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Early voting started in Georgia on Tuesday, so candidates are eager to get their message out to voters as they head to the polls. The candidates for Georgia House of Representatives District 137 faced off on Tuesday evening in an election forum at the LaGrange-Troup County Chamber of Commerce.

Incumbent Debbie Buckner (D) sparred with Stephen Acorn (R) during the forum organized by the LaGrange-Troup County Chamber of Commerce and live-streamed by The LaGrange Daily News. Videos of the forum, including other races, are available on both the Chamber and LDN Facebook pages.

Buckner has worked as the senior public health educator with the Columbus Health Department and as director of community relations for the Doctors Hospital in Columbus. She has served Georigia’s 137^th district since 2013.

Acorn is a native of Douglas, Georgia, and a graduate of Columbus State University. His career experience includes working as a sales consultant.

Each candidate was given 90 seconds for each question, with two minutes for an opening and closing statement.

Some of the questions covered in Tuesday’s forum include:

House Bill 1180 aims to reform Georgia’s film tax credit to ensure a better return on investment for taxpayers, while critics worry it could harm smaller students. Do you believe that Georgia’s film tax credit program needs and if so, what changes would you support to maximize the program’s economic benefits while maintaining Georgia’s attractiveness in film productions?

“I had the privilege of working on the film tax credit this past session, and we are delighted with the work that has been brought into our state with the film industry, and the tax credit has been a big part of that in helping the companies to come here. One of the things that I think needed to be addressed was purely for what I call hub seeds, the LaGranges, the Valdostas, the Ssavannas and the Columbuses of the world,” Buckner said. “It is difficult for some of the film companies to come out into our area and have all the things that they need. So we put into the draft legislation that did not get all the way through the process this past legislative session to give them what they call an uplift, to give them a little bit more of a tax credit if they come to some of the more rural areas.”

“I had mixed feelings about the film industry being in Georgia. You think about Hollywood, you think about California, you think about their ideology. I believe that a lot of that is seeped over into our, what has been a conservative state, it’s starting to seep through in more of your urban areas, and liberal ideology that a lot of us don’t believe in,” Acorn said.

“Whenever the film industry came, many of the employees were 10-99 employees, which means they were individual contractors. And a lot of the taxes that were intended to be received by the state weren’t received because they were only here temporarily filed temporarily here, really and truly, the only taxes that we received were through sales taxes for the limited amount of time they were family here before they went back to their homes did, whether it was in California or another state,” Acorn said.

House Bill 581 aims to cap property assessment increases to 3% annually. Do you support this cap, and how do you believe it would impact local governments and school districts that rely heavily? What alternatives would you suggest to ensure these entities remain adequately funded?

“It really depends on the area in which you’re in,” Acorn said. “Currently, in District 137, you have a mixture of where you have urban area Columbus, you have rural areas such as Talbotton, Meriwether, and then you have some urban and somewhat spread an area here in LaGrange. If you look at Talbot County, which is my opponent’s home county, there’s no industry. There’s no revenue that’s been generated from sales taxes or any other kind of taxes that come with development or industry. So that is the only mechanism that that local government has to be able to generate any type of revenue.”

“House Bill 581, with a constitutional amendment, so it acquired 120 votes, That means that when it passed to a majority, it was a majority of Republican and Democrat voters, so it had an overwhelming support for it to go forward. It is a referendum to allow people to decide if they want to have this floating homestead exemption that is based on the consumer price index. It would limit it from going too high, but it would lower it when the times needed it to be lower. We do not have that now, and that would be very helpful to homeowners. It’s a good idea,” Buckner said.

“Also inside the bill, there is an opportunity for sales tax should the county opt-in to do the floating homestead, they can also opt into this new sales tax opportunity. It’s a complicated bill. There’s a whole lot in it, but it has taken into consideration that the counties would need to make up the difference. And so far, the Association of County Commissioners has remained neutral and has suggested that people vote their conscience and that we have also given the county commission the opportunity, once it’s been voted in by the people, to decide whether they want to opt in or out, and then they have the opportunity to also do a sales tax,” Buckner said.

Legislation is being considered to reduce regulatory burdens on small businesses and expand eligibility definitions to include companies with up to 300 employees. How would you support small business growth in Georgia? Do you agree with expanding the definition of small businesses, and how do you see this impacting local economies?

“Numbers are always difficult because of where they are. Three hundred in Talbot county would not be a game changer as far as something that would be useful and helpful, but 300 maybe here [in LaGrange] would,” Buckner said. “What I think that we need to be doing and are trying to do a lot of times with the tax code that we’re working on, and all one of the bills that I’ve worked on the past has to do with historic preservation. What we did is we said it needs to be a building that is National Register eligible. But many times in small communities, to get through that process to become National Historic certified is very lengthy, very difficult and very hard. So what we did is we said, if it was eligible, then they could get the historic tax credit. Why that is significant is we’ve also layered it with affordable housing tax credits. We also have some workforce development tax credits. It can be layered.”