The annual rite of spring at the General Assembly typically quickens after the sun goes down on the 40th and final day of the session.
A committee chairman jumps to attention at the front of the House or Senate to explain a piece of legislation that has been on lawmakers’ desks for 45 seconds or maybe hasn’t gotten there yet:
“This is a bill to designate the South Georgia gnat as the official Annoying Pest of Georgia. That’s been stripped out and now it contains House Bill 1182, Senate Bill 672, Senate Bill 72 and HR 129. It’s a good bill to hep’ rural Georgia, and I ask for your favorable support.”
The exhausted knowing shake their heads in support, ready to push the green “yes” button. The exhausted unknowing furrow their brows and ask, “Huh? What are we voting on?”
It is repeated, with some variation, until midnight or so.
Thursday is that day.
Capitol veterans know the drill. The 40th day has gone that way for decades, one of the few legislative traditions largely untouched by the technological revolution.
“They are all just alike: the tone, the frenzy and the mania,” said Neill Herring, longtime lobbyist for the Sierra Club, who spends much of each session drawing up amendments to “fix” legislation.
One Capitol regular once described the 40th and final day of the session as being like “passing a kidney stone,” one that has been getting bigger and more painful for three months.
The work on Thursday will start early and go late, the chaotic crescendo to a lawmaking session that started in January and ends when the speaker of the House and the Senate president bang the gavel one last time for the year and yell, “Sine Die.”
It’s the day when “Frankenbills” and “Christmas trees” — several bills added to one bill — become commonplace, and when the percentage of legislators thoroughly reading bills falls. When explanations of what a particular piece of legislation does get shorter as the end gets nearer.
It’s a time to lean over the fourth-floor gallery railing to stop the clock, it’s a time to attach a special-interest tax break that nobody’s ever heard of to a bill that nobody could possibly vote against, and it’s a time to kill “good bills” and pass questionable ones that, sometime around mid-April, may lead lawmakers to ask: “What did we do again?”
It’s the day at the Capitol when, as former state lawmaker and now DeKalb County CEO Michael Thurmond said, “Anything can and often does happen.”
Slow start, fast finish
The General Assembly convenes every year on the second Monday of January. It has 40 working days (weekends are generally not included) to finish its work, then go home. The 40 working days are typically spread out over three months.
Little in the way of actual lawmaking typically occurs early on, although a few bills win final passage along the way.
Lawmakers go into session at 10 a.m. each day, listen to the sermon of the day, pray, pledge allegiance to the flag, greet the “doctor of the day” and hear what’s typically a one-sentence caption of bills that were filed the previous day. They might welcome a visiting dignitary or honor a high school football team or a sorority. Then, maybe they allow a lobbyist to buy them lunch or they visit one of the Capitol Hill cafeterias. Afternoons they go to committee meetings to work on legislation. And maybe another lobbyist then buys them dinner. Or they go home or to work if they live in Atlanta.
Credit: TNS
Credit: TNS
The majority of bills that win final passage do so in the last few days of the session. The practiced procrastination is, in legislative parlance, called “perfecting” legislation. Sometimes bills may need a lot of work. But the system also builds pressure as the end of the session nears. And it means lawmakers vote dozens of times on the 40th day, sometimes more than once on the same bill.
No bill, good or bad, is ever truly dead legislatively until the end of the 40th day of a session. Legislation can look buried, even cremated and scattered to the winds for 39 days and 12 hours, and be resurrected at the last minute.
“No pun intended, but we’re trying to resurrect the coroners pay raise bill,” Wayne Garner, a former longtime lawmaker turned lobbyist, said Tuesday as he worked the halls.
On the last day “conference committees” of House and Senate members negotiate final deals on legislation. The deal is then brought to the General Assembly for an up or down vote.
This year lawmakers head into the final day without a state budget for the coming year and battling over a range of issues, including how to slow the rise of property tax assessments, whether to ban sex education before sixth grade and what should be the future of mining near the Okefenokee Swamp.
The last day is a long slog filled with meals on the fly and Type A personalities trying to stay awake and pay attention. –
Credit: robert.andres@ajc.com
Credit: robert.andres@ajc.com
Last-minute surprises
But the unexpected often happens.
The most famous example occurred in 1964, when state Rep. Denmark Groover of Macon, a brilliant lawyer and onetime Marine fighter pilot, dangled above the House chamber, trying to keep the clock from running out on a legislative session. He didn’t fall, but the clock did.
In 1992, the General Assembly approved a bill at the last minute that included an amendment pushed by the doctors’ lobby that was written so poorly that it made it a felony for nurses to give injections and for diabetics to give themselves shots.
With two hours left in the 2012 session, the Senate overwhelmingly approved a bill shielding the identities of people applying for hunting and fishing licenses.
What the sponsor didn’t mention was it also sealed the records of some ethics cases filed against politicians. After an Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter found out and posted it on social media, good-government lobbyists, bloggers and a few House members picked up on it. The House killed it.
In 2022, well into the night, House Republicans amended a bill dealing with the teaching of divisive concepts in schools to include a provision that allowed any athletic association to ban transgender girls from competing on girls teams and sent it across to the Senate. Shortly after midnight (sometimes the word “day” is stretched to include the hour after midnight) Senate leaders called on the chamber to agree to the changes made — before lawmakers had a chance to read the amended legislation.
It passed on a party-line vote, with Republicans supporting it and Democrats opposing it.
The end of a session can be held up because a top lawmaker wants to pass a signature piece of legislation or a well-connected lobbyist needs to get a bill through for a client.
Such maneuvers aren’t uncommon as the clock ticks down on the final day.
Statehouse veterans have strategies to keep on top of things as much as possible.
Rep. Marcus Wiedower, R-Watkinsville, told the “Politically Georgia” podcast he searches out “subject matter experts” in the Legislature to answer his questions about bills. The General Assembly is a part-time gig, and most members have some kind of professional expertise.
“It’s not possible to read every ‘agree and disagree’ (on a bill) we take up on Day 40,” Wiedower said.
Rep. Stacey Evans, D-Atlanta, said comfortable shoes are important.
“I don’t want to be tripping or in pain. I may be in pain because of some of the legislation I have to deal with, but I don’t want it to be because my feet are hurting,” she said.
She, too, looks to experts in various fields in the Legislature for help. But Evans is also prepared when she’s unsure as bills and conference committee reports are flying around near midnight.
“When in doubt, it is a lot easier to justify a ‘no’ vote than a ‘yes’ vote on something that turns out to be disastrous,” Evans said. “So if I am in doubt, if I have not had a chance to read it, if I have not been able to find my subject matter expert on the floor, I am most likely going to vote no unless I can find a sponsor and I trust that person to tell me what is in or what is not in (the bill).”
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