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AJC.com > Legislature > Blog > Archives > 2007 > March > 20
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
House votes for earlier primaries
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgia took a big step Tuesday toward holding its presidential primaries earlier next year when the House of Representatives voted to join many other states signing up for a national primary day.
House Republican leaders said Georgia should move its nominating contests up from the first Tuesday in March to Feb. 5 so the state could have a bigger impact on the race for the White House. The measure now goes to the Senate for consideration.
Nine other states have already scheduled their primaries and caucuses for the same day, including Alabama. California is one of the most recent states to move its primaries to Feb. 5. Thirteen more states are considering doing the same.
Proponents worry Georgia will be an afterthought among presidential candidates if the state waits until March to vote.
“We want to make sure that Georgia voters have input in the nomination of presidential candidates,” said Rep. Austin Scott (R-Tifton), who sponsored the legislation for the date change. “By moving it forward, we will ensure the major candidates will come to our state and seek the support of the voters.”
Critics say the move to what has been called a “mega-primary” will hurt candidates who don’t have the money to campaign simultaneously in numerous states. Others say the change would shrink the time community groups have to register voters.
“It’s fair to say that it will make American democracy very unpredictable. This is unprecedented,” said former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore, a Republican presidential candidate who met with GOP legislative leaders in the state Capitol on Tuesday.
“One scenario is that the advantage goes to the richest person, or the person the press supports — which means the American people will not really have an opportunity to decide this based on philosophy or issues,” Gilmore said.
The House approved the date change on a 154-11 vote.
Republican Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle said through a spokeswoman, “I am supportive of moving Georgia’s presidential primary to early February because we need to be more relevant than we are right now.”
Some political experts say moving the primary date makes sense for Georgia so it won’t risk being left out of the nominating process.
“If you bring a closer in and you are five runs down, it doesn’t really help much,” said Alan Secrest, a Democratic pollster who worked on former Lt. Gov. Mark Taylor’s unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign last year.
Georgia’s impact could be minimal on Feb. 5, however, because of the large number of states in the race, said Larry J. Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics.
“How are the candidates going to get to know Georgia? The candidates can’t be everywhere in a week. It’s not possible,” Sabato said. “At best, this will be an airport-to-airport campaign. It is scheduling insanity.”
There is also a scenario in which it could be better for Georgia to wait until March, said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster.
“It’s a gamble,” Ayres said. “If one or both nomination fights are still open after the Feb. 5 primaries are over, then it takes Georgia out of what could be an exceedingly critical position.”
“It is still possible Georgians will be sitting around after Feb. 5, thinking ‘Why didn’t we stay where we were so we could really decide the nominee?’ “
Another provision in the Georgia bill would reduce the number of votes candidates must receive to win primaries and elections, from more than 50 percent to more than 45 percent. The change would not apply to municipal elections.
Staff writer Jim Galloway contributed to this article.
Permalink | | Categories: politics
House votes to ban reporters from floor
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgia’s House of Representatives voted today to ban news reporters from its floor while it is in session, a move critics say erodes access to the state’s elected officials.
Under existing House rules, reporters are permitted to walk onto the floor only briefly to seek an interview with a lawmaker outside the chamber.
House Speaker Glenn Richardson (R-Hiram) introduced the rule change to ban reporters from the floor during the period starting 30 minutes before the House convenes to adjournment.
Reporters seeking interviews with lawmakers while the House is in session will now be required to do so through official pages.
Democrats and even some Republican lawmakers were scratching their heads over Richardson’s surprise proposal, wondering why he introduced it.
Richardson was sharply critical of news reporters early in the General Assembly’s 40-day session, complaining some have been lingering on the floor too long during the session. No specific incident prompted the proposed rule change, however, said his spokeswoman, Clelia Davis.
“What this resolution does is put Georgia in line with every other state that I have been able to examine and the Senate across the hall,” Richardson told the House moments before it approved the rules change on a 132-29 vote.
House Minority Leader DuBose Porter (D-Dublin) voted against the measure.
“This continues to close access and accountability of what we do here in the House,” said Porter, co-owner and executive editor The (Dublin) Courier-Herald. “This group of Republicans … obviously doesn’t want to have access for accountability to the public that the print serves.”
House Majority Leader Jerry Keen (R-St. Simons Island) said he knew of no other legislative body that “allows direct access to the members on the floor by the media while they are in session.” The U.S. Congress and Georgia’s Senate, Keen said, do not allow the same media access to the floor now granted in the House.
