Issues

Karen believes that the best way to grow our economy and create jobs is to provide comprehensive, statewide and long-term solutions in education, tax and regulatory policy, transportation, water and health care. Georgia is a natural magnet for job creation because of its location, hard working citizens and its low taxes. We are limited only by our educational and physical infrastructures which are showing the strain of rapid population growth.

While addressing these infrastructure needs, Georgia's next governor must continue Governor Perdue's record of attracting diverse new businesses to every corner of our state, including businesses from the manufacturing, service, technology and logistics sectors.

Karen believes we need to work hard to retain the current major businesses and corporate headquarters that have already come to Georgia and continue efforts to recruit more. Karen also believes that we need a new focus on attracting and helping small and medium-sized businesses to Georgia. Small business is the real economic backbone of Georgia and the true key to job growth.

Georgia has made progress in some important areas of education, including graduation rates, SAT scores, and making the creation and approval of Charter Schools easier for parents. However, Karen thinks there is still much more work that has to be done.

As Governor, Karen will work with parents, teachers and community leaders to develop programs and innovative approaches to attack the problem of the still unacceptable drop-out rate for our children.

While doing everything we can to keep our children in school through graduation is a priority, so is preparing them for life after high school, whether through continuing education in college or technical schools, or through entering the workforce.

Too many of our children are graduating from high school lacking the skills to be successful in college or in a job. In college, too many of our students are having to take remedial classes because they lack the skills to enter basic college classes.

Karen wants to expand and grow the number of Charter Schools in Georgia so that parents and students have choices for their education. Thanks to recent changes in the law, the process for approving Charter Schools is now easier and less cumbersome. We must take advantage of this and grow the number of these schools in Georgia.

Transportation is a key issue for all Georgians. Residents of the Atlanta area are most concerned about congestion, while rural Georgians need the economic development and safety that comes with more paved roads. We are one state, and Karen believes we need a statewide solution to our transportation challenges. The recently passed bill on the governance of transportation spending was not all that it could have been, but it does represent at least a step in the right direction.

When it comes to funding transportation projects, Karen supports a comprehensive statewide approach rather than a piecemeal regional approach. She believes this should be a collaborative effort with legislators and local governments. The goal needs to be providing a foundation for our state’s future, and we have to get started immediately.

Since it is a matter of “when” and not “if” the next drought occurs, Georgia needs a statewide water plan to prepare for the inevitable. This statewide water plan must respect the water rights of all in our state and cannot undermine the success and future of one community for the benefit of another. Karen supports the construction of a strategic network of water reservoirs in partnership with local communities. As Governor, Karen will deal aggressively with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to ensure that Georgia’s interests do not take a back seat to those of Florida and Alabama.

We need to continue our aggressive conservation efforts which have reduced water consumption by 12 percent. At the same time, Karen believes that we must begin to invest in newer technology, such as water reuse and desalination.

Karen supports flexibility with Medicare and Medicaid dollars, a consumer-driven, free-market based system, and portable coverage that isn't tied to the employer. In addition to this, she supports tax deductibility for employees, not just employers, and safety nets for the truly impoverished and those who are mentally or physically not able to care for themselves.

Karen also supports 21st century initiatives to increase utilization of health information technology, including e-prescriptions and electronic health records.

She is adamantly opposed to a government-run "single payer system" preferred by many Democrats and European countries. In defense of her views, Karen points to the influx of Canadian patients seeking quality care in the U.S. to avoid the long waits and care rationing that a single payer system creates.

Karen has a strong record of fiscal responsibility as a business executive and as an elected official. In her first days on the job as head of the Fulton County Chamber of Commerce, she found that an employee had embezzled all but $10 from the Chamber’s bank accounts. Many board members wanted to quietly dissolve the organization but Karen disagreed and brought the others to her viewpoint. She ensured that the embezzler was vigorously prosecuted and then led a revitalization of the Chamber with innovative benefits to recruit new members.

As Chairman of the Fulton County Commission, Karen was faced with a $100 million budget shortfall. The only proposal the other commissioners had was to raise property taxes to fill the void. That was unacceptable to Karen, so she re-wrote the budget to use smart, targeted cuts that eliminated the deficit without raising taxes one penny. That is the approach Karen will take when tackling the state budget as Governor.

As Secretary of State, Karen has saved taxpayers millions of dollars by cleaning up a good-old-boy organization and implementing policies that root out and prevent wasteful spending. Among these actions were:

• Streamlining operations in all agency divisions; implementing proven business principles; and making significant cuts to her agency’s budget.
• Implementing zero-based budgeting, which required division directors to justify all expenditures from scratch each year and prevented them from merely seeking budget increases.
• Establishing the agency’s first Office of Inspector General to oversee all the inspectors and investigators and cross train them across the Elections, Professional Licensing, and Securities divisions.
• Ordering an audit of state-registered businesses. The audit found that 20 percent of entities registered with the state no longer existed. Her office also collected $3 million in late renewal fees from corporations in arrears. This money was returned to the state’s general fund.
• Cutting in half the number of agency employees who held state purchasing credit cards, cutting the spending limit from $5,000 to $500 and requiring purchase orders and reviews of each expenditure. As a result, expenditures of taxpayer dollars have decreased 50 percent.
• Installing GPS tracking devices on all Secretary of State’s Office inspector and investigator vehicles and making sure they were on the job for Georgians and not running personal errands. This cut the average use of gasoline in these vehicles from 101 to 65 gallons in one month – a 36 percent savings for Georgia taxpayers. She also prohibited investigators from taking their state cars home with them, incurring further savings. The GPS units also alert supervisors if a monitored vehicle exceeds 80 miles per hour, thus decreasing unsafe driving practices on our highways.

