Georgia might soon allow its spirit distillers to give away free samples to visitors.  The Union Recorder has an article about House Bill 514, sponsored by Rep. Rusty Kidd (I-Milledgeville), would allow samples to be given to visitors.  The bill stipulates that a visitor would be allowed 1 sample of no more than 1/2 of an ounce per calendar day.

The City of Fort Oglethorpe passed a similar tastings ordinance for beer and wine sampling back in early January.  The ordinance would allow for tap beer or wine samples with a limit of no more than 3 one ounce samples per day.  There’s some consternation from one of the city councilmen, Johnnie “Red” Smith.  He’s saying that he was “set up” by his colleagues in the meeting where quorum was barely met with 3 council members present and Councilman Smith was elected to preside over the meeting where the ordinance was passed.

HB 514 has been assigned to the Regulated Industries committee in the House.  We’ll see if this goes anywhere and ruffles any feathers as Sunday Sales did during the last session.

One would figure that when you pay a state fee for a specified purpose, the total sum of the fees collected would go towards taking care of that specified purpose.  GPB has a good example in their story about a proposed bill concerning these fees:

In 2010, Georgians paid $6.3 million in scrap tire management fees. The $1 fee paid on every new tire is meant to defray the cost of landfill cleanups.

But lawmakers didn’t use any of it for landfill cleanups that year. Instead, they redirected the fees to other budget needs as state revenues declined. That’s because the state of Georgia often collects fees but uses them for a different purpose. And it’s not required by law to only use a fee for the stated collection purpose.

Ah, we’re talking about state government after all.  So, a state fee levied to help off-set the costs of landfill cleanups isn’t really being used for that, but rather to fund other parts of government?  Makes perfect, logical sense, right?

House Bill 811, written by Rep. Jay Powell (R-171st District), would change that practice by requiring the fees to be automatically reduced proportionally each year if the fees collected were not being used for the purpose specified:

Todd Edwards with the Association of County Commissioners of Georgia says it takes a less restrictive approach than past bills.

“It wouldn’t bind the legislators to put it in a fund that they couldn’t reach for other purposes. In fact, it doesn’t bind them in any way at all,” Edwards says. “It simply dictates that if you’re not spending the fees as they’re supposed to be spent, then the fees will be reduced proportionally from that point going forward.”

Initially, it will affect a handful of fees levied by the state, but legislators could add additional fees if the bill becomes law.

Today’s “fresh political pickins from the Peach State”:

1.) Coming off a bitter campaign, Governor Deal and former Governor Barnes have forged an unlikely alliance over a good cause: ensuring that spouses of state employees killed in the line of duty are able to continue health coverage under the state’s plan. To quote Barnes: “It’s the least we can do, really”.

I didn’t vote for Governor Barnes and I don’t regret that decision. But it’s good to see this kind of unity from Speaker, Governor and former Goveror when it comes to something like this, which is doing the right thing.  It also more than makes up for these shenanigans last week by Barnes. “What a crock”.

2.) HB 92, sponsored by Rep. Mark Hamilton, R-Cumming, would reduce the early voting period from 45 to 21 days. Read the full article here. Personally, I think this is very necessary. I’d even support cutting it down to 14 or 7 days, but 21 is a good number. Cost-wise, it guts rural counties to have this long of an early voting period:

An ACCG survey found that counties with less than 10,000 registered voters spent an average $78.31 per early vote in the 2010 primary election, and $11.79 in the general election, compared with $10.76 and $3.63 for counties with more than 100,000 registered voters.

Plus, ya’ll know us rural folks have had problems with voter fraud in the past. A long period of early voting allows more ballots to be mailed out to cemetaries everywhere.

3.) Attorney General Olens, Congressman Westmoreland and Governor Deal held a press conference yesterday in response to the ruling in Florida on the healthcare law.

4.) HB 100, introduced by Rep. Allen Peake of Macon, creates a new court in Georgia to exclusively deal with problems regarding the Department of Revenue.