Senate rules ban reporters from the floor during the session. Reporters can seek interviews with senators through the Senate press office when the Senate is in session.
Still photographers and television cameramen would still have access to the House floor during the session under the rules change.
“It is not to restrict the media’s access to a member,” Keen said during a House Rules Committee hearing on the resolution Tuesday. “In trying to maintain order and the proper atmosphere for debate that takes place, I believe the speaker’s amendment to the rules is a good one.”
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: politics
Sentencing bill passes Senate
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgia’s 49 district attorneys would be able to pursue sentences of life without parole against murderers who have not been convicted of a previous violent felony without seeking the death penalty under a bill that passed the Senate Tuesday.
The chamber approved Senate Bill 145 by a vote of 49-3. The measure now heads to the House for consideration.
Sen. Preston Smith (R-Rome), the bill’s sponsor, argued that the measure would give prosecutors the option of seeking a sentence of life without parole without having to initiate a lengthy and time-consuming capital punishment trial.
“In cases where it is not possible to seek the death penalty, the family members of a victim who has been murdered should be assured that the murderer will not be back on the street,”; Smith said after the vote. “This gives prosecutors the ability to lock up a murderer and throw away the key.”
The only paths to life without parole currently are through a jury’s decision in a death penalty trial, a negotiated sentence for a guilty plea when the prosecutor has sought death, or a prosecution against a murder defendant if he or she has a prior violent felony conviction. Otherwise, prosecutors only can try for death or life with parole.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Criminal justice
House approves mid-year budget
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The House overwhelmingly approved a $19.4 billion mid-year spending plan that helps keep PeachCare and the public defender system in the black.
It also includes an extra $167 million for schools to help pay to educate the rising number of students in Georgia classrooms.
The mid-year plan, which runs through June 30, was approved 171-1 this afternoon. It would pump an extra $81 million into PeachCare, which provides health insurance to about 300,000 children of working poor families.
The midyear budget includes money to both fill a shortfall in the program and to make up for a spike in the number of children being covered.
“This is a budget you can be proud of,” said House Appropriations Chairman Ben Harbin (R-Evans). “This budget meets the needs of our children’s health care program, a program that has been a shining example to the nation.”
The mid-year budget now goes to the Senate, which is also expected to back the extra PeachCare funding.
Harbin said the Legislature is hoping Congress will act in coming weeks to reimburse the state for the shortfall. PeachCare is a joint state-federal program. Lawmakers delayed the end of the 2007 session in hopes Congress would come up with some extra money.
Congress has agreed, as part of an Iraq war spending bill, to provide the funds for Georgia and 13 other states that have come up short. However, that probably wasn’t going to happen before Georgia’s PeachCare was scheduled to run out of money. So state officials agreed to shift Medicaid money into PeachCare until the federal funding comes through.
The midyear spending plan also includes almost $9.6 million to keep the state’s public defender system afloat. The shortfall has threatened to delay several cases. The murder trial of accused courthouse killer Brian Nichols was among those put off because of the funding crisis.
Permalink | | Categories: Budget
Stem cell bill passes Senate
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgia women would be encouraged to donate post-natal tissue and fluids for non-embryonic stem cell research under a bill that passed the Senate this morning.
Senate Bill 148, sponsored by Sen. David Shafer (R-Duluth), gained approval by a vote of 39 to 15. The bill establishes a Newborn Umbilical Cord Blood Bank, or a network of banks, overseen by a 15-member state commission. All state hospitals would be required by June 30, 2009, to inform pregnant women that they can donate placenta, umbilical cords, and amniotic fluid to the bank.
Typically, post-natal tissue is simply discarded as medical waste. Those fluids and tissues contain non-embryonic stem cells that can be used to treat several diseases.
Shafer named his bill in honor of Keone Penn, a sickle-cell anemia survivor from Snellville treated with non-embryonic stem cells.
“My bill is designed to do one thing: promote non-destructive stem cell research,” Shafer said. “It does not prohibit any kind of research. It does not discourage any kind of research.”
Several lawmakers, however, expressed concern about the bill’s language. The measure does not ban or prohibit embryonic stem cell research, but states that the public policy of Georgia will be to encourage the donation, collection and storage of non-embryonic stem cells for scientific treatment and medical research.
The bill also states that embryonic stem cell research has been “hampered by difficulties” and that embryonic stem cells have a tendency to “to form tumors.”
Sen.David Adelman (D-Atlanta), a strong supporter of both embryonic and non-embryonic stem cell research, asked lawmakers to remove the language in the bill that “discourages promising research and steals hope.”
