Sunday sales bill hits Senate roadblock

She was part of a late-blooming grass-roots campaign that gave state senators enough second thoughts to slow the bill after it sailed through early hearings and was sitting in the Rules Committee, ready to be moved to the floor for debate and a vote.

It was bipartisan legislation that would have allowed counties and cities to let voters decide whether to permit Sunday sales, but after Republican senators took a secretive vote this week, they said their caucus did not support bringing it up for debate.

"No, we are not going to move forward," Senate Majority Leader Chip Rogers, a co-sponsor of the bill, said Thursday.

He said, "We took a whip count and there is not the support to move forward, and it really was a decisive answer."

Rogers declined to delineate the vote among the 36 Republican senators in his caucus.

A whip count is a nonbinding secret poll among party members that is not subject to open meeting laws.

Kathy Kuzava, a lobbyist for grocery retailers and wholesalers, was hoping to ignite a counter-campaign to try to revive the bill.

"People out there, if you believe in local control and want this to be something you can decide, you need to call your legislator," she said.

"There is a group of people that get behind closed doors and make a decision," she said, "and there may not be a time when you are going to see something that the people want to come to the floor for a fair vote. It is decided among a very few, and that is frustrating for all the people of Georgia who would like to see government decided in a fair manner."

Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle also noted the unusual way the whip vote was taken after the bill went to the Rules Committee.

"Having a caucus vote determining what bills come to the floor and what bills do not actually, to my knowledge, has not been done in the past. So this is a little bit of a change in the procedure with the Senate, and the minority party is pretty much shut out of the process," he said.

The bill's failure left voters like David Staples, a Cobb County Libertarian, disappointed.

"To say we are not going to let the citizens of Georgia decide the issue seems silly," he said. "We are grown adults who can purchase it six other days of the week. I can even go to the strip club and purchase it while looking at naked women Sunday. But I can't go to Publix and purchase a bottle of wine to have with my lasagna."

There is a similar bill in the House, but it has been sitting dormant in the House Rules Committee since Feb. 9.

Rep. Roger Williams, R-Dalton, the sponsor, said, "My discussion with [House Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge] was that it was probably not the best idea to get it over there and have it killed in the Senate and have the backlash over in the House.

"There's no sense sending it over there if they are not going to pass it," he said.

He hoped another opening will come this session to pass his bill, if they can get some indications from the Senate that there would be votes to support it.

Ralston said he would not dictate what the House should do, declining to push lawmakers to vote on the House proposal, which many expect to pass.

“I don’t know if it’s worth the time to spend on things that are futile,” he said. “It’s always the best when the two chambers recognize the importance of issues and even though they disagree on details can agree on how to get there.”

Pat Tippett, a two-decade veteran of lobbying for social and religiously conservative values as an organizer of Georgia Conservatives in Action, knows the fight may not be over.

"We know we have to continue monitoring the legislation," she said.

She and fellow lobbyist Kay Godwin along with allies in the Georgia Christian Coalition helped spark a late e-mail and phone campaign to legislators against Senate Bill 10.

Tippett said they were caught unaware by the bill's early, swift movement through a committee to the Senate Rules Committee.

But the bill stalled there for nearly two weeks while Republicans fretted over not seeming too anxious to pass legislation allowing counties and cities to hold elections on Sunday alcohol sales when, as they began to say, there were so many important issues at hand such as reforming HOPE scholarships and budgeting.

Roger re-emphasized that theme Thursday.

"While I support it, I certainly recognize there are a lot of people who do not support it, and if there is not the support, there is no need to continue to dwell on it. And we are moving onto the much more important issues: education, HOPE scholarships, balancing the budget and creating jobs," he said.

Erik Kriebel of Athens, who supports Sunday sales, said he was disappointed by the way a portion of the Republican Senate caucus bottled up the bill and did not have to answer to voters for it.

"Ultimately, unless they come out and announce who was against it, it's a little cowardly," he said.

Staff writers Aaron Gould Sheinin and April Hunt contributed to this article.

What happened

With a new governor saying he’d sign a law letting Sunday alcohol sales be decided at the local level, such bills passed House and Senate committees. However, after senators felt the pressure of grass-roots opposition, Republicans decided not to bring that chamber’s bill to the floor.

What they said

Jerry Luquire, president of the Georgia Christian Coalition:

"We know it is on life support. We hope it's dead. ... Technology killed the bill, too. We have 32,000 addresses in our e-mail database. We can easily hit 150,000 homes in minutes."

Bradley Burns of Buckhead, who supported the bill:

"I was disappointed that it was killed in the Republican caucus. I was really hoping it would get out to the floor and they would let people vote on it. I understand that some people have their reasons to be against it. But if it came to a vote and didn't pass, I would accept that."