My wife gave me an old book on the first day of the Legislative Session. The gold lettering on its worn bound cover was faded, but it turned out to be the Legislative Manual of the Georgia General Assembly for the 1929-1930 Legislative Session.

We no longer publish a legislative manual as such. This one included a list of the officers of the Executive Department and rosters of the officers and members of the General Assembly. It also included the standing rules of the Senate and House, as well as rules for when the Senate and House met in joint session and the Senate met in “executive session” to consider confirmation of the Governor’s appointees.

For those of you who are interested, the Governor of Georgia in 1929 was Larmatine Griffin “L.G.” Hardman, a physician and businessman from Commerce who as a member of the General Assembly had led the fight for prohibition. The office of Lieutenant Governor would not be created until 1946 so Senate President W. Cecil Neil of Columbus would have become Governor had tragedy befell Dr. Hardman during his term of office.

The State Senate of 1929 had 51 members, as opposed to 56 today. Most Senate Districts were composed of three counties. A handful of Districts were made up of four. The membership of the Senate, like Georgia itself, was predominately rural. In fact, not a single resident of Fulton, DeKalb, Cobb or Gwinnett County served in the State Senate. Today, residents of those four counties make up over a third of the body.

Sessions of the General Assembly began the fourth week of June, and they lasted no longer than sixty days. Today we start in January and must be done in forty days.

My Senate District, then numbered 51, was composed of Forsyth, Gwinnett and Milton Counties. It was represented by Senator Marcus Mashburn of Cumming. Senator Mashburn was Chairman of the Senate Committee on Public Printing and Vice Chairman of the Senate Committee on Hygiene and Sanitation. Today we do not have either of those committees. We also do not have a Milton County, but that may soon change.

Among the other standing Senate committees were Agriculture, Amendments to the Constitution, General Judiciary Number One, General Judiciary Number Two, Special Judiciary, Commerce and Labor, Corporations, Drainage, Forestry, Game and Fish, Highways, Internal Improvements, Military Affairs, Mines and Mining, Public Schools, Railroads, and Temperance.

Several state enterprises merited their own standing committees, including Academy for the Blind, School for the Deaf, State Sanitarium, Tuberculosis Sanitarium at Alto, University System of Georgia and Its Branches, and Western and Atlantic Railroad.

The House did not have districts as such. Instead, the eight most populous counties each elected three Representatives, the next thirty largest each elected two, and all the rest each elected one, for a total of 207 members, as opposed to 180 today.

No one thought to identify the Governor and members of the General Assembly by party. They were all Democrats. They were also all white and almost all men. By my count, five women held posts in the Executive Department, serving as Executive Secretary to the Governor, State Historian, State Librarian, Executive Secretary to the State Library Commission and Acting Superintendent of the Georgia Soldiers’ Roster Commission.

It makes me wonder what our great grand children will think 80 years from now when they look at the names, pictures, party labels and committee assignments of the 2007-2008 Legislative Session.

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I hesitate to comment on the impeachment resolution drafted by Representative Ron Forster for fear of giving the unfortunate matter more attention than it deserves.

As reported today in AJC, Representative Forster is seeking to impeach the Lieutenant Governor. He is unhappy that the Senate referred the veto overrides to committee. He believes the Constitution required the Senate to vote on the overrides immediately after receiving them from the House and wants the Lieutenant Governor put on trial and punished for the Senate not having done so.

The Constitution does in fact require the Senate to “immediately consider” any veto overrides transmitted to it by the House. When the transmitted overrides were received, the Lieutenant Governor immediately suspended the business of the Senate and ordered the Clerk to read the override messages aloud. On motion of the Senate Majority Leader, they were referred to the Senate Rules Committee by unanimous consent of the Senate.

There is no question that the Senate action was “immediate.” As to whether the action itself properly constituted “consideration” (a word that literally means “to think about carefully”), the answer to that question can be found in the Rules of the Senate which explicitly permit the Senate to refer a veto override to committee.

