ATLANTA – Legislation allowing Savannah bars to sell alcohol on Sunday afternoons that fall in a St. Patrick’s Day weekend is awaiting Gov. Nathan Deal’s signature after the House passed it 147-7 this morning.
Deal doesn’t normally comment on legislation he didn’t propose, and so his office hasn’t said if or when he might sign it. The Chatham County delegation is sending him a letter and requesting a meeting with him today to plead for quick action.
What passed was Senate Bill 318 by Sen. Lester Jackson, D-Savannah. The House of Representatives had passed the identical bill in January sponsored by Rep. Ron Stephens, R-Savannah. A Senate committee approved it, and it has been awaiting action by the Senate Rules Committee for a month.
The legislation permits bars to sell alcohol during the St. Patrick’s Day weekend, something restaurants in Savannah can already do.
Members of the City Council had requested it as a way to be fair to bar owners and to address public demand for libations during the area’s largest tourist event.
Chatham delegation offers local legislation
At nearly the last moment possible, the Chatham County delegation to the General Assembly passed one bill Monday, introduced four others, postponed one until next year and was expected to introduce its final bill yesterday.
Passed is a bill to allow Savannah bars to join the city’s restaurants in selling alcoholic beverages on Sunday afternoons that fall in a St. Patrick’s Day weekend. That measure was introduced in January but only cleared the final legislative hurdle Monday morning.
Gov. Nathan Deal’s office has said he will sign it but didn’t say when or whether it will be in time for this year’s celebration.
Postponed is a proposal to redraw the Savannah city limits so that Hutchinson Island is no longer included. The delegation’s chairman, Rep. Ron Stephens, R-Savannah, said the city has had ample time to provide fire and police protection for the developments there.
Last week, Mayor Edna Jackson met with the delegation and announced that the city was searching for a site to build a combined police and fire station on the Island. But Stephens said Monday that, with all but one of the delegation members effectively re-elected, they’ll be ready to introduce the bill in 2015 if progress isn’t evident.
“We’re going to hold the Savannah’s feet to the fire unless, after 17 years, they can get us police and fire over there,” he said.
The de-annexation movement is growing, according to Sen. Lester Jackson, D-Savannah. He said after news reports about the possibility of removing Hutchinson Island from the city, the president of the Bacon Park neighborhood association said her 900 residents also want to secede from the city.
Three of the newly introduced bills have to do with the Chatham Area Transit system. One each would set up a non-binding referendum in Pooler and in Port Wentworth to gauge support for extending bus lines.
“We want to look at (public) transportation as a way to move working people to and from work, from downtown Savannah to the warehouses of Port Wentworth or to job opportunities as far as Tybee Island,” Jackson said, noting mass transit is affordable and environmentally healthy.
Separate legislation will repeal the mechanism in current law letting the county’s individual cities opt out of the CAT system. The bill will also expand the CAT board to include representatives of areas that are added.
To pay for extending the system, CAT’s board intends to ask the County Commission to create special tax districts along the corridors of new bus lines, primarily targeting commercial property owners. It plans to map out those districts before the referenda so voters will know if they’ll be subject to a tax increase.
In addition to the three CAT bills, the delegation introduced legislation merging the county’s elections board with the voter-registration board. Sen. Buddy Carter, R-Pooler, introduced the bill because he said Chatham is the only Georgia county that separates those functions between two boards.
He said he hoped to get the impressions of the Elections Board after its meeting Monday afternoon.
“There’s still time to perfect it, and I want their input. I want them to be comfortable with it,” he said. “I think everybody is philosophically on board with it. There are some little tweaks everybody wants to make.”
Set to have been introduced Tuesday is a bill to limit the income of the county’s judges and clerks. They receive both state and county salaries, and the County Commission is seeking to save money by restricting the pay to one or the other.
“It’s a valid reason for what they’re looking for,” Stephens said. “We’ve got some of the highest-paid judges in the state.”
He favors exempting current judges so that only those elected or appointed in the future would come under the reductions.
Jackson, on the other hand, says the cuts need to apply to everyone to create significant savings for the county.
“When you talk about ‘grandfathