The Cause at the Dome

Recap of weekly Legislative Activity, Friday Feb. 6th

Jim Kulstad, our veteran lobbyist, and one of Common Cause Georgia’s best assets, was there every day forcefully representing our legislative priorities.

Here is a recap of what we worked on this past week:

• Independent Redistricting Commission

The most exciting development was the introduction of legislation (HR 229) mandating an Independent Redistricting Commission for Georgia after the 2010 census. It is an exact duplicate of the bill that Gov. Perdue submitted in 2007 after accepting the recommendation of his own blue ribbon commission. John Sours, who served on that commission, was helpful in getting Rep.Harry Geisinger (R – N. Fulton) to be the chief sponsor of the resolution. Rep. Stephanie Benfield (D, DeKalb), one of Common Cause’s best allies in the legislature, was instrumental in helping us get the ball rolling.

The House sponsor list includes Minority Leader Dubose Porter (R - Dublin), Judiciary Chair Wendell Willard (R – Sandy Springs) and Burke Day (R - Tybee Island), who has sponsored similar legislation in previous years. We are very pleased at the bi-partisan support this bill has attained. In the coming weeks we will schedule a press conference to maximize the splash on this legislation. It will indeed be an uphill battle, but it is a fight we should be leading, and I am delighted at the progress this week.

As a final comment on redistricting, we attended the organizational meeting of the House Reapportionment Committee on Monday. These are the legislators who will be in thick of things, starting in 2011 if they do reapportionment the old way. Dennis Dunn of the AG’s office laid out the process where they must honor the one person-one vote principle and must abide by the provision of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act that makes any changes in Georgia’s districts subject to pre-clearance by the US Department of Justice.

There was also a presentation by the full time reapportionment staff which manages the very intricate process of calibrating the population size and demographic makeup of districts to insure compliance with whatever lines the politicians want to draw. There is a lot of competence about the process that is already there and ready to be managed by someone other than the legislature if we are successful.

Bill Bozarth re-introduced himself to Rep. Roger Lane (R – Darien), the incoming chair of this committee, and told him that we would be working to take this power away from him, but that if we were unsuccessful, we would be watching him closely to discourage a repeat of the self-serving redistricting that took place in 2001. It was a very friendly interchange, and he acknowledged we were taking the stand we should take on this issue.

• Non-Partisan Elections in Local Government

This issue is also looking better as Buddy Carter (R - Chatham) has taken the lead from an earlier effort spearheaded by Kevin Levitas (D – DeKalb) in pushing for a law that would allow counties to make any or all of their elected positions non-partisan. HB 130 is the primary bill that would open the doors for counties to go the non partisan route on county commissions, district attorneys, sheriffs, solicitors, tax receivers and collectors, and court clerks. Carter has also introduced HBs 131 – 136, which offer stand-alone options for each of the offices, should the full package not succeed.

We had a great meeting with Rep. Carter on Monday and agreed to work together to get his bills passed. He acknowledged that he needs to overcome leadership resistance in the House, but Carter is well respected, and it is encouraging that he is strongly behind this legislation.  

• Ethics Panels in Local Government

We were please to see that the legislation requiring ethics panels in local government was introduced on Tuesday. SB 96 is identical to the bill that passed the Senate last year and it has strong bi-partisan support again this time. We will look for that bill to be before the Senate Ethics Committee next week. Senator Kasim Reed of Atlanta is the primary sponsor. Second sponsor is Sen. Eric Johnson, now chair of the Senate Ethics Committee, so we don’t expect the bill to have any problems getting out of committee, or the full Senate for that matter.

• Fiscal Responsibility

In our focus area of fiscal responsibility, Rules Chairman Earl Erhart introduced HB 63, intended to be the enabling legislation for Constitutional Amendment 2 (The Tax Allocation District Amendment) which will shrink the definition of blight for purposes of using school money for development purposes.

The bill was scheduled for a hearing on Tuesday before a sub-committee, but was pulled from the agenda at the last minute. We understand that changes are being considered, and we have no reason to believe that the bill will not go forward.

• Campaign Finance and Ethics Reform

In this critical focus area, we dialoged further with Rep. Willard and Sen. Shafer this week to get the bill crafted so it will address three of our top ten priorities, including lobbying gift restrictions and revolving door rules.

Another bill that we were not involved in crafting (SB 119), sponsored by several Democratic senators with no Republicans, was introduced. It addresses one of the provisions of our reforms, campaign-to-campaign contributions. We will engage the sponsors of this bill to support our extended bill when it emerges.

• Open Records

We spoke with Rep. Jill Chambers (R – DeKalb); she said she was looking to introduce legislation in this session to consolidate and simplify the current Open Records/Open Meetings law. She indicated she was not looking for passage, but instead would plan hearings in the coming summer to tune the legislation.

That means that we are forced to wait for any implementation until the 2010 session. This is an area where we take our cues from our coalition partner, The First Amendment Foundation. We will interact on this subject to get that group and Rep. Chambers’ reform efforts in synch.

• Other Bills of Interest

SB 70, sponsored by Sen. George Hooks (D - Americus), was passed out of the Senate Ethics Committee. He explained the bill proposed tougher reporting rules for state contractors who contribute to the offices of candidates that have a regulatory authority over them. The bill passed quickly out of committee with our blessing, but subsequent discussions raised doubts about exactly where it would apply.

Sen. Hooks wants Georgia to better position itself to prevent what happened in Illinois, and his bill has the first elements of anti-Pay-to-Play legislation. In our current reading of this bill, it is encouraging to see a movement forward, but a more careful crafting would be necessary if this were to come close to enactment.

SB 17, sponsored by Sen. Seth Harp (R – Columbus), would stiffen fines for late filings by lobbyists and public officials and re-establish lobbyist filing fees. We got a chance to speak with Sen. Johnson (R - Savannah), who now chairs the Senate Ethics committee, and he asked our advice on some small tuning ideas he has in lobbyist reporting.

• A Final Note

In our campaign to bring anti-Pay-to-Play reform into the City of Atlanta Mayoral election of 2009, we held our first meeting with an announced candidate on Wednesday. Sam Bacote, Emmet Bondurant and I called on Atlanta attorney Jesse Spikes at his office. We had a very satisfactory meeting, as he agreed to bring that topic into his campaign team’s work on developing his platform.