Once, midnight was revered as the hard-and-fast deadline for the final day of Georgia’s legislative session.
As the proceedings on Thursday – er, Friday – proved, that’s not the case anymore. With a number of bills still on the agenda, lawmakers inched past midnight to buy more time to pass proposals.
Not long ago, that would have seemed impossible. Sponsors would rush to pass bills before the stroke of midnight and opponents would filibuster. Once, a lawmaker almost broke his neck trying to stop the clock. Many a headline described a “race to midnight.”
That began to change in 2015. When the clock struck midnight in the House, lawmakers and their families and friends celebrated the adjournment by filling the room with scraps of confetti-like paper.
But then-Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle kept the state Senate in session, where lawmakers passed a range of tax breaks that included incentives for Mercedes-Benz’s headquarters and a private Baptist college.
“For time eternal, this day has ended at midnight,” then-House Speaker David Ralston said at the time. “It is going to end at midnight today in the House even though I understand the other chamber may stay later.”
Our friends over at Politifact weighed in then with the ruling that lawmakers are free to press beyond midnight. “Lawmakers meet for 40 legislative days,” read the conclusion, “which end only when the chambers adjourn.”
It looks like lawmakers have happily heeded their advice. An Atlanta Journal-Constitution analysis of 20 years of voting data found the latest lawmakers have stayed is 12:47 a.m.
That happened in 2017 for a contentious vote to pass Senate Bill 130, a rewrite of Georgia’s adoption law to include legal protection for child placement agencies that don’t offer services to gay parents. Last year, the session finished at 12:15 a.m.
As the clock struck midnight on Thursday, House Speaker Jon Burns quipped that “we may be on Mountain Time.” Lt. Gov. Burt Jones noted lawmakers have “gone past midnight on previous years before, so we’re not doing things that are new.”
Plenty, too, happens after midnight. In 2016, almost 20 votes were cast after midnight, setting a record for the Legislature. The years 2017 and 2022 held the second-highest number of late night votes with more than 10 votes each after midnight.
Staff Writer Phoebe Quinton contributed to this report.
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