work and be able to get out and do the things that Georgia offers. I know you’ve talked with Sen. Jeff Mullis about the construction funding shortfall, which presents a challenge locally for needs like getting Cloud Springs Road widened from Lakeview Drive to U.S. 27. We can’t keep funding transportation like we have been.

We are a pro-business-leaning legislature, and we are actively trying to bring businesses into Georgia to provide jobs, and if we can create a business environment that allows these jobs to continue coming into the state then we’ll benefit. There are those growth pains that we’ll be dealing with, but I’d rather be dealing with growth pains than with the pains of a shriveling economy.

In the November elections, no legislative incumbent in Georgia from either party lost their seat. How do you explain this bucking of the national trend, where both chambers of Congress changed to Democratic control and their party now holds the majority of governorships?

I think what the elections show is that for the most part across the state people are happy with the direction that Georgia is going. When that is the case, the voters will send incumbents back to the legislature.

Will the Georgia General Assembly be a happy place then, or will there be the same old acrimony on the same old issues?

I don’t think you’re going to be able to term this session as more cooperative. There are some very real differences between our party and the minority party, and I think you’re going to see them continuing to try and politicize issues. There’s a lot of grandstanding that goes on in the speeches (in the House), and I think that will continue because the Democrats in the House today are even more left-leaning than they were two years ago.

Would you characterize the Democrats as being obstructionist?

I wouldn’t go so far as to say they are all the time, but there are clear instances where it has been so. Their opposition to voter ID cards is an example — without looking at the validity of securing the ballot box, they saw a political issue and they tried to make it as divisive and as charged as they possibly could.

In order to pass the faith-based funding amendment this year as Gov. Perdue hopes to do, would you be willing to include specific language that forbids the use of school vouchers, which is the main sticking point for the Democrats?

No, because when you’re looking at amending the state’s constitution I don’t think you should bring together two issues that are not related. There are states that have vouchers, and there are other ways to go about getting them. But we’re not pushing for that, we’re pushing for an initiative that allows organizations like Freedom Counseling, Kids For Christ and the Care Mission to receive state funding. There are a number of organizations in this state that are already receiving state funds, but if there was ever a legal challenge that prevailed against them then the state’s going to have this incredible need to meet these social services and we’re not going to have the money to do it. We simply want to establish constitutional protection for faith-based funding from the state.