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AJC.com > Legislature > Georgia Beat > Archives > 2005 > March > 24
Thursday, March 24, 2005
Senate votes to remove motorist fingerprint requirement
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgia’s fingerprint requirement for motorists soon may be repealed. The Senate voted 40-10 Thursday in favor of House Bill 577, a bill that would end the mandate requiring Georgians to be fingerprinted to get a driver’s license.
Sen. Chip Rogers (R-Woodstock), who carried the measure, said that there is no evidence that the fingerprint requirement has “done anything to put someone in jail … and there’s nothing to show it’s prevented any fraud.”
The bill also would require the state to destroy all existing fingerprint records.
The measure must go back to the House because it passed the Senate with several amendments. One specifies the documentation necessary for a person to receive a temporary driver’s license, permit or special identification card. The documentation includes a pending or approved application for asylum, refugee status, temporary protected status or other federal documentation of legal presence in the United States.
Sen. Sam Zamarripa (D-Atlanta) said that while the amendement’s language clearly targets illegal immigrants, it does not change existing state law. “I’m okay with it,” Zamarripa said.
Another change would set the effective date of the bill to 2006. A third amendment stipulates that fingerprint images electronically stored on existing driver’s licenses will be destroyed when the motorist applies for a renewal.
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Legislature erases Jim Crow-era laws
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The state Senate today officially erased four Jim Crow-era laws from Georgia’s code.
The Georgia Legislature enacted the laws during the 1950s in an effort to preserve segregated schools following the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ended “separate but equal” black and white school systems.
The laws have not been enforced in years, but have remained on the books.
One measure gave the governor the power to suspend compulsory school attendance laws; another allowed the governor to close schools.
With both Senate and House agreement, the bills now head to Gov. Sonny Perdue to be signed into law.
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Secrecy bills clear Senate
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Republicans pushed two secrecy bills through the Senate this afternoon.
One bill to allow university foundations to keep the personal information of nearly all donors from public scrutiny was approved 30 to 21, along largely partisan lines.
A second bill, to which the Senate gave final passage, would prohibit the release of the names and home phone numbers and addresses of any public employee — which could apply to anyone who works for city, county, or state government. Republicans argued the restriction was needed out of a concern for workplace violence.
But the State Merit System, which requested the legislation, acknowledged the bill was requested to prevent public employee unions from contacting state workers.
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House sends meth bill to governor
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Georgia House gave final approval today to a bill designed to combat meth production by putting Sudafed and similar cold and sinus remedies behind the counter at stores statewide.
The bill, which passed the Senate on Tuesday and now goes to the desk of the governor, would take drugs with pseudoephedrine off the regular shelves. Pseudoephedrine is a key ingredient in the illegal stimulant methamphetamine.
Supporters of the bill say that making the ingredient harder to get will help thwart the production of meth, often cooked in explosive, makeshift labs in kitchens, trailers and sheds.
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Senate dismantles Department of Motor Vehicle Safety
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The state Senate today passed Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue’s plan for dismantling the four-year-old Department of Motor Vehicle Safety, scattering its functions and 1,400 employees across four existing state agencies and a new department focused on driver’s license services.
The 35 to 15 vote on the bill followed a lengthy and sometimes heated debate about the need for the change and its potential costs.
Perdue has promised to alleviate the long lines at some driver’s license centers, particularly in metro Atlanta, and has said the best way is to have a department singularly focused on that issue.
Senate Democrats said the bill goes too far and unnecessarily breaks up an agency that is viewed as a national model and is credited with reducing commercial truck accidents.
“There is no reason or cause to do this,” said state Sen. Gloria Butler (D-Stone Mountain), a member of the Senate’s Public Safety and Homeland Security. “The department is working well in most cases.”
Senate Public Safety and Homeland Security Chairman Ross Tolleson (R-Perry) said he expects the various functions under DMVS to operate more efficiently and in a more cost effective manner under the governor’s reorganization plan.
He also disputed Democrats claims that there will be significant costs involved in the reorganization and the potential loss of federal funding.
“I’ll be honest I believe it will be a rather large savings,” Tolleson said.
Democrats tried to scuttle floor debate on the bill because it did not have a fiscal note, which is a report by state auditors on the likely costs of the reorganization.
They chided the GOP majority by declaring that the state law that requires fiscal notes on certain legislation was pushed through the General Assembly by former state senator and now U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson.
The GOP majority overruled them.