For those who say there's no more fat to cut in government, I say, “Bring it on."

Karen believes in the sanctity of human life. Today, with scientific advances that are now a reality and others that are on the horizon, society faces serious new moral and ethical issues. In dealing with these issues, Karen believes the sanctity of human life must be the priority and the fundamental premise upon which policies are based.

Karen is pro-life. As a matter of law she believes society may allow for exceptions in cases of rape, incest or when there is a real threat to the mother’s life.

Karen believes that science has shown that adult stem cells have greater scientific and medicinal value than embryonic stem cells. Creating life only to end it and use it for research is wrong.

Marriage is between a man and a woman only. To anyone who thinks otherwise, I say, “Bring it on.”

And, for those who think a woman can't get elected governor of the great state of Georgia, I say, “Bring it on.”

Karen is a strong supporter of individual citizens’ right to keep and bear arms. She was born into a family of sportsmen and first fired a gun when she was eight years old. Karen opposes the re-imposition of the so-called “assault weapons ban,” which essentially seeks to ban rifles used for hunting and sport shooting as well as handguns used recreationally or for legitimate self defense. Karen understands that actual assault weapons are already banned by the 1968 Gun Control Act and that new bans are an attempt to deceive voters into believing that automatic weapons are currently legal. She supports the right of law abiding citizens to carry a concealed weapon and believes that obtaining a carry permit should not be made so onerous as to become a de facto ban on such permits.

Karen believes that we were taxed too much before the election of President Obama and that the current trend in Washington is going to make the situation even worse. High tax rates on families, small businesses and corporations INHIBIT job creation and stifle the entrepreneurial spirit that drives the American economy.

One of Karen’s first priorities as Governor will be to conduct an audit of our entire tax code and develop a comprehensive plan for income, small business, property and corporation tax reform. Karen will also conduct a cost-benefit analysis on the legislation that would statutorily require tax and spending limitations on state government.

Georgia needs a 21st Century tax code – one that is clear, understandable and fair. This tax code will not be created at the expense of our counties and cities but in harmony with them. Karen is not concerned with who gets credit for this accomplishment; if done right, our entire state will benefit from a tax structure that is fair to all.

Karen is a strong supporter of the FairTax. Eliminating the federal personal and corporate income tax, capital gains, payroll, gift and estate taxes, and replacing them with a revenue-neutral personal consumption tax would create a much fairer tax structure for families and businesses. It will also encourage savings. As Governor, Karen will continue to push Congress to enact the FairTax and also encourage the repeal of the 16th Amendment, which would take away the federal government’s authority to levy income taxes. This would return the powers to tax to the American people.

At the state level, Karen will work with the state, county, city, and school board officials to re-evaluate our entire tax structure. Her fundamental belief is that all tax rates should be lower, so Georgia’s families and businesses can keep as much of their hard-earned money as possible, a basic principal of fairness.

Government can and should get by with less. Many of our tax laws were written over 50 years ago and need to be reviewed. It is imperative that we restructure Georgia’s entire tax system with those principles in mind.

Karen believes that the United States and Georgia should be welcoming and hospitable to those who seek to come to our shores legally. Those who come by other means are, by definition, beginning their lives in our country and state by breaking our laws. While she believes that primary responsibility for protecting our borders lies with the federal government, she is well aware that they are systematically failing to live up to that responsibility, and that states must step in to fill the void left by federal inaction and incompetence.

As Secretary of State, Karen implemented the “SAVE” program to verify the work visa status of all new applicants for professional licenses who are not U.S. citizens. SAVE, which stands for Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlement Program is a federal database that helps us ensure that applicants who are not legally eligible to work in the United States will be denied licensure.

In March 2009, Secretary Handel announced the first in a series of multi-million dollar final settlements between her office and several prominent investment firms in cases involving sales of auction rate securities to individual, business and institutional investors. Under these agreements, the firms will repurchase billions of dollars of securities from customers. In addition, the firms will pay approximately $8,500,000 in fines to the Secretary of State’s Office, which the Office will remit to the state’s general fund.

In spring 2008, the North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA) formed a multi-state Task Force to investigate whether some of the nation’s prominent investment firms had misled thousands of investors when recommending that they purchase auction rate securities.

The Task Force is co-chaired by Bob Terry, Georgia Securities Division Director, and Matt Kitzi, Missouri Securities Commissioner, and is comprised of securities regulators in 12 states. As a result of the Task Force's efforts, 11 firms have agreed to repurchase more than $50 billion of auction rate securities, and have likewise agreed to pay over $400,000,000 in fines. It is estimated that over $3.2 billion of auction rate securities were sold to Georgia investors by these firms, a substantial portion of which the firms have agreed to repurchase.

Karen established a new ethics policy in 2007, which limits gifts to employees (including herself!), establishes a nepotism policy to address cronyism, and requires a one-year “cooling off” period before employees can take lobbying positions with companies seeking to do business with the agency.

It is also important to Karen for government to “let the light shine in.” Georgians turn to the Secretary of State’s Office for important consumer information regarding license holders and securities professionals. Unfortunately, a decades-old policy of allowing “secret orders” kept this information in the dark. The public now has access to the information on most of the Office's actions and can find much of this information on the agency’s website. Open records requests are approached with the attitude of determining what can be provided instead of focusing on how not to provide information.

In 2008, Karen launched the Transparency in Government Initiative website (SOS.GEORGIA.GOV/TIG), which allows citizens to view the agency’s FY 2009 budget and monthly budget expenditures, her campaign and personal financial disclosures, and the agency’s Ethics Policy.