Day 30 - Crossover Madness 2: What's Austin Scott up to?

HB 225: This bill would require a person to be a Georgia resident in order to register voters in Georgia. That's right, it would be illegal for someone to come here as a volunteer to register voters. It's most likely a response to Obama's success using voter registration teams. The bill had been tabled in committee, giving us a brief sigh of relief. Then Monday we had heard it might be added as an amendment on the floor, and people were running all over to get the opposition together. The rumor that the bill would be resurrected was only half true. It turned out that the attempt to resurrect was not on the floor but in committee. Governmental Affairs Committee Chair, Rep. Austin Scott (R), briefly had HB 225 on his agenda, but when questioned about why the tabled bill was coming back up, he removed it from the agenda. That was Monday.

So what happened yesterday...when the legislature wasn't even in session? Chairman Scott (also an announced candidate for Governor) held a committee meeting and started talking about the bill. He did not follow procedure and post a notice about the meeting on the House notice board. The meeting was at 11:00; we happened to notice at 11:30 that it was posted on the small board outside his office.

In the committee, he didn't even discuss taking it back off the table. He just started talking about it again. Both Republican and Democratic Committee members were clearly not much interested in passing the bill. Scott just said we're going to pass this bill.

Things are hard enough to accomplish when the rules are stacked against you...but ignoring the rules makes things impossible. This is what gives politicians a bad name. And the public a cynical view of government.

Rep. Alisha Thomas-Morgan (D) filed a Minority Report, a procedure which will give her 20 minutes to speak on the floor about her and fellow committee members' objections to the bill. In addition, she challenged the rules violations that occurred when the bill was not voted off the table and when the meeting notice was not properly given.

We're curious to see if Rep. Scott wants that discussion to happen on the House floor.

Technically the bill does not qualify for the regular 30th day calendar, because even with the shenanigans, it came out of committee a day too late. But it could come up again if the House calls a supplemental Rules Committee meeting to add more bills to today's calendar to try to get it through by the end of the day. We expect at least one of these meetings later today on the House side. Stay tuned.