The Legislature this week:
- After Monday's first day, much of this week's action will take place Wednesday, when Gov. Nathan Deal gives his annual State of the State address and unveils his budget priorities for the year.
- For the first time in many years, the state is expected to have a budget surplus for the fiscal year that begins July 1. Expect those extra dollars to go toward raises for teachers and state employees, public schools, health care, the Division of Family and Children's Services and other areas.
- Legislators will be in session through Friday, although their heavy-duty work will begin next week as committee schedules fill up and bills reach the House and Senate floor.
The ordeal began a year-and-a-half ago, with junior state Sen. Josh McKoon’s self-written protest to the state Attorney General’s Office.
It ended Monday when state Sen. Don Balfour, acquitted of 18 felony counts of trying to steal money from the state, made an unusually personal speech to a hushed Senate chamber. The Snellville Republican spoke of humility, of overcoming a wrong and of how much he wanted to move on.
Afterward, for 20 seconds as other senators stood and applauded, McKoon stayed seated, his head bent on the shuffled paperwork at his desk. He was not quite ready to let it go.
“I’m going to take a little more time to think about the comments that were made today. …” he said later, after the chamber had emptied and the Gold Dome began working in earnest on its first day of this year’s 40-day legislative session. “I don’t think there’s anything about this episode to applaud.”
Once one of the most powerful politicians in Georgia, Balfour is now diminished and weary from the fight against charges that over a five-year period he had intentionally taken reimbursement for expenses to which he was not entitled. The charges could have brought him up to 10 years in prison and thousands of dollars in fines.
They did cost him his perch as chairman of the powerful Senate Rules Committee.
The man who traveled the globe on legislative business, who has mugged for the camera on top of a camel in Turkey and stood staunch and smiling in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, now leads a committee — the Senate Reapportionment and Redistricting Committee — that faces little serious work for the rest of this decade.
Statehouse leaders and others, quick to publicly distance themselves from the scandal, have soft-pedaled his welcome back into the GOP fold. Senate Pro Tem David Shafer, R-Duluth, has been more quick to offer assurances that new rules will prevent misuse of legislative expense accounts going forward.
Monday gave both sides the first chance to make those tentative steps of letting this episode pass, but it offered no indication of how long that would take.
“Forgiveness is important, but it’s an awfully hard concept — I’m just being honest with you,” Balfour said Monday, moments before speaking from the well to his fellow senators. “And when I’ve gone through what I’ve gone through, that people have gone to the extent of trying to take my liberties and freedoms away from me, forgiveness is still forgiveness — but boy, I don’t know how people get there. Maybe I need to get there, but I’m not there yet.”
McKoon noted Monday that the state constitution would allow the Senate to censure or otherwise punish Balfour even now. He said he wanted to talk to his colleagues about those “potential options” and wouldn’t rule anything out.
But veteran observers of Georgia’s political scene expected a calmer hand to prevail.
Steve Anthony, who teaches politics at Georgia State University, spent years as one of the state’s top Democratic legislative aides and said members of the Senate GOP caucus would likely help guide Balfour — who’s already announced a re-election run this year — toward at least a measure of redemption.
Others weren’t sure it would even come to that.
“You can’t undo what’s done, and you can’t make everybody buy into the sense of kumbaya, but I think it’s human nature to try and move on,” said Chuck Clay, a former longtime senator and former chairman of the Georgia Republican Party who now works as a lobbyist. “Even if you don’t want to put someone on your A-list for guests, it’s in everybody’s interest: (Balfour’s) a very smart man and brings a lot of very good skill sets to the table.”
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