Georgia lawmakers screw the everyman in ’09
Wednesday, April 8th, 2009“This place is for sale,” muttered the disgusted Democratic state representative a few minutes after one of the strangest episodes in recent Gold Dome history.
The lawmaker had walked out of the House chamber last Wednesday following a much-watched vote on Gov. Sonny Perdue’s pet bill to snatch road-building authority away from the state Department of Transportation — a vote that Speaker Glenn Richardson held open for nearly five breathless minutes while his henchmen worked the room to persuade a handful of pliable pols to switch their votes.
When Richardson, whose podium houses a private voting scoreboard, saw that enough legislators had flip-flopped, he called for voting machines to be locked and cast the deciding vote himself to pass the hot-potato measure to the Senate.
No one said sausage-making is pretty. But in addition to looking ugly and smelling worse, much of the sausage produced of late by Georgia lawmakers is chock-full of legislative salmonella.