Representative Forster argues that the veto override provision of the Constitution trumps the Senate Rules.  But the veto override provision cannot be read in isolation from the rest of the Constitution.  The provision dealing with veto overrides must read in conjunction with the provision of the Constitution giving each house of the General Assembly the power to adopt its own rules of procedure.

But as far as impeaching the Lieutenant Governor is concerned, it simply does not matter whether the committee referral was constitutionally correct or not. The referral was not made by the Lieutenant Governor but by unanimous consent of the Senate. Justifiably unhappy or not, Representative Forster has taken aim at the wrong target. His recourse is to run for the State Senate.

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I today introduced two pieces of legislation addressing problems at Grady Memorial Hospital.

Senate Resolution 722 creates a Grady Oversight Committee. First proposed in 1999 by then Senator David Scott, legislative oversight has been persistently opposed by those who run Grady. Of course, their resistance to legislative oversight has not stopped them from crying the same old lament of legislative neglect whenever the coffers run dry.

The language of the resolution is drawn from legislation creating MARTOC, the highly successful legislative overview committee for MARTA. It will allow the General Assembly to continuously monitor Grady and help make sure that public funds are properly spent.

Senate Bill 353, the Public Hospital Integrity Act, prevents those with a financial tie to either Grady or a major vendor of Grady from serving in a governing capacity for the hospital. This bill will help make sure that Grady’s board gives its loyalty to Grady as an institution and not to those who do business with Grady. Senator David Adelman, Vicent Fort and Kasim Reed are among the Democrats who cosponsored the bill.

As important as they are, governance reform and legislative oversight are just the beginning. I will shortly be unveiling additional proposals for Grady concerning funding, staffing and competitiveness issues. I will keep you posted.

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The first day of the 2008 Legislative Session began with the House of Representatives voting to override twelve of the Governor’s vetoes. The vetoed bills were then transmitted to the Senate which is required by the Constitution to “immediately consider” them. We did so by unanimously referring them to the Senate Rules Committee.

Apparently believing the committee referrals to be an attempt to avoid taking action on the vetoes, the Speaker today suggested that the Senate shirked its constitutional duty in not immediately subjecting the vetoed bills to an up-or-down vote. But the word “consider” literally means “to think about carefully.” Referral to committee is an appropriate response, and I fully expect the committee process to work.

Senator Don Balfour, Chairman of the Rules Committee, has indicated that hearings could begin as early as later this week.

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Today I co-chaired a hearing on global warming at the State Capitol.  The idea for the hearing originated with Senator Ross Tolleson, who chairs the Senate Natural Resources and Environment Committee.  He asked me to join him because I am the chairman of the Senate Regulated Industries and Utilities Committee, which deals with energy issues.

As I said at the hearing, glaciers once covered most of North America.  They have steadily receded over the last several thousand years as the world has grown warmer, and most of that warming has had nothing to do with human activity.  In fact, it is pretty clear that the temperature of the sun, which rises and falls in cycles, is the driving natural phenomenon.

As to whether human activity has accelerated the warming in the last hundred years, it seems logical that we have had some impact.  The controversy arises in determining the extent of that impact and what should be done about it.

Senator Tolleson arranged for us to hear from two witnesses.  Martin Rickerd, the British consul general, discussed his country’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, including incentives and penalties on energy-intensive businesses and on automobile owners.  Dr. Harold Brown, professor emeritus from the University of Georgia, urged caution, saying that the human impact on climate is difficult to ascertain.  He also pointed out that climate experts were predicting a new Ice Age as late as the 1970s and demanding government action to “warm up” the planet.

More hearings are planned.  Global warming was an issue at the National Conference of State Legislatures meeting in Boston last summer.

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For decades, telephone companies provided telephone service and cable companies provided television service, and each industry was taxed and regulated differently.  Now telephone companies offer television service and cable companies offer telephone service.  They both offer Internet access and they both compete with satellite companies.  We have witnessed a convergence of technology, and the different taxing and regulatory regimes no longer make sense. 

It was against this backdrop that I chaired the first meeting of the Telecommunications Taxes, Fees and Franchising Study Committee.   I was happy to be joined by Senators Chip Rogers, Bill Heath and Tim Golden as we heard from a half dozen industry representatives.  

