Monday, January 14, 2013

Day 1: Dawn of the Session and Ethics Press Conference



Day 1: First Day of the Georgia Legislation Session 2013, press conference on ethics by Georgia Alliance for Ethics Reform with Senator Josh McKoon (R-Columbus)

So today Monday 01/14/2013 was the first day of the legislative session for the State Legislation of Georgia. The idea of these posts is to give a short and sweet (hopefully) summary of each day of the GA legislation. As you might know, I am interning covering a great variety of issues, focusing primarily in immigration, but going through abortion, poverty, LGBT rights, education, health, etc. 

So today was the first day of the session, (first day of 40 legislative days, and typically we have 4 or 3 legislative days per calendar week). By the time I left, today was mainly for housekeeping, and setting the rules for the Senate.  The relevant issue for this first day was a debate related to ethics, which included a press conference hosted by the Georgia Alliance for Ethics Reform, in which State Senator Josh McKoon (R-Columbus) confirmed his interest on introducing a bill that would limit the gifts lobbyists give to legislators to a maximum value of $100. Among the reasons for this, William Perry, Executive Director of Common Cause Georgia, mentioned a trip to Europe of the Speaker of the House David Ralston worth $17000 paid by a lobbyist.

I can probably keep going, but better to stop here, and save the long posts for the later days. More coming soon enough I am sure.

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