Home > Political Insider > Archives > 2007 > April > 19
Thursday, April 19, 2007
The House calls.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The House abruptly adjourned a few minutes ago, with no plans to suspend the session as Gov. Sonny Perdue wanted — to reconfigure the $700 million ‘07 budget.
The Legislature is obligated to meet tomorrow for its 40th and final day.
Nothing to do but wait and see if the governor will follow through on broad hints that he’s inclined to veto the supplemental spending bill, with a $142 million property tax.
More to come.
Step into my office, says the governor to the House member
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Things are getting serious here.
We’ve gotten confirmation that the governor has been calling down House members — Democrats as well as Republicans — to his office to pitch to them the deal that he’s put on the table for House Speaker Glenn Richardson and Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle.
In a nutshell, this is what he’s telling them: Suspend action today. Don’t meet tomorrow, the 40th and final day of the session. Let budget writers from both chambers and the governor’s office fold the $700 million from the ‘07 budget bill into the $20.2 billion budget bill for ‘08.
That might take days. It might take weeks. The Legislature would come back for that final day, probably sometime in May.
Richardson has rejected this, and is betting the governor won’t be able to veto a $142 million tax cut. On the other hand, Cagle has already indicated he’s amenable to Perdue’s offer. Would he be able to bring his chamber with him?
We’re further assured that the governor isn’t asking House members whether they’d sustain his veto.
But we’ve heard that others, in the governor’s name, have been making first inquiries to Democrats. This is also denied by the governor’s office. We’ll let you decide.
We do know that members of the governor’s staff have been barred from the House floor. Clelia Davis, spokeswoman for Richardson, said they were detracting from the decorum.
The bottom line is that, for ages upon ages, the final two days of the Legislature consist of a budget confrontation between the House and the Senate. This year, it’s between the governor and the House speaker.
Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life, and this bill no breath at all?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It may seem strange that in a year with so little legislation there should have been two competing bills dealing with funding for the arts. But therein lies an artful tale, with as much blood on the floor in the final act as a Verdi opera or a Shakespeare play. This is just an update - we’ll save the longer tale for later.
A bill championed by Sue Weiner, executive director of the Georgia Council for the Arts, didn’t make it past crossover day - the legislative equivalent of folding off-Broadway.
A rival bill, sponsored by Rep. Joe Wilkinson (R-Sandy Springs) and championed by many in the arts community, had a longer run. But it failed to make it on the final Senate Rules calendar, and the word is that Weiner was instrumental in its downfall.
We hear a last-gasp effort to revive the measure was ongoing Thursday afternoon, but it appeared it, too, was about to be folded.
That headline is a play on a line from “King Lear,” by the way. If you didn’t know that, it’s a good argument for this bill.
Permalink | |
How about these bedfellows?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
We’re told that Gov. Sonny Perdue is putting out feelers to House Democrats, to gauge whether they would support his veto of the $700 million, 2007 supplemental budget.
The question is what it might cost the governor.
Perdue on Wednesday threatened to veto the bill, which contains a $142 million tax rebate to property owners, though the cost of distributing the checks, and the amount, has become a matter of contention. The bill might also force temporary layoffs among some literacy teachers and prosecutors.
The 180-member House has proceeded apace. To override a gubernatorial would require a two-thirds vote of the chamber. Among the chamber’s 106 Republicans, an override vote would become a test of loyalty to the Speaker and his leadership team.
Democrats would find themselves the deciding votes. And something tells us the governor wouldn’t be the only bidder.
Yearning for a little good ol’ fashioned hate
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
This session, the Republican members of the House have played the rough-and-tumble Spartans to the Senate’s peace-and-love, bipartisan Atheneans.
But this afternoon, a knot of legislators gathered at the front of the House, to set debate limits on the upcoming city-of-Dunwoody bill.
House Speaker pro tem Mark Burkhalter (R-Alpharetta) and House Majority Leader Jerry Keen (R-St. Simons Island) were getting along splendidly with House Minority Leader DuBose Porter and state Reps. Calvin Smyre (D-Columbus), David Lucas (D-Macon) and Stan Watson (D-Decatur).
Speaker Glenn Richardson looked down on the kumbaya circle and declared that the Legislature had indeed gone on too long. “Y’all are beginning to like each other. Soon you’ll be like the Senate,” he said.
Actually, members of the Senate think they’ve been too civilized as well. That long lunch senators took this afternoon was intended to slow down the number of House bills brought before them, and make the House more amenable to compromises.
