ATLANTA – The lone lawmaker who opposed a spending package for hurricane recovery has drawn the ire of south Georgia lawmakers.

Citing his conservative principles, Rep. Matt Gurtler, R-Tiger, was the only lawmaker to oppose a plan to add $270 million to this year’s budget to help rebuild southwest Georgia after Hurricane Michael ravaged the area.

But it was a recent comment Gurtler made in an interview with a local news outlet that prompted Rep. Sam Watson, R-Moultrie, to pen a letter on behalf of a bipartisan group of 19 legislators.

“They understand where I’m coming from,” Gurtler said in an interview with Fetch Your News, an online news outlet in north Georgia, referring to his southwest Georgia colleagues. “They agree with me, for the most part. They understand that some of that money wasn’t supposed to be in there.”

Gurtler said he was specifically referring to $40 million “in subsidies and handouts” for economic development projects funded through the One Georgia Authority and Regional Economic Business Assistance program. He called it a “policy I would call out regardless of location, as it hurts Georgia, our economy and had nothing to do with the hurricane.”

He and another legislator, Rep. Renitta Shannon, D-Decatur, also voted against a $200 million income tax credit benefiting timber and pecan growers whose trees were wiped out during the storm. Lawmakers met in November for a weeklong special session.

Watson said he sent the letter to news outlets in Gurtler’s district to set the record straight.

“I wanted his people to know that we did not support that, we do not understand why he voted no, we do not agree with him,” Watson said Monday.

“And I would hope they would have some concerns that, if a natural disaster struck their communities, he’s not going to help them. I just think that’s wrong and selfish,” he added.

Watson wrote in the letter that Gurtler’s tendency to vote against every state expenditure is “short-sighted and foolhardy.”

“I have friends in the 8th District,” Watson wrote, referring to a swath of northeast Georgia that touches both the Tennessee and South Carolina borders.

“I know them to be kind-hearted and compassionate people. Surely they would not turn their backs on the people of south Georgia. But this is exactly what their state representative did.”

Gurtler said in a statement that Watson was focusing on “personality, not policy.”

“After two years, and hundreds of votes, my consistent voting record is highly predictable and this is merely an orchestrated attack on a legislator who exercises his independent legislative judgment,” Gurtler said.

“Typical ugly politics, and things like this are the reason so many Georgians and Americans have become fed up with the status quo and voted for President Trump,” he said.

Gurtler, who is frequently the only no vote in the House, was re-elected this year to a second term in spite of the support lavished on his primary opponent by powerful Republican state leaders.

Jill Nolin covers the Georgia Statehouse for The Valdosta Daily Times, CNHI’s newspapers and websites.