5.) There are two bills in the House looking to place more scrutiny on projects that “rely on transferring water from one river basin to another”. This idea is currently being worked on by Rep. Tom McCall and Rep. Alan Powell.

6.) In other positive news (not), a new report says that Georgia is 7th among states in total illegal immigrant population.

The schedule for the remainder of this week shows the General Assembly in session tomorrow and Thursday, then breaking for Easter. Thursday is day 33, so there will be 7 days of G.A. fun remaining to solve all the state’s problems before these folks return home to face the voters.

Tomorrow, however, there are no scheduled votes in the Senate, as most Senators will leave the capitol and attend the funeral for former Senator Nancy Schaefer and her late husband Bruce.

This leaves one day of Senate business before the Easter break, and House members are watching the lack of movement of two bills with increasing anxiety.

HB 307 is the bill which raises taxes from hospitals. HB 1055 raises fees in many state areas. Both bills are a significant portion of the gap needed to balance the state budget.

The House is also responsible for submitting the budget to the Senate. And the apparent agreement when leadership of both houses and the Governor agreed to these tax & fee increases was that all were on board. To prepare and pass the budget, the House needs to know what revenue is expected.

Some fear that the Senate may be having difficulty swallowing these tax & fee increases, and are even speculating that Lt. Gov Cagle is backing off of the deal. One other also believes that last year’s version of the JOBS act will be attached to HB 307 when passed, as cover to Senator Lee Hawkins voted for last years bill, who has called the bill that passed the House 154-8 a sham.

Attaching a different version of the JOBS bill to HB 307 carries significant risk. Governor Perdue has reportedly laid down strict guidance that if HB 307 doesn’t come to his desk clean/as-is, he will veto it.

Which brings us back to the anxiety that is building in the House. They’ve already taken the vote to raise taxes. The Senate has essentially one day to resolve the issues above. If they do not, the House can’t use the Easter break to finalize their budget and pass it quickly upon return. House members are starting to fear that the session may drag beyond April’s qualifying. They are also starting to openly wonder if the Senate is about to stab them in the back.

It’s been much quieter this year without the public fights between the Speaker, Lt. Governor, and Governor. But that doesn’t mean the institutional friction isn’t there. We’ll know a lot more by Thursday evening if that quiet may hold.

Update: Travis Fain has his take on these issues here.

While the Missis is staring in GEICO ads the senator has a new website.

I like it. My only suggestion would be to to put the third column on the right as a footer under the other two columns so the site is not so wide in my browser.

Businesses are very unhappy with the Senate failing to pass a constitutional amendment to deal with transportation and Jerry Keen got lots of free meals from lobbyists.

“Being in leadership and being majority leader, there are a lot of folks that would like to talk to him,” said Chase Daughtrey, Keen’s deputy chief of staff.

Keen’s staff sets his dinner schedule with farm, energy, communications or other interests, which account for some of the meals. But since the majority leader’s office is responsible for feeding staffers, state troopers, doorkeepers and others, some of the meals go to those confined to the Capitol while the House is in session, Daughtrey said.

Their leadership acts like petulant children. Here’s Dick Pettys’s opening:

Ten days on, the bad reviews of the 2008 legislative session just keep on coming. Not only have they not abated, they’ve widened to encompass more targets.

The initial target, naturally enough, was Speaker Glenn Richardson. He should be used to it by now. It’s his session-ending zingers that get him in the day-after headlines and in the following day’s editorials. (In 2007, it was the one about the governor showing his backside. In 2008, it was his taunting of Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle to “stand up and be a man.”)

But the editorial targets have widened now to include Gov. Sonny Perdue and the lieutenant governor. Perdue, after six years at the helm, should be accustomed to some heat. But for Cagle, it’s a relatively new – and probably unexpected – experience.

While at least one newspaper has called for Richardson’s ouster, nobody other than Richardson has yet called for Cagle’s ouster.

At least the Lt. Governor actually rose above this whole mess for the most part and the Governor was kind enough to go to China, though rude enough to come back.

