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Thursday, April 5, 2007
Pipeline saga continues: ‘Thankfully, we have Glenn Richardson’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The fight over S.B. 173 might just have taken a turn. Which way, we don’t know.
You know the bill. This is the one that eases the way for Colonial Pipeline Co. to construct a new liquid petroleum pipeline from Baton Rouge, La., to Powder Springs in Cobb County. Read the background here.
The issue has moved from the Senate to the House. And was quiet, until the mailman came today, with a note for House Speaker Glenn Richardson.
The U.S. Postal Service dropped off a glossy, 11-inch by 14-inch glossy mailer from Landowners for Environmental and Economic Protection of Washington, Ga.
On one side is a detailed black-and-white photo of a child being hugged by her mother, who’s holding a cardboard sign that says “Evicted by Big Oil.” Underneath is the headline: “Colonial Pipeline wants to take your property.”
On the other side is another headline: “Thankfully, we have Glenn Richardson to block S.B. 173.”
This mailer came to a west Cobb County address, but carried the following message for the Speaker, who lives in the county next door: “If S.B. 173 passes, Paulding County will be in the bull’s-eye for condemnation! It will threaten Paulding County homes and businesses….”
Oh, yes. It includes maps of the pipeline’s alleged path through the Speaker’s Paulding County territory. Maybe not through his exact district, but you get the gist.
Sometimes these things work. Sometimes they have just the opposite effect. We’ll let you know.
POSTSCRIPT: Amy Morton at Georgiawomenvote.com has posted a copy of the flyer here.
Taking a private fight public: Senate Republicans call in the fiscal hard-cores
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Fights among lawmakers in the state Capitol, over who has say-so over how many millions in tax dollars, are the essence of every session of the state Legislature.
But historically, such tussles have been restricted to a circle of a dozen or so legislators in the House and Senate, plus the governor. In other words, it’s largely been a private fight over public money.
This year, Republicans — in particular, Senate Republicans — are bringing in outsiders. They’re calling in The Base. An e-mail campaign this week, rallies next week.
You’d think it was November, and Democrats were on the ballot.
Here’s the issue: Most years, the state takes in slightly more in tax revenues than it plans to spend. This year, the amount is $700 million.
Each year, most of the surplus — contained in a mid-year budget document — goes toward unanticipated school spending. Under Democrats, many millions also went toward what Republicans called pork— spending projects advocated by influential lawmakers.
Republicans vowed to be different. And while the process is slightly more transparent, much of the annual surplus still goes toward projects of the kind that many GOP lawmakers once condemned.
That changed last month, when Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, commander of the Republican-controlled Senate, demanded that the mid-year budget be stripped of everything but what could be justified as emergency spending.
House Republicans were stunned. The session came to a stand-still. It will remain stalled until either the House or Senate blinks. Which brings us to the decision by Senate Republicans to bring members of the GOP’s fiscal conservative core into the fight.
This isn’t about popularity. Republicans in the Senate are out to crack the will of Republicans in the House with a very public campaign.
The Republican Liberty Caucus of Georgia, a loose subsection of the state GOP, this week urged its associates to e-mail letters of support to members of the Senate. And to Republicans in the other chamber, if they feel so inclined.
“Georgia House Republicans have added over $214 million dollars of pork to the 2007 supplemental budget,” the organization’s web site states.
Jared Thomas, executive director of the Georgia chapter of Americans For Prosperity, a new anti-tax group, says he intends to mobilize his membership next week.
These efforts aren’t aimed at House Speaker Glenn Richardson or his lieutenants. They’re directed at the right-wing of the chamber’s GOP caucus. The true-believers.
When the $700 million mid-year budget was presented to the House last month, state Rep. Steve Davis of McDonough was the only lawmaker to vote against it. He’s a Republican.
Davis said he’s not out to embarrass his own leadership. “I just want to do the right thing. It’s not about me and them,” he said. “I don’t feel that I’m alone.”
