MOULTRIE — A newcomer to the Georgia Legislature told the Moultrie Rotary Club about his experiences at the club’s meeting Tuesday.
State Rep. Jay Powell, R-Camilla, said it has been a pleasure to serve Colquitt and Mitchell counties as their representative for the last nine months. His first sessions in the Georgia Legislature, however, have been very different for the freshman legislator than what he expected when he was elected in November.
“It’s different than what you would find in the civics books,” Powell said.
With about 1,100 bills dropped in both the state House and state Senate, Powell said he learned a bill in the house will not reach the floor until it is read twice. Following the second reading, the bill will then be assigned to a committee then to a subcommittee for a hearing and debate. Most of the bills will take a few days to be read and assigned before they are heard by the subcommittees.
Powell said it wasn’t until the second week of the session that the house began voting on bills. That was because nothing could be done until the Speaker of the House was elected, and he then made office assignments and appointed committee and subcommittee members to debate on bills brought before the floor.
“As a practical matter,” Powell said, “there was really nothing to do until the committee appointments.”
Powell said the House could spend the entire 40-day session doing nothing but voting on and passing bills. To ensure the process is completed to make a bill a law, however, the General Assembly has a Crossover Day on the 30th session day. The day was created so that the House and Senate would act only on bills that have passed the other house.
“If a bill doesn’t pass both houses,” Powell said, “it does not become a law.”
The House went through several Senate bills but only considered a few of them before the session concluded, Powell said. The final day of the session, however, the House heard about 100 bills and worked to pass some of them to turn over to Gov. Sonny Perdue to sign into law. If a bill was not passed by both houses by 12:01 a.m. on the final day of the session, it was returned to the General Assembly to act upon on the next session.
Powell said he expects the state to continue to see financial problems into the next year because of state revenue downfalls. Georgia has really struggled with finances and may see programs cut or eliminated to ensure necessary programs are able to stay in place.
“We have not yet turned a corner,” Powell said. “I don’t anticipate a whole lot different next year.”
Powell said the state cannot continue to do things it has always done and expect different results. It will take something different and unfamiliar in order to get Georgia back to where it needs to be financially. He used an example of his daughter driving a route she know, despite being lost when she first drove it, because she was familiar with it.
“We do a lot of things we know are wrong but we continue to do them because that’s the way we’ve always done it,” Powell said. “If we’re going to make this state more responsible, we’re going to have to try something new.”
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State of Georgia Representative Jay Powell, far left, speaks with Moultrie Rotary Club members Mike McLean, second from right, and James Benefield Tuesday. Powell spoke to the service club about his experiences being a first-time legislator. John Oxford
Discussion
Rep. Powell discusses his first year in House
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