| |
Georgia transportation plan bogging down again?
By Gary Reese
March 10, 2010 — Gov. Sonny Perdue’s proposal for transportation funding is running into serious issues in the House Transportation Committee, where the proposal was debated again this week. A subcommittee on Monday passed its own version of the bill (HB 1218) on to the full committee. But it’s a version that Perdue’s floor leader, Jim Cole (R-Forsyth), said the governor would veto. Moreover, Legislative Counsel Rick Ruskell told the committee Tuesday it wasn’t entirely clear the governor’s proposal was constitutional. Perdue’s proposal would divide the state up into 12 regions. Each region, working with the state, would draw up a project list and submit the list to the region’s voters for their approval, along with a proposal for a one-cent sales tax to fund the projects. If a region passed its tax, the money would be spent only in one region. However, the House’s new version would allow a region to decline to hold a referendum, if its leaders don’t come to agreement on a project list. That amounts to opting out of the vote, Cole said, and Perdue can’t accept that. --Calling Oklahoma a "hot” state for the Republican Party, RNC Chairman Michael Steele visited Oklahoma City this week to unveil a new television fundraising campaign that began airing Monday in five national markets, including Oklahoma City and Tulsa. Seeking to tap into anti-big-government sentiment, the commercial features Steele saying things like, "Today our freedom is threatened. Presidenk Obama and Nancy Pelosi are experimenting with America — massive government expansion, government takeovers, redistribution of wealth and staggering debt to countries like China and the Middle East. It’s wrong. We can’t afford it.” --A federal judge has shot down efforts by CITGO Petroleum to limit the fines and special conditions it could face in a federal Clean Water Act lawsuit over a June 2006 oil spill at the company's Lake Charles, La., refinery. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Richard Haik comes in a lawsuit filed against CITGO by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the state Department of Environmental Quality seeking damages for a spill that leaked an estimated 53,000 barrels of oil into the Calcasieu River and other nearby waterways. In the ruling, Haik also found that CITGO violated the Clean Water Act in the 2006 incident, but left open until trial the question of how much the company should pay in civil fines. --Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who says there’s nothing in Virginia law to protect gay state workers from discrimination, is welcoming Gov. Bob McDonnell’s decree against bias on the basis of sexual orientation. However, it’s not clear from a written statement just issued by Cuccinelli whether he backs the governor’s legal thinking in issuing a so-called executive directive protecting gay employees. |
|
|