Senator Cecil Staton, writing in the Telegraph over the weekend, wrote, “The people of Georgia are owed an apology.” Personally, I think we ought to go the route of Texas and only allow them to meet every other year.

House Regulated Industries committee attaches retail Sunday Sales to the Gwinnett Braves Sunday Sales:

State Sen. Renee Unterman (R-Buford), the author of the Gwinnett stadium bill, urged the committee not to tack the Sunday sales measure onto her legislation. Unterman said Gov. Sonny Perdue has told her he would veto any legislation that would allow for local communities to vote on Sunday alcohol sales….
However, Rep. Allen Freeman (R-Macon), a member of the House committee, said Unterman was being hypocritical by urging lawmakers to approve Sunday beer sales at the Gwinnett stadium but opposing Sunday sales at grocery and convenience stores across the state.

I’m not keen on $15M of my tax dollars going to support a stupid baseball stadium, so the way I see it, either way the Governor goes I win.

This sounds like a fine plan to me.

It’s sponsored by Nancy Schaefer, John Douglas, Robert Brown, and others. Basically, it requires immediacy in an emergency for DFACS to take a child from a home, only allows them to keep the child for 72 hours (as opposed to the present 7 days) without a court order, and requires that DFACS first try to find appropriate family members to place a child with instead of immediately opting for foster care.

Also notable, the law would be changed to make sure a child can be removed from a home if a parent has murdered the other parent, not just waiting for a conviction of that murder.

Interestingly though, the law gets rid of a provision allowing DFACS to remove a child if the parent has had his/her rights to another child involuntarily terminated. That sounds like a perplexing change at first, but come to think of it, I know situations where this would have been a good thing.

A friend of mine sent me this video, I put up on YouTube for your viewing enjoyment.

This one…I made. My first shot at making a video.

If Cagle fails to deliver on this tax break, I imagine the first campaign videos in 2010 looking something like this (well, they’ll be, you know…good).

The Senate does not like them.

The Georgia Senate on Thursday booted the lone environmentalist from the state board charged with protecting natural resources.

“It’s one heck of an Earth Day present,” said Sally Bethea, the executive director of the Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper who — until now — was the strongest pro-environment voice on the state’s 18-member Board of Natural Resources.

Senate Majority Leader Tommie Williams said it was because Ms. Bethea is a registered lobbyist for Riverkeepers, which presents a conflict of interest. Ms. Bethea says she’s been one the whole time she’s been on the board. Nonetheless, I think it was a good call because she is a lobbyist for an organization with interests before the board.

However, I’d also note that now there are zero people on the board who are strong environmentalists. And while I’m not one, I think the Board really ought to have one to make sure the business guys aren’t missing something important.

All in response to PeachCare.

I’m no fan of tax increases and I’m not a particular fan of the 3.5% surcharge imposed on rental cars that the Senate passed last night. But, given the options, it appears to have been the best option available.

This issue has been around for a while. The state has a legitimate need to fund trauma care. The state was going to go after super speeders with fines, but realized that the majority of people who are super speeders are also the people who are least likely to have the funds to pay. So they’d come up short.

At the end of the day, there were two options — a 3.5% surcharge on rental cars, which will largely affect people coming into Georgia to visit, or H.B. 747, sponsored by John Lunsford and Carl Rogers.

This bill would have added a 20¢ surcharge to all land line phones in Georgia. Bell South was okay with this — probably knowing that more and more people are headed to cell phones and VOIP anyway and those who don’t would be equally stuck. So that appears to be the conundrum facing the Senate last night — either raise taxes on all Georgians with landline phones (still the large majority of citizens) or raise taxes only on those who rent cars.

In reality the state could have done more. It could have allocated the surplus, gutted Sonny’s fish deal and land conservation deal, etc. But everyone passed the buck it seems and the legislators were, at the end of the day, faced with a problem that really needed fixing and two not so good options. They chose the better of two.

