The circumstances this year are unprecedented, but the General Assembly has been slouching in this direction for some time. There was a precursor a couple of years ago, when the legislature marked time until late April waiting for Congress to reauthorize the State Children's Health Insurance Program.

What the decision by House and Senate leaders last week amounts to is an admission – one Gov. Sonny Perdue declined to make in his message to the legislature last month – that a state which can't afford to fix the water fountains in its state Supreme Court building can only hope for a break from Washington to bridge its budget gap. There's still a lot of rhetoric left over from the New Federalism movement of the early '90s, but not a lot of gas.

You'll hear it said that much of the money being dispensed in the recovery package Congress is debating can't be applied directly to Georgia's budget problems, and that's true. It's also true that even as the Republicans in Atlanta were announcing the break, Republicans in the US Senate were successfully paring down the very parts of the package that would help the state most directly.

But until the state has a better handle on what's going to happen in Washington, there's little point in trying to make decisions that will have ramifications several years out.

"Ever read that book, Waiting for Sheetrock?" a Republican legislator with considerable influence in the budgetary process said Monday. "I told somebody the other day, that's where we're at. Waiting for a bailout."

He was a little off on the title of Melissa Fay Greene's book about the poor of McIntosh County, Praying for Sheetrock, but right on point about the reality of the situation the legislature faces. The options are so bad – and they got even worse with the latest revenue report – that putting them off has some virtue in itself.

There's one group which is going to feel considerable budgetary relief from the stretchout, no matter what happens in Washington.

"I call this the Lobbyists' Fundraising Relief Act," a beneficiary of this unexpected break said Monday.

Lobbyists tell tales about how stuffed their mailboxes get in the weeks after a session, when the fundraising letters from every elected official, candidate for office, caucus and cause come rolling in. Because state law prohibits any state elected officials from fundraising before this session ends, the long break will give them a three-month holiday. (This, by the way, is also reason to suspect that if there's an early resolution of matters in Washington. the legislators might change their minds by March 25, when they're supposed to break, and move on to end the session.)

One danger in the stretchout is that it arranges time in a perfect way for a lot of mischief to be done.

The five days allotted for the end of June won't be like a special session, in which the subjects that can be dealt with are limited by the governor's call. Any sleeper bill which has made it through either the House or Senate by March 12, this year's crossover day, has a chance of popping back up in the final, frantic hours.

That means the (dwindling) corps of legislative watchdogs will have an even harder job. But if that keeps checks out of the hands of politicians for three months, it's a reasonable tradeoff.

Tom Baxter is editor of the Southern Political Report and senior vice president of its parent company, InsiderAdvantage, a media and polling firm. He was the chief political correspondent at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution for 20 years.   [full bio]

Editor's note: Hello, Georgia! You've likely heard by now that the Georgia Assembly is planning on splitting the current session. Georgia Online News Service (GONSO) political editor Tom Baxter explains some of the issues behind the split session in today's lead story.

Meanwhile, GONSO reporter Maggie Lee looks at a bill that would grant immunity from lawsuits to Big Pharmaceutical companies whose drugs are approved by the Food and Drug Administration but later turn out to have harmful and lethal side effects.

And, for today's Soapbox, Alan Essig and Sarah Beth Gehl of the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute have a suggestion for legislators during the budget crisis: Stop giving sweet tax breaks to special interest groups.

As always, we'd like to hear from you. Send your comments and any story ideas to executive editor John Sugg at john.sugg@georgiaonlinenews.org. You can also call us at 800-891-3459.

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SOAPBOX

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