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AJC.com > Legislature > Georgia Beat > Archives > 2005 > April > 01
Friday, April 1, 2005
2005 Legislature wraps up session by passing ethics compromise bill
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
After a tense day of negotiations, lawmakers approved a compromise just before midnight Thursday on Gov. Sonny Perdue’s ethics package, the centerpiece of his agenda for Georgia’s first Republican-controlled Legislature in more than a century.
With that, the 2005 General Assembly adjourned for the year.
Republicans had planned to have lawmakers exit the Capitol at 6 p.m. Thursday, one day shy of the traditional late night scramble on the 40th and last legislative day.
The plan hit a snag as Senate leaders locked horns with fellow Republicans from the House over their competing versions of the ethics bill. The Senate threatened to buck the early adjournment plan and finish work on the measure Friday.
But late Thursday, both houses adopted a compromise that cleared the way for the 2005 General Assembly to adjourn at midnight.
Perdue, speaking to the Senate at 10:30 p.m., congratulated lawmakers on their work. “I believe the state House and state Senate are going to make history by passing the strongest ethics legislation Georgia has ever seen,” he said.
Perdue noted that at the beginning of the session, he had said he wanted less government and more personal responsibility. “Tonight, I believe this General Assembly, this state Senate, can proudly say that we delivered what we promised,” the governor said.
Sen. Don Balfour (R-Snellville) said the ethics compromise creates a bipartisan House-Senate committee to look into legislative conflicts of interest, prohibits former lawmakers from returning to the Capitol as lobbyists for a year and extends lobbyist disclosure provisions to regulatory officials. That would force lobbyists to disclose what they spend on the Public Service Commission and the state insurance commissioner.
The compromise does not include a limit on lobbyist gifts to lawmakers that Perdue wanted. And the concept of a self-policing ethics committee has been criticized by some watchdog groups who wanted that function performed by the State Ethics Commission.
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