Legislature up against tough deadline

The Georgia General Assembly has — to borrow from the late country troubadour Jerry Reed — a long way to go and a short time to get there.

Lawmakers on Monday convene for Day 38 of the constitutionally limited 40-day session. And they have a host of things to do before the gavel falls on the 2009 session. Transportation funding? Not done. Transportation governance? Nope. A state budget for the upcoming fiscal year? Not yet.

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So, as the Georgia-born Reed asked in the theme song from “Smokey and the Bandit,” can lawmakers “do what they said can’t be done?” The answer, according to key lawmakers, is “absolutely.”

“Is there enough time to get done all the bills that are out there? The answer is ‘no.’ But, to get done all the bills that need to get done? Yes, we have plenty of time,” said state Sen. Don Balfour (R-Snellville), chairman of the Rules Committee, which has great power to decide which bills reach the Senate floor.

The accuracy of that statement could depend on how you define “need to get done.” The House and Senate, as of now, are to be in session Monday, Wednesday and Friday. There is only one piece of legislation that must absolutely be completed before midnight on the 40th day: the 2010 state budget. And it is that budget that could create an epic pile-up of legislation in the final hours.

The House has already approved its version of the 2010 budget, for the fiscal year beginning July 1. It’s an $18.6 billion spending plan propped up by $1.4 billion in federal stimulus funding. The House sent it to the Senate two weeks ago.

Senate leaders say they will not approve their version until Wednesday. Tough economic times have slowed the process, Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle said Friday.

“No one likes having to cut $2 billion out of the state budget,” he said. “That’s a hard thing to do. [But] we’re not that far apart.”

Still, once the Senate votes, the House will almost certainly reject Senate changes, the Senate will insist on its version and both sides will appoint negotiators to meet in a conference committee to seek a compromise.

That scenario leaves conferees meeting all day Thursday and into Friday before House Appropriations Chairman Ben Harbin (R-Evans) and Senate Appropriations Chairman Jack Hill (R-Reidsville) must sell a compromise to their respective chambers, where lawmakers will have to vote on a budget that few of them will have actually read.

If the legislative session were an interstate, the road signs would warn of heartburn ahead.

“It’s not just heartburn for me,” Harbin said Friday as he sat at the Capitol hoping for word from Senate budget writers. “It’s a little bit of heartburn for everyone.”

Alas, Harbin expected Friday to pass much like the past 14 days: He’ll hear nothing from Hill or the Senate on their progress, their plans or their prospects for finishing.

“We’ve not seen or heard anything in it,” Harbin said. “It kind of concerns me.”

But Cagle, who said he has spent hours working with Hill on the budget, insists it can be done. “It always comes down to the end,” he said. “Until enough pressure gets into the pressure cooker, we don’t seem to do it.”

They will put the final touches on the budget over the weekend, Cagle said Friday, and Hill and Harbin can begin meeting.

As for transportation, many factors are at play, and road bumps separate lawmakers from the promised land.

The House Transportation Committee has spent hours studying a plan to overhaul Georgia’s $2 billion transportation administration but on Friday approved a separate plan announced just the day before.

The Senate, of course, has its own version, and Gov. Sonny Perdue has been chasing both sides for weeks to try and get something done.

Then there is transportation funding. Both sides have approved plans to pay for future road building. The House wants a 1-cent statewide sales tax. The Senate wants to allow counties to band together and adopt a sales tax.

Both sides are jockeying for position. “We believe that our version is something that people can vote on that people would vote for,” Balfour said. “We can pass something out, but if the people of Georgia don’t vote for it, it doesn’t help transportation.”

House Transportation Chairman Vance Smith (R-Pine Mountain) believes there is still time enough for all this to be worked out.

“There’s always time,” Smith said. “There has to be the ‘want-to.’ But there’s always time. And the House has the want-to.”

Among many other issues still at-large are new restrictions on stem cell research, an end to the “birthday” tax on cars, Medicaid funding, and a massive package of tax breaks for businesses.

Of course, the big rumor floating through the halls of the Capitol is that the session won’t actually end Friday.

The rumor is that lawmakers will vote to hold off on the 40th day until later in April, which would give them time for conference committees to work and avoid a Friday meltdown.

But Cagle said he does not see it happening.