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Governor’s criminal justice package clears hurdles
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Two bills that are part of Gov. Sonny Perdue’s criminal justice package inched closer to final passage today.
The state Senate voted 44-3 in favor of House Bill 170, a measure that would give prosecutors as many opportunities as defense attorneys to reject potential jurors in felony and misdemeanor cases.
Currently, the defense can “strike” —- or remove —- twice as many potential jurors as the prosecution.
The bill, called the Criminal Justice Act of 2005, passed with an amendment that would extend the state’s rape shield law — a provision that prevents the prior sexual history of a rape victim from coming to light in hearings — to include aggravated sodomy, aggravated child molestation, and aggravated sexual battery.
The measure now goes back to the House for the members to consider the Senate amendment.
The Senate also approved Perdue’s Crime Victims Restitution Act of 2005 by a vote of 45-0. The bill outlines specific details on how crime victims can recover damages from criminals. The measure also returns to the House for final approval.
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Demonstrators protest bills requiring photo ID at polls
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A coalition of civil rights activists, labor unions, Democratic lawmakers, college students and others descended on the state Capitol today to loudly protest proposed legislation that would require voters to show voter identification at the polls.
The rally was organized by civil rights veteran Rev. Joseph Lowery of The Coalition for the People’s Agenda, but drew a wide range of opponents to the bill including Lt. Gov. Mark Taylor, a candidate for governor in 2006.
“I feel like the cavalry has made it,” Taylor told a cheering crowd of about 200 people on the Capitol steps.
Taylor and others said the Republican-sponsored Senate Bill 84 and House Bill 244 are designed to suppress the vote of the elderly, the poor and minorities, groups that tend to support Democrats.
“They are against voting,” Taylor said. “We need to encourage voting in Georgia, we need to encourage voting in America.” Several Democratic lawmakers from the House and Senate also spoke out against the bills.
Others attending the rally included representatives from The League of Women Voters of Georgia, the AFL-CIO, Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, the NAACP, Hispanic advocates and students from Spelman and Morehouse colleges and Fort Valley State University.
The group began by singing some civil rights songs. Some in the crowd held up signs in support of labor unions or voting rights.
“What do they fear?” Lowery asked the crowd. “Why are they afraid of the people? Let the people’s voices be heard.”
Both the House and Senate bills are pending in each chamber, having been approved by committees. Either bill could come up for a vote in the House or Senate before the General Assembly is scheduled to adjourn on April 1.
The bills would reduce the number of acceptable forms of identification for voting from 17 to only one of seven forms of photo identification. Republican proponents of the bill say it is designed to prevent voter fraud and to ensure that the person voting is who they say they are. Opponents of the bill say it could prevent people who do not have a driver’s license or other form of photo ID from voting.
An amendment to the bills would allow for poor people to receive a free state photo ID. But opponents of the bill say there are only 50 places in all of Georgia’s 159 counties where such IDs can be obtained, and it would be inconvenient or impossible for some people to get them.
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Bid to create Fayette county commission districts fails
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
After several minutes of debate on the House floor today, a bill that would require district voting for the Fayette County Commission failed to gain enough votes to pass.
However, Rep. Virgil Fludd (D-Tyrone), author of the bill, made a motion to have the bill reconsidered tomorrow.
HB 856 would change the way county commissioners are elected by dividing the county into five districts, each with its own commissioner. Commissioners are currently voted on countywide.
Members of the Fayette County Commission were opposed to the bill, passing a unanimous resolution that was sent to the General Assembly this week.
Rep. Dan Lakly (R-Peachtree City) spoke on the House floor against the bill, calling it an issue of “fundamental fairness.”
None of the nearly 30,000 voters he represents supported the bill, Lakly said.
“This bill is being requested for political purposes,” Lakly said, “nothing more, nothing less.”
Lakly said the local delegation — Lakly, Fludd, Rep. Roberta Abdul-Salaam (D-Riverdale), Rep. Darryl Jordan (D-Riverdale) and Rep. John Yates (R-Griffin) — met in a hurriedly last week to discuss the district voting issue. The group voted 3 to 2 in favor of introducing the bill, with Lakly and Yates casting the two dissenting votes.
“I have received many calls against this legislation, but not one call in favor of it,” Yates said. Both Jordan and Abdul-Salaam expressed their disappointment after the bill was defeated, noting that generally local issues are not overridden by the House.
The vote was 82 against the bill to 63 in favor.
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