ATLANTA — As midnight came and went Friday in the Georgia House of Representatives, top Republicans scrambled to wedge one more piece of legislation into a busy legislative day.
House Resolution 1087 seemed like a no-brainer to many. It called for a voter referendum to change the state constitution and make sure people who don’t pay their taxes can’t hold public office.
But the measure failed by a few votes as late Friday night became early Saturday morning and “Crossover Day” — the deadline for legislation to clear the House — came to a harried close.
The vote was 117 to 31, with another 31 legislators not voting at all. The measure needed three more votes to pass.
“I cannot believe there are that many people ... that don’t want people kicked out of office for (not paying) income taxes,” said state Rep. Calvin Hill, R-Canton, the measure’s sponsor.
But it wasn’t that simple. Some legislators felt the vote wasn’t legal, since it came after a midnight deadline. Others, House Minority Leader DuBose Porter said, were upset that their bills didn’t make it to the floor Friday, making them casualties of Crossover Day.
That included state Rep. David Lucas’ bill to increase Macon and Bibb County’s hotel-motel tax to help fund the Georgia Sports and Music halls of fame in downtown Macon. Without a vote, that bill and others essentially died Friday night. The House met for more than 15 hours Friday, and still there wasn’t enough time to make it through the debate calendar House leaders put together, much less get to bills that didn’t make the calendar.
The push to legalize horse racing? Dead. Drug testing for welfare recipients? Dead.
Of bills that were on the House debate calendar Friday, the end to the refundable tax credit for low-income Georgians is dead for now, with the potential to arise and be pasted into other tax code reforms. The same goes for proposed increases in licensing fees for video gambling machines in convenience stores. Time ran out before either came up.
One item that did pass late Friday is a change to state insurance laws. The House and Senate both voted to allow out-of-state companies to sell policies in Georgia. Female legislators, who have worked for years to get various coverage mandates into state law, initially stood against the change and beat the bill back last Wednesday in the Senate.
But by Friday that coalition had fractured enough for the change, which is part of Gov. Sonny Perdue’s legislative package this year, to go through. Republicans argued that this will mean more Georgians can afford insurance because some out-of-state policies will be cheaper. Democrats countered that the no-frills policies will be more trouble than they’re worth and that the state will be mostly powerless to help consumers duped into buying a toothless policy.
These issues and more will come up again as the state Legislature burns through its 10 remaining legislative days. In coming days, the House will start reviewing and voting on Senate bills, and the Senate will do likewise.
But for this week, most of the focus will be on the state’s fiscal 2011 budget. And to that end the House’s “Green Door” committee met Monday.
That committee is made up of the top elected leaders in the House, and they heard from the series of budget committee chairmen and legislative staffers who have overhauled Perdue’s budget into a version the House is expected to pass later this week.
The committee’s meeting was open to the public, but wasn’t publicly announced like most legislative committee meetings are. It played out before a room of empty chairs in a quiet corner meeting room at the state Capitol.
“We have a lot of meetings here that are not closed,” Speaker of the House David Ralston said after the meeting. “We advertise some, and others, it just gives us a chance to have a frank discussion.”
In the end, though, Ralston and House Appropriations Committee Chairman Ben Harbin, R-Evans, said they didn’t see any major budget changes coming from the meeting. A series of House budget committee meetings are scheduled for today, with the full House expected to approve the budget later this week.
That will send it to the Senate for more work, and Senate leaders have said they plan to focus on that next week, while most of the Legislature is off for spring break.
To contact writer Travis Fain, call 361-2702.