Davis isn’t a high-ranking member of the House. But he is a member of the 216 Group, a collection of 20 or so GOP lawmakers dedicated to fiscal conservatism and limited government. They meet in Room 216 of the Capitol.
State Rep. Tom Graves of Ranger, Ga., is the chairman of the 216 Group, according to its web site. We weren’t successful in our efforts to contact him Thursday.
In the fall of 2002, party chairman Ralph Reed and the entire Republican ticket assembled at the state Capitol to endorse something called the “Declaration for a New Georgia.”
The manifesto was modeled after Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America,” and listed the major reforms Republicans would implement, should they ever become masters of state government.
Included in the declaration was a vow to end the tradition of burning through surpluses: “Republicans will end this practice by abolishing the [midyear] budget.”
To stage right of the group — Reed was on one side, Sonny Perdue on the other — was a placard of the declaration. Republican candidates were invited to decorate it with florid John Hancocks.
Nearly six years later, the hunt is on for that placard and the signatures on it. The signboard has become evidence in the budget fight.
But the placard and its signatures have gone missing.
Speaking of the Speaker, he’s speaking to other Speakers
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
House Speaker Glenn Richardson has let slip that he’ll spend much of this week in Augusta at the Master’s tournament.
He’s to be shepherding his peers from other four other states. “It’ll be in the 30s when they start teeing off. It’s going to be interesting,” he told our colleague Bill Hendrick.
A spokeswoman for Richardson wouldn’t say which states the other House speakers hail from. Probably so as not to arouse the jealousy of lieutenant governors in those same, mysterious commonweals.
But she did say that Richardson is using the occasion to learn what his duties will be when he assumes the leadership of a national association of House speakers.
Yes, there is such a thing. It’s kind a union, with legislative agendas and dues and everything. We hear, for instance, that the group is currently lobbying Congress for an adjustment in the federal penal code, to require capital punishment for offending journalists.
A little shrimp talks hurricane politics
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
As many of us know so very well, Georgia money spends just fine in Louisiana. So U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu was in Atlanta Wednesday afternoon, collecting some for her upcoming 2008 race.
In a phone conversation, Landrieu said she’d been feeling pretty good about her fundraising efforts, which have gotten off to a late start in the aftermath of Katrina/Rita. But seeing the extraordinary first-quarter numbers put up by her Senate colleagues Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination left her “really feeling like a little shrimp - and not of of those big, brown Louisiana shrimp.”
Landrieu said her state is making progress in securing more funds for hurricane recovery, although the Bush administration has called the $1.3 billion included in the upcoming supplemental budget “excessive and extraneous.”
“If he’s not going to do it, Congress will do it. And if he’s going to veto it, let him go ahead,” the Louisiana Democrat said.
Landrieu was particularly critical of the administration’s refusal to waive the requirement that the state match 10 percent of what the feds send in disaster money, something Landrieu said has been done in the case of 32 of the last 38 federally-declared disasters.
The per capita cost of Andrew to the citizens of Florida was $139, and 9/11 cost New Yorkers $390 per capita, and the 10 percent match was waived in both cases, Landrieu said. The per capita cost of Katrina/Rita to Louisianans was $6,700.
On the subject of the day in Louisiana politics - whether former U.S. Sen. John Breaux can qualify to run for governor, although he has established resident in Virginia - Landreiu’s allegiences are clear.
“If people say, is he a citizen of Maryland or a citizen of Louisiana, I don’t think there’s any question,” Landrieu said of her longtime ally. “But I think eventually that question will have to be settled in court.”
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Rallying the GOP troops for a fight over the budget
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Republicans are taking this state House-Senate budget fight to lengths we never saw under Democrats.
Participants in the state Capitol tussle are bringing in outsiders. They’re bringing in The Base.
The Republican Liberty Caucus of Georgia is urging its associates to e-mail letters of support to members of the Senate. And if said enthusiasts want to send House Republicans a message, they can do that, too.