So, some folks, including me, can say the Senate voted to raise taxes last night. In reality, it was a vote that most of the GOP voted against. It was also much better than the House’s 20¢ idea.

As a blogger, I am loving the fighting going on between the Senate and the House. It makes for great blog posts. Today, Travis Fain again provides a balanced, solid look at the fight over Peach Care. The House and Senate have resumed their pee fest on each other over the various plans.

The Senate’s changes are more complicated, and Richardson said they’ll cost Georgia taxpayers more than the current program.

“Now, apparently they’re going to be liberals,” he said of Senate Republicans. “(PeachCare) was out of money. We’re still out of money. And yet the Senate’s response is they’re going to expand benefits.”

On that, Cagle disagreed. “Our proposal costs the state less money than any other plan that’s out there,” he said. “And that includes the speaker’s.”

I frankly haven’t paid enough attention to know which is the better choice, though I do know that watching all of this is a hellavalot of fun!

Political Insider has the details. In short, Wendell Willard thought he had a deal. Rich Golick thought so too and didn’t like whatever it might have been.

So, when last the GOP met, the Democrats were threatening to attack them over SB 43 by highlighting an employee who went on to him employer’s property and shot a co-worker. The GOP decided to back down on SB 43 and the genius NRA lobbyists then decided to try to co-opt the very Democrats who were threatening to brow beat the GOP.

Fast forward to today and we get word that the NRA is trying to attach SB 43 as an amendment to other legislation — not that its germane or anything to anything it’d be attached to. They are trying to scare the legislators with stories of employees fired for bringing guns to work, using a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision that (A) will probably get reversed by the SCOTUS and (B) does not apply to any states outside the 9th Circuit.

Of course, that brings us to this sad story. A man brought a gun to the CNN Center and killed a lady earlier today. Apparently it was a “domestic situation.” Will the Democrats use this to club the GOP, or will the NRA be able to bribe enough of them to get an amendment through?

Gun rights vs. property right. The NRA sure knows how to pick a fight between friends.

I don’t think it is that odd.

One of the quirkiest bills filed this year passed the Senate with no opposition late Tuesday evening.

The original version of Senate Bill 191 would have barred the state from naming anything in honor of Senate Minority Leader Robert Brown (D-Macon), who introduced the legislation. Brown said serving his constituents is enough of an honor.

By the way, I hear Robert Brown might just decide to not run for Mayor of Macon because a group of black leaders in Macon voted on who they’d support and less than half said they’d support Robert Brown. This group, called the Cotton Street Mafia, is composed of many of the black leaders in Macon and controls black politics in Macon.

I feel sorry for them. Maybe we should all chip in and send them up some pizza and beer.

Sunday alcohol sales won’t be taken up at the Capitol today, and neither will the governor’s senior citizens tax break. But a laundry list of other issues, from the controversial to the mundane, will be discussed as both the Georgia House and Senate convene for lengthy Crossover Day sessions.

The House is set to debate changes to the state’s PeachCare insurance program for children, which would cut costs by making some families ineligible for the program. Numerous other issues, including hospital regulation reforms, changes to annexation laws and new life for the pay day lending industry, could be added to the House debate calendar this morning.

The Senate is scheduled to churn through a series of hotly debated issues, including employees’ rights to bring their guns to work, community improvement districts and the Senate’s own set of new annexation rules.

Let’s make no bones about, that’s what’s about to happen. The Georgia Legislature is about to enable female genitalia to go killing. My word choice may be offensive to some, but this law should really be offensive to those of you who actually hunt and care about such things.

I mean, you must be a female genital if you feel the need to put food out to attract deer and stand near by to kill it. You must be that certain body part if you aren’t man enough to actually go out and hunt and feel the need to get straight to the killing — either that or you are one lazy SOB.

I realize Rep. Maddox has some good talking points on allowing hunters killers to bait animals and gun them down, but let’s skip all the Georgia Hunting and Fishing Federation inspired talking points and get straight to the nut of this bill:

If you favor this law, you favor arming female genitalia because real hunters hunt.