Four proposals emerged, and for those of you who are interested in telecommunications policy, Tom Crawford of Capitol Impact did a good job of summarizing them in this article: 

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I support virtually every practical limitation on the power of government to tax, and as a general matter, favor the taxation of consumption over productivity or its fruits.

But I will admit to being initally skeptical about the workability of Speaker Glenn Richardson’s plan to eliminate all taxes on real and personal property.  These taxes are, for the most part, collected by local governments and eliminating them would require an entirely new mechanism to fund the operations of our cities and counties.

Last week, the Speaker presented his GREAT Plan to the North Fulton Chamber of Commerce.  After hearing him out, my skepticism has given way to open mindeness.  There are many details to be worked out, and I remain far from convinced, but the Speaker makes the excellent point that if we were designing a tax system from scratch, no one would suggest the one we have now.

Property taxation was created as a way to tax farm income.  When property taxes were first levied, only planters and farmers owned land, and the tax came due in the fall, right after the harvest.  It made sense two hundred years ago.   It made sense one hundred years ago.  But does it make sense today?

Most politicians shy away from bold ideas, calculating that political longevity is best maintained by the avoidance of controversy.  The Speaker is to be commended for putting forward a very bold and thought provoking proposal.  I am looking forward to the debate.

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It is the season for study committee meetings.  Earlier this week, I participated in the first meeting of the Senate Study Committee on Genetic Technology, chaired by Senator Eric Johnson.  The committee was formed to consider the legal issues arising out of advanced fertility treatments.  For example, what should happen to frozen eggs and sperm if a couple divorces or one of the donors die?  What are the inheritance and other rights of a child conceived after the death of the mother or father, using frozen eggs or sperm? 

Fascinating questions, and I am glad that Senator Johnson has taken the lead in gathering the information that we need to answer them.  At our first meeting, we heard from a leading fertility doctor, a lawyer who practices in adoption and surrogacy law and two couples who received fertility treatment. 

Less fascinating, but still important, was a meeting of the Senate Banking and Financial Institutions Committee, called by Senator Bill Hamrick to review a proposed revision of Georgia’s securities law.  Bob Terry of Secretary of State Karen Handel’s office presented, section-by-section, a new model law prepared by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws.  We will likely take up the new model in the 2008 Legislative Session, and I am glad that Chairman Hamrick has already begun familarizing the members of his committee with this complicated issue.

I also met this week with Mike Cassidy, President of the Georgia Research Alliance, a public-private partnership originally organized in 1990 to use the research capabilities of Georgia’s universities to encourage economic development.  The GRA is at the beginning of a major initiative to make Georgia a leader in vaccine research.   I strongly support the GRA and believe that Georgia is fortunate to have Mike Cassidy at its helm.

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The Lieutenant Governor has asked me to chair two study committees, one on communications taxes and fees and the telecommunications franchise process and the other on cigarette tax evasion.

Brian Johnson in the Senate Research Office is helping me organize the work of these committees.  If you have suggestions for either study, let one of us know.

I have also been appointed to a third study committee, chaired by Senator Eric Johnson, on reproductive and genetic technology.  Melanie Stockwell in Senator Johnson’s office is coordinating the work of this study committee.

For a complete list of 2007 study committee appointments, visit the Senate website.

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Three Democratic state senators today urged Governor Perdue to call a special session to terminate legal proceedings in the Genarlow Wilson case and take “immediate and decisive action to set Genarlow Wilson free and end this terrible nightmare for him and our beloved state once and for all.”

I am not sure what they are now proposing.  Every earlier legislative attempt to free Mr. Wilson would have opened up hundreds or even thousands of child molestation cases to judicial review, with mandatory notifications to the victims of these crimes.

Two weeks ago, House Democratic Leader DuBose Porter urged Governor Perdue to call a session to reduce the gas tax.

Given that a special session for any purpose would force the immediate transmittal of the Governor’s vetoes and almost certainly result in an intraparty confrontation over the budget, I suspect the Democrats would embrace virtually any reason to meet in special session.

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