A day in the life of a lawmaker

Published 11:26 pm Saturday, February 24, 2007

ATLANTA — The Georgia House of Representatives came to order at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, as it generally has during this year’s session. But order may not be the first word to spring to mind for a first-time observer.

The first part of the day is taken up with points of personal privilege. Representatives come to the front to recognize people from their districts, many of whom are sitting in the galleries surrounding the House floor.

When the session opens, those galleries are full. But by around noon, the crowds will have thinned out considerably.

But even as the designated speakers speak, lawmakers walk around the room, stopping at the desks of colleagues to talk. Twice during the hours to come, the speaker will bang a gavel to quiet the murmur of those discussions when they grow too loud.

Rep. Roger Williams, R-Dalton, says the discussions focus mainly on bills that aren’t on the agenda that day.

“Someone may have a bill in your committee, and they want to know what’s happening to it. Or there may be a bill you are interested in but don’t know that much about, so you ask one of the members of the committee handling it about the details,” Williams said.

Williams allowed The Daily Citizen to follow and observe him on Wednesday, a day he described as pretty typical for the current session so far.

About an hour after the House opens, the first resolutions for the day are brought forth. With no debate, House members overwhelmingly approve measures to name parts of local highways for Bulloch County physician Charles Emory Bohler and the late Georgia Southern University football coach Erk Russell.

House members also approve bills to license owners of personal care homes, to refine the definition of the term “exploitation” in laws against elder abuse and to adjust some language in some Department of Transportation contract procedures. All pass with little debate and few, if any, dissenting votes.

Around noon comes the first controversial bill of the day, House Bill 318, a measure to allow state pension funds to invest up to 20 percent of their assets in foreign companies. Those funds can currently invest up to 10 percent in foreign firms.

Supporters of the bill, such as Rep. Tom Benton, R-Jefferson, say it will allow pension fund managers to invest where they can get the biggest return for retired state employees and teachers.

Opponents express concern about the risk of those foreign investments and a desire to invest the money in Georgia.

After about 45 minutes of debate, the House approves an amendment to the bill that would prohibit the funds from investing in companies linked by the federal government to terrorism.

Then the speaker calls for a vote on the main bill. Bells clang as members push buttons on their desks, registering their votes, and a large electronic sign displays each member’s name and how he or she votes.

The bill gets 87 “yes” votes compared to 81 “no” votes. But it fails to pass because it required a constitutional majority — a majority of the House plus at least one more vote — of at least 92 votes.

After that vote, the House adjourns at around 12:47. But for the next 10 minutes, representatives take to the floor to announce various committee and caucus meetings.

Finally, around 1 p.m., members begin to file out of the chamber.

The hallways seem to be constantly roamed by a wolf pack of lobbyists looking to cull out lawmakers who can make a difference on the bills important them. Williams ducks and dodges them but stops to talk for a few seconds with a couple of security guards, then crosses the street to the Coverdell Legislative Office Building, named after the late Georgia U.S. Sen. Paul Coverdell, for lunch.

As he waits for the elevator, Williams strikes up a conversation with Rep. Brooks Coleman, R-Duluth.

“How’d you vote on that (pension) bill?” Coleman asks.

“I voted against it,” Williams replied.

“That’s a good bill. That’s a good bill,” said Coleman, chairman of the House Education Committee.

“Well, I think if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” Williams said.

At lunch, Williams said his day had begun at 6 a.m. After exercising and eating breakfast, he went to his office to check his schedule for the day, answer phone messages and e-mails, and to meet with visiting constituents.

After the quick lunch, Williams returns to his office and again checks his schedule with assistant Judy Kind. He’ll be in hearings with several different committees until the early evening. In fact, just a few minutes after getting back to his office, Williams is summoned downstairs to an Appropriations Committee hearing on general government affairs.

The call comes as a surprise to Williams, who didn’t have the hearing on his schedule.

“They must need help getting a quorum,” he said.

Sure enough, that was the case. There are only a couple of lawmakers there, and just a handful of people in the audience. Most are wearing name tags showing they are members of various government agencies.

As its name implies, this committee helps shape the budget, and committee members grill representatives of the governor’s office and the Department of Revenue on their 2007 budget requests. Committee members seem especially interested in various cost-saving measures the department claims to have implemented.

“Under the New Georgia initiative, these departments are allowed to roll over savings into their next year’s budget. The problem is that it’s not really saving taxpayers money. We’re trying to find out where that money has gone,” Williams later explained.

After about an hour, the committee still has plenty of work left on its agenda. But Williams has yet another hearing he’s supposed to take part in, back across the street in the Capitol building. So he quietly leaves.

Williams enters the Capitol and once again forces his way through the lobbyists.

But when he arrives, at his meeting room he finds it occupied with yet another committee holding hearings.

Slowly, the small anteroom outside the hearing room fills with several other members of the Ways and Means Committee, as well as numerous staff members and lobbyists. They stand around talking, seemingly not too concerned that their meeting room is still occupied.

Williams says this is a fairly frequent event.

“Once these hearings get going, you really have little control over how long they last,” he said.

Finally, about 30 minutes after the hearing was supposed to begin, people begin filing out of the meeting room, and lawmakers go in to start the next set of hearings.

This room is smaller than the first, but more crowded. The committee members sit around a small table. There’s no lectern for the speakers to stand at, so they just walk right up to the table, which is only a couple of steps away for most of the audience.

These hearings will address several sales issues, including a bill that would allow cities to adopt a 1 percent sales tax for up to five years to fund some capital projects. Cities would still be eligible for a share of the county Local Option Sales Tax (LOST).

Typically, the lawmaker who authored the bill speaks first, outlining why he thinks the measure is important. Then, others who want to voice an opinion on the measure are called.

More than 400 bills have been introduced in this session, so all over the Capitol, hearings such as this are going on.

Wednesday was day 24 of the 40-day session, and Williams said it was a fairly normal day so far. But he said the pace of business will pick up around day 30. By custom, that is “Crossover Day,” the last day for the House and Senate to pass legislation and send it to the other chamber.