“What I’m asking you to do is to remove the language that will take away some of the hope held out by many Georgians who are suffering some of the worse debilitating and degenerative diseases known to mankind,”Adelman said.
Shafer, who is opposed to embryonic stem cell research, declined to remove any of the bill’s language. Embryonic stem cell research requires the destruction of a human embryo at an early stage of development- a process that some people believe destroys a human life, and is therefore, unethical.
Several groups such as Georgia Right to Life and the Georgia Christian Alliance said they supported Shafer’s bill earlier this year during lengthy committee hearings on the issue.
The Georgia Biomedical Partnership, a private non-profit association representing the life sciences industry in Georgia, opposed the measure.
“We wholeheartedly support the efforts of SB 148 to establish a newborn umbilical cord blood bank and provide access to this tissue and blood for research and medical treatment,” wrote Charles Craig, the association’s president.
“We oppose references in the bill to embryonic stem cell research as unnecessary to the bill’s purpose and in some cases unscientific.”
Embryonic stem cells - despite the controversy around the issue - have not cured any disease yet. However, many scientists believe the regenerative abilities of such cells eventually will yield cures to diseases such as cancer, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.
Nonembryonic stem cells have effectively treated diseases such as anemia, leukemia, lymphoma and sickle-cell disease. But some scientists say such cells are limited in their ability to treat a wide-range of diseases. A scientific panel recently determined that a 2002 study that found adult stem cells might be as useful as embryonic ones was flawed.
Shafer introduced a similar bill last year that created considerable controversy. The parts of the bill that established an umbilical cord blood bank received near universal support from Republican and Democratic lawmakers, Georgia’s scientific community, advocates for patients with degenerative and chronic diseases, and conservative Christian groups.
A ban on human cloning - a process not yet achieved and widely denounced by scientists and religious leaders alike - also won wide support.
But a section of the measure that would have banned therapeutic cloning —- a process that many scientists argue may someday hold the cure for degenerative diseases and spinal cord injuries —- concerned many individuals and patient advocacy groups. Shafer eventually removed the controversial language, and the bill passed the Senate and then the House on the final day of the session.
The measure needed to come before the Senate for a final rubber-stamp of approval - but the clock ran out.
Gov. Sonny Perdue issued an executive order that resurrected some parts of the bill, but that order will sunset at the end of the year.
Senate Bill 148 now heads to the House for approval.
Permalink | Comments (6) | Categories: Health Care
Subcommittee backs flexibility on grad coaches
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
High schools with 95 percent graduation rates, and combined middle school/high schools, would not be eligible for graduation coaches under budget recommendations approved today by a subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee.
The proposal also would give school systems the flexibility to move around graduation coaches to better serve at-risk students. That means some eligible schools would not have a coach while others could have more two or more coaches.
The Education Subcommittee also recommended budgeting $5 million to help start-up charter schools and restoring more money to Quality Basic Education, the state funding formula.
The state now provides about $1 million in grants for new charter schools, far less than the total amount requested by charter start-ups.
QBE has been under-funded for five years. Gov. Sonny Perdue has recommended restoring almost $30 million to the formula in the FY 2008 budget; the subcommittee wants to add another $7 million.
Just 12 high schools had graduation rates of 95 percent or better in 2006. Forty-five schools are combined middle-high schools. Making those 57 schools ineligible for a graduation coach would save an estimated $3 million.
But Rep. Jan Jones (R-Alpharetta), the subcommittee chairwoman, said the intent of the recommendation is not to save money but to give school systems the ability to double up coaches at schools with disappointing graduation rates.
Cobb County, for example, would be able to move the graduation coach at Lassiter High School, where the graduation rate last year was 94.2 percent, to Campbell High School, which had a 63.2 percent graduation rate.
The subcommittee’s recommendations now go to the “green door” budget committee, made up of House leaders.
Permalink | | Categories: Education
House favors ban on marijuana-flavored candy
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgia’s House of Representatives has approved a ban on the sale of marijuana-flavored candy to children.
People caught selling the sweets — nicknamed “chronic candy” — to minors could face a $1,000 fine under House Bill 280.
The candy comes in the form of lollipops and gumdrops.
It is produced in Germany and Amsterdam and packaged to resemble a “nickel bag of marijuana,” said Rep. Judy Manning (R-Marietta), the bill’s sponsor.
Supporters of the bill say the candy serves as a gateway to illegal drug use.
“It is detrimental to our children,” Manning told the House today before the chamber approved the measure on a 133-26 vote.
It now goes to the Senate for consideration.
