Transportation

"We need to develop a comprehensive transportation plan that does include mass transit and includes a component to fund that plan."

Wilson said he would support state funding for the MARTA system.

"Not raising gasoline taxes is just a short-term method of pandering to voters. It doesn't accomplish anything. Short-term, all you're doing is allowing folks to not face reality. This is a situation that is not going to go away."

 He predicts drivers will soon be paying $6 a gallon.

Subsidies for the development of alternative energy

"Those things can be really tricky. Every time you turn around, the state is giving some kind of tax subsidy."

Wilson said he believes there is no transparent way to track the effectiveness of subsidies.

Improving education

"My solution to this is to quit cutting educational funding."

Wilson said that in the last five years $1.6 billion has been cut from education.

"As a result of that, 100 counties, in order to have a stop-gap measure, have increased property taxes at the local level. It's forced school systems to have more pupils per class."

Wilson said he would advocate putting in place a formula that considers a student's socioeconomic background in determining class size with the intent that students who need more academic assistance would be put in smaller classes. He also supports Pre-K education for the entire state.

"All of these solutions are long-term," Wilson said. "They're not cheap."

Georgia's shortage of trauma centers?

"You can go into a restaurant and a state park with your loaded gun. If you have a shoot-out and you're injured, the chances are you're going to die because we don't have a good trauma center system. Every year 700 Georgians die because we do not have an effective trauma system. It's just deplorable that the legislature didn't find a way to fund that program."

Illegal Immigration

"It's the easiest problem in the world to solve. The federal government has a system called E-verify. Every company should run a [Social Security number] check through E-verify. If [immigrants here illegally] can't get work, they go home. I think people really don't want to handle this problem. They would rather hire cheap labor."

State water resources

"[The Georgia legislature] developed a weak water plan that's based on economic regions. I think that's going to have to come back and be re-visited. We really didn't do anything. I look at things coming from the conservation end."

Wilson said he would support getting as many Georgian households as possible off of septic tanks systems, which he says use water wastefully. He said he would also support building requirements for more low-flow toilets.

Quotes compiled by Rachel Oswald.