With the November general election five weeks away, the instability of the national economy is the primary issue on voters’ minds, and while Congress continues to work to get a bailout package passed, candidates are addressing the role of government in dealing with the financial crisis on the state level.

Incumbent Bill Hamrick, R-Carrollton, is being challenged by Democrat Pat Rhudy in the Senate District 30 race.

For the past several weeks, Hamrick has been back in Atlanta working on the subcommittee of public safety appropriations. During the same time, Gov. Sonny Perdue has begun the process of hearing from department heads regarding wish-list funding for the next fiscal year.

The budget will likely require increased attention come the January start of the legislative session, Hamrick said, considering the state’s growing shortfall and the necessity for large-scale cuts this past year.

It’s no secret that the U.S. economy is struggling and the banking sector is trying to keep its head above water, he said, and the runoff at the state and local levels is disturbingly widespread and will cause many programs to go on the chopping block.

“We are in a tough situation with the economy. It’s affecting state revenues, and when that happens it effects all our institutions - public safety, education, health care,” said Hamrick, who was elected to the Senate in 1999. “That’s why we need to look for opportunities to get the government to work better and hear from people about how we can help.”

How does the government work better and, perhaps more importantly, more fiscally responsible?

The first and foremost step in trimming the budget, he said, will be to examine specific functions of each department. While he could give no specific examples of the major slashes that will inevitably be required, he cited the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s decision to do away with an unmanned crime lab as the kind of step that will need to be made to free up additional funding.

Rhudy agreed that any cutting of expenditures will have to be looked at on a case-by-case basis, though she said the primary problems driving the economic woes of the state are not the responsibility of department heads.

Instead, she said, the lawmakers in Atlanta have a responsibility to ensure that the kind of corrupt lending practices that fueled the mortgage meltdown are not repeated.

“Policy impacts daily lives and that’s an esoteric concept. It takes a long time to evolve yourself where it’s understood,” she said. “We need government to balance this unfair capitalism. I’m saying that we need much more thoughtful regulation. I think we can trace a lot of these problems to deregulation.”

The Legislature has recognized the need for regulation within the lending industry and has made steps in recent months to protect homeowners, Hamrick said. During the last session, he said, a law was passed giving homeowners a 30-day notice of foreclosure instead of the previous 15-day notice. It would further provide contact information for both the borrower and the lender should the two parties be able to reach an agreement and delay or possibly negate foreclosure proceedings.

But more still needs to be done, he said. Lenders must be held accountable for questionable lending practices, and the way to ensure such accountability is to tie the lenders professionally to the borrowers, he said. Hamrick proposed lending administrators - not exclusively bank and mortgage officers - should be licensed by the state, therefore giving the state the ultimate authority to determine who is lending money and what assurances are in place to protect the borrower.

“Mortgage brokers don’t have much of an incentive to ensure the borrower can repay the loan. When they get their fees, they’re gone,” Hamrick said. “Something needs to be done to weed out the bad actors in the mortgage industry.”

While the state has made progress, Rhudy said, it’s negligible at best, and the problem lies with continued and repeated negligence on the part of state leaders.

“There’s some problems that are coming out of some bad laws and it’s time to take a look at that and try to get them fixed,” Rhudy said. “The reason we have such a high rate of foreclosure and the reason we have such a high number of foreclosures in Georgia is not just because of the economy. It’s bad government. Now we’ve let our government go, and it’s affecting everybody.