Coming soon to mailboxes, Facebook pages and and answering machines across the state: reminders from Republican legislators that they cut your taxes, helped fuel job growth, paved the way for more charter schools and passed new abortion restrictions.
The Georgia General Assembly’s 2012 session that ended Thursday night will quickly become the stuff of campaign literature as all 236 legislative seats are up for election this year. Many Republicans, wary of anti-incumbent fervor stoked by tea party activists, will work hard to emphasize the accomplishments of the session, both in the run-up to the July primaries and the November general election.
“Our message is going to be what our focus was on this session, which was jobs,” said House Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge. “That’s what Georgians wanted us to focus on. That’s what we did focus on.”
For Democrats, however, the 40-day session might be remembered as a last hurrah. New legislative district maps going into effect this year have the potential to further diminish Democratic influence in state politics.
One man who doesn’t have to face voters for another two years can spend his summer celebrating a legislative sweep. Gov. Nathan Deal got nearly everything he asked for this year: tax reform, money to expand the Port of Savannah, sentencing reform and cash for economic development.
The same, however, cannot be said for the tea party. The grassroots organizations had a mixed session; their influence was evident on several pieces of legislation but the their key priority — ethics reform — was never seriously considered, and their complaints about the high-profile tax bill, which was introduced and approved in a single week, went unheeded.
Julianne Thompson and Debbie Dooley, co-organizers of Atlanta Tea Party Patriots, claimed victory with Republican lawmakers over passage of several bills, including legislation that could eliminate whole state agencies. And they celebrated the eleventh-hour defeat of a bill that would have barred picketing outside private residences.
It is the failure of lawmakers to seriously consider ethics legislation, however, that Thompson and Dooley said incumbents will be hearing more about this summer. “They’re going to regret that,” Dooley said.
The tea party and its 31-member coalition of conservative groups plan to create a legislative scorecard this summer that will rate every lawmaker, and ethics will have a prominent place. The tea party, along with government watchdog Common Cause Georgia and others, had advocated for a cap on lobbyist gifts to lawmakers and other measures to strengthen rules governing elected officials’ conduct. Unlike neighboring states, Georgia does not limit what lobbyists can spend on legislators.
Republican leaders in the House and Senate never warmed to the idea and it went nowhere. Top lawmakers said limiting gifts doesn’t work in other states and that Georgia’s 2010 ethics law, which increased reporting and created new fines, is effective.
Tea party leaders were incensed by a late attempt on the session’s final night to shield some ethics records from public view. Dooley and Thompson also lamented the hijacking in the Senate of an attempt to create an ethics study commission.
Sen. Josh McKoon, R-Columbus, who supports the gift cap, wanted to create the special committee to brainstorm possible reforms. But Senate leaders refused to give McKoon a seat on the commission and barred activists such as Dooley and Thompson from serving, too. Ultimately, the resolution was never voted on.
“We’ll make ethics part of the election,” Thompson vowed.
Justin Tomczak, a Cobb County Republican activist, said the failure of an ethics package was “a missed opportunity.”
“We know that laws don’t make people do the right thing, but efforts to encourage our elected officials to conduct themselves with integrity are important,” he said. “With this issue going down, yet again, we have given the Democrats an issue to run on and all of this could have been avoided.”
The message taken to voters by Republican lawmakers, however, will be quite different.
“We had a very successful session,” Sen. Ronnie Chance, R-Tyrone, said. “We passed a lot of pro-family, pro-business legislation.”
Chance pointed to House Resolution 1162, which will allow voters this November to decide if the state can create charter schools, as a “huge” victory. House Bill 386, which provides tax cuts for married couples and provides exemptions for many sectors of the Georgia economy, was also key, Chance said.
“We’ve been working on that for many, many years and it’s going to be a huge win for consumers,” Chance said.
The tax bill also eliminates the “birthday tax” — the annual levy on car tags — replacing it with a one-time fee, and delivers tax breaks to airlines.
Ralston said the tax bill and the state budget, which includes $47 million for deepening the Port of Savannah as well as an extra $111 million for economic development, demonstrate the Legislature’s commitment to creating jobs.
Tomczak agreed that much good was accomplished this year, but like others wished lawmakers had not rushed to pass the tax bill in one week. It did not allow much time for public review, he said.
“I think there are mixed feelings and a lot of uncertainty as to what the actual impact will be.”
The tax bill, however, like the state budget and the sentencing reform bill, HB 1176, were adopted on overwhelmingly bipartisan votes. That allows Democrats to tell voters that they, too, fought for them this session. It might not help.
Last year’s redistricting process squeezed Democratic districts and were designed, in part, to help boost Republican majorities in both legislative chambers to more than two-thirds. That would allow Republicans to pass proposed constitutional amendments without the need for Democratic votes.
That’s important, as Democrats were able to block passage of the charter school amendment for 35 of the session’s 40 days before four Democrats flipped. While the bill ultimately passed, Democrats are often able to leverage support for constitutional amendments in exchange for consideration of issues important to them. That would become more difficult if Republicans gain a two-thirds “super majority” constitutional amendments need.
Republicans on Friday weren’t talking about fighting Democrats. Senate President Pro Tem Tommie Williams, R-Lyons, was more interested in thanking them. Williams noted the bipartisan nature of several major bills this year while acknowledging the sometimes bitter battle over abortion and charter schools.
“The people don’t want just partisan government,” Williams said. “They expect us to work together across the aisle to bring together good legislation.”
Deal agreed. “Even though you may have different points of view, we try to resolve differences instead of fighting publicly, before they become a public issue, and we’ve been very successful in doing that,” he said in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
As for more controversial measures like HB 954, the bill that essentially bans elective abortions after 20 weeks of a pregnancy, Williams said they were not designed to rally the Republican base at the polls this year.
Not everyone believed that. Senate Democratic women walked out of the chamber after the bill passed and wore yellow police tape and shouted, “We will remember!” As the bill passed the House, Democratic women turned their back on its sponsor.
-- Staff writer Kristina Torres contributed to this report.
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