When you go to the store to pick up a few groceries and hand the cashier a $20 bill, you always expect change for any unspent money.

Georgia citizens expect the same when it comes to their hard-earned tax dollars.

When government collects more than it needs to provide essentials such as education, transportation, health care for the poor, paying debt and adding to reserves, any remaining surplus doesn't belong to the state treasury.

It belongs to the people.

Unfortunately, too many public officials from Washington to local city councils and school boards have the opinion that once they become part of government, the money they manage is government's money.

Tax revenue is never the government's money. It's the people's money.

That's why Republicans demonstrated their commitment to supply-side economics last week in negotiations over adjustments to the 2007 budget. They agreed that $142.4 million in surplus revenue should be immediately rebated to the people.

Harsh exchanges and political fighting about how to spend extra revenues collected by the state had forced a stalemate between the Georgia House and Senate. We offered to take $142.4 million in surplus and return it to Georgians.

The Senate agreed and the impasse was over.

As a result of the compromise on adjustments to the 2007 budget, residential homeowners in Georgia will each get about a $100 rebate this year -- likely by summer. While the tax cut isn't enough to put your kids through college, it sets a precedent that excess collections should be returned where they came from.

Legislators will ask the state Department of Revenue to mail the $100 rebate checks to homeowners. If for some reason the state cannot print checks, then the tax credit would be applied to residential property taxes due this year.

The decision last week by the GOP to push through this tax cut was a defining moment in the direction of how the new majority will govern at the state Capitol. Think about it. How often does any government return money to taxpayers?

Rarely do you ever see government return surpluses to hard-working citizens. With Republicans in control, there is a new philosophy that returning surplus revenue to our citizens empowers Georgians and gives them more money to spend, thus stimulating our economy.

When many Republicans in the United States Congress strayed from the party's principles, they lost the majority in the last election. The public's perception of a Congress lacking an agenda made it difficult for them to identify with the GOP. Instead, when elected officials give money back to taxpayers, as we just have in Georgia, we advance a conservative agenda wanted by a vast majority of our state's voters.

When elected officials take an oath to represent our constituents, we have a duty to be stewards of the taxpayers' money. That means we should guard the state treasury as if it were our own checkbook and to monitor the state's balance sheet as if it were our own money.

Henceforward, as we prepare budgets and make plans on how to spend future state dollars, tax cuts should rightfully be part of budgetary policy in Georgia.

> State Rep. Mark Burkhalter (R-Alpharetta) is speaker pro tem of the Georgia House of Representatives.

This column is solicited to provide another viewpoint to an AJC editorial published today.

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