Here’s the set-up, as defined by the Liberty Caucus:
Georgia House Republicans have added over $214 million dollars of pork to the 2007 supplemental budget.
This number does not include the funds needed to operate Peach Care. Currently the Lt. Governor and Senate leaders are attempting to remove this [frivolous] spending.
And here’s the sample letter the group offers:
Dear Senator,
I’m writing you today to let you know I support the efforts of the Lt. Governor and Senate leadership to strip the unnecessary pork from the 2007 supplemental budget.
Supplemental budgets should only be used for emergency spending and not economic development and other pet projects.
Please support the removal of unnecessary spending from the 2007 supplemental budget.
On its web site, the Liberty Caucus lists seven House members, 15 senators and Lieutenant Governor Casey Cagle. State Sen. David Shafer of Duluth is listed as the honorary chairman.
In an accompanying press release, the Liberty Caucus sought to give cover to one of its members:
“The RLC would like to also recognize State Rep. Steve Davis (R-McDonough), who was the only member of the State House to vote against this pork-laden budget.
Representative Davis took a big risk in contradicting the wishes of his leadership to cast the lone dissenting vote in favor of the taxpayer.”
Whitehead to Pelosi: Don’t start the immigration war without me
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
State Sen. Jim Whitehead, considered the leading Republican in the race to replace the late U.S. Rep. Charlie Norwood in Congress, continues to press the immigration button.
He’s sent a letter to U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, asking her not to bring any attempt at immigration reform to a floor vote until he gets there. The special non-partisan election is scheduled for June 19.
Notice, in the following passage, how Whitehead, from Columbia County, is using the issue to put a bit of air between himself and the Bush Administration:
“Legislation addressing this hotly-debated and volatile issue could be decided by a very narrow margin. The people of this district deserve to have their voice heard and their wishes recorded in any vote taken on this issue.
The overwhelming majority of the people of Georgia’s Tenth District vehemently oppose the position of both you and President Bush to offer citizenship to illegal aliens, as do the majority of the American public at large. Please do not use this vacancy to thwart democracy.”
No rest for the weary: Barrow and Marshall again on GOP hit list
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
To no one’s surprise, the Associated Press is reporting today that U.S. Reps. John Barrow of Savannah and Jim Marshall of Macon will remain among the most likely Democrats to be a target for Republicans in ‘08.
That’s part of a political analysis by White House advisor Karl Rove that was intended for a private audience, but was made public last week by a U.S. House committee.
The best part of the piece is a brief interview with Mac Collins, the Republican who challenged Marshall and lost by just under 2,000 votes. Collins, himself a former congressman, still hasn’t conceded the race.
“A concession is running up a white flag,” he told AP. “I never ran up a white flag.”
But he wouldn’t say whether he’ll challenge Marshall again for the 8th District. But state Sen. Ross Tolleson (R-Perry) has shown interest in the race. In the 12th District, the AP says former Augusta mayor Bob Young is considering a challenge to Barrow.
Says the AP: Rove’s analysis became public last week as part of a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on whether the White House and the General Services Administration were injecting partisan politics into the agency’s operations, which include federal contracting and management of federal buildings.
A Rove deputy presented the election forecast at a meeting of GSA political appointees in January. Critics say the presentation could only have been aimed at getting the agency to help Republicans win in 2008.
Home is where the House district was
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
We caught a little of the rebroadcast of the Feb. 28 Cooper Union debate between Newt Gingrich and Mario Cuomo last night on CSPAN, and one passing comment grabbed our attention. Gingrich was kidding Cuomo about having once been Bella Abzug’s press secretary, and he said:
“How do I go home to Atlanta and explain that?”
He’s spent so much time elsewhere since leaving office that some have wondered whether Gingrich would claim Georgia as his residence if he ran for president. Guess from that remark he would. (BTW, constitutional scholars will realize this means there couldn’t be a Gingrich-Perdue ticket.)
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