Members of the Georgia House who are delinquent in paying ethics fines would be stripped of their committee assignments under a proposal by Republican leadership.
House Majority Leader Larry O'Neal, R-Bonaire, said his resolution is necessary for lawmakers to "self-discipline" themselves.
"We all have to act like responsible elected officials," O'Neal said Tuesday while presenting the resolution to the House Rules Committee.
The panel, which decides what measures make it to the House floor, agreed to delay consideration of HR4EX until Wednesday at the request of Minority Leader Stacey Abrams, D-Atlanta.
Abrams had asked O'Neal to consider changing the resolution to allow for the House Ethics Committee to determine whether a legislator is actually delinquent. O'Neal's resolution did not include a mechanism for making that determination.
O'Neal agreed to consider Abrams' change, which would allow the House Ethics Committee to determine if a member is delinquent. Ethics Committee Chairman Joe Wilkinson, R-Sandy Springs, said he supported the change.
William Perry, executive director of Common Cause Georgia, a leading government watchdog group that has pushed for stronger ethics rules, said O'Neal's resolution "has our full support."
Because the resolution would not change state law, only the House rules, the measure would not apply to state senators.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported in May that 47 state lawmakers, or about 20 percent of the General Assembly, owed the state money for ethics violations. While the sums were relatively small, some of the fees dated back almost a decade. The fines are imposed by the state ethics commission.
O'Neal said Tuesday those kinds of stories damage the General Assembly's standing with voters.
"It's embarrassing," he said. "It's not party specific and it's not person specific. The people of Georgia expect us to live honorably under the rules."
Abrams and other Democrats said they support the concept but want to add a method for addressing disputes. Abrams said several lawmakers, Democrats and Republicans, are in the midst of a dispute with the state ethics commission over past violations.
Before 2010, most reports filed with the commission, including campaign finance reports and personal financial disclosures, were filed by paper; now, it's all done electronically. The commission, Abrams said, has ruled that several lawmakers either filed those pre-2010 reports late or not at all and assessed fines. Abrams said they are working with the commission to investigate further, but those lawmakers who are contesting the commission's finding would be stripped of committee assignments under the resolution.
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