Deal close on ‘private cities’ legislation; taxation power removed
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
This afternoon, supporters of “private cities” legislation have dumped a provision that would allow developers to levy taxes on the inhabitants of their project, as a last-minute attempt to bring Democrats on board and reach the two-thirds majority needed in the House to pass a constitutional amendment.
We just finished talking to DuBose Porter of Dublin, the House minority leader who has been heavily lobbied for his support. He says a deal is being worked out that should give bill supporters the 120 votes they need in the 180-member changer.
Opponents of the legislation, designed to allow developers to raise more upfront money for massive projects in rural areas, have bandied about an effective slogan for the bill that has given conservatives in both parties heartburn.
They’re calling it the “let the developers tax’ bill. (Actually, the legislation is a matched set, S.B. 200 and S.R. 309.
Porter said the taxation portion of the legislation has been replaced by one that permits developers only to present purchasers with an upfront “assessment.”
Also beefed up in the new version of the bill is language intended to make sure it excludes Oaky Woods, a 20,000-acre, black-bear habitat next to Gov. Sonny Perdue’s home in Houston County.
During Perdue’s re-election campaign last year, critics charged that Perdue’s administration failed to buy and protect Oaky Woods from developers. The original bill excluded Muscogee and Houston counties.
Porter says a third county will be added.
Democrats in a furious Senate debate over the issue said the constitutionality of the excluding these counties was questionable. In the drafts he’s seen, Porter says a “severability” clause has been removed — meaning that if the exclusions are found unconstitutional, the entire legislation becomes unconstitutional.
Permalink | |
Bill for epilepsy patients can’t find footing in Senate
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Somebody in the Senate call state Rep. Charlice Byrd (R-Woodstock) and tell her what’s happened to her bill.
H.B. 127, one of those rare do-gooder pieces of legislation, would protect people with epilepsy from unsuspected changes in their medication.
It’s endorsed by the Georgia Epilepsy Foundation, and passed the House early this session on a 161-0 vote.
Byrd says her bill would prevent pharmacists from switching the brand of medicine — whether top-shelf or generic — without a physician’s permission.
The bill only applies to epilepsy patients.
Byrd says the minute differences in medicine prescribed by doctors — often recommended by pharmacists, usually to save money — have been found to trigger grand mal seizures in patients .
“With epileptic patients, any change — a slight change — in their medication changes their blood levels and it causes you to seize,” said Byrd, whose mother was epileptic.
A seizure can cost those with epilepsy their drivers license for several months, and and can wreak havoc with employment, Byrd said. About 100,000 Georgians have epilepsy.
While it breezed through the House, the legislator said H.B. 127 has been quietly opposed by health maintenance organizations, pharmacists. And the Georgia Retail Association.
Byrd said those first two organizations fear that the bill could serve as a precedent. “One lobbyist told me this is opening a door for every other kind of medication,” she said.
White House and Senate Dems say Isakson’s approach to immigration not so bad after all
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Johnny Isakson’s having a pretty good spring. First his embryonic stem cell bill blew through the U.S. Senate. Now his approach to immigration reform may have legs.
The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that both the White House and Senate Democrats have embraced Isakson’s two-step, secure-the-border-first tactic as a means of reassuring “wary conservatives,” whose support is needed if any attempt at re-writing immigration laws is to succeed.
Last year, Isakson’s idea was dumped on by his Senate colleagues, 55-40.
We’ll let the relevant WSJ paragraphs pick up from there:
Since then, its chief supporter, Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), has been courted by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who has supported reviving the trigger to help broaden support. Democrats, now in control of Congress, say they also are open to the idea in a new immigration bill, if it wins Republican votes.
“It’s going to take some time to develop the systems that we’re creating in the immigration bill, and so we are looking at what triggers could apply that would satisfy someone like Senator Isakson,” said Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.). “It is a change of position, and there are lots of different changes as we try to accommodate.”
Take a few deep breaths, Lynn, and get a-holt of yourself
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
U.S. Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Sharpsburg) was one of 50 or so House Republicans who attended a private meeting in Washington on Wednesday with Fred Thompson, the hot non-candidate for president.
“There was a breath of fresh air in the room today,” Westmoreland said, according to an Associated Press report.
City of Atlanta payroll shooting up?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Creative Loafing’s John Sugg has a piece claiming that hiring has surged 27 percent under Mayor Shirley Franklin. He says City Hall employed 7,428 when she took office. Sugg says the current number is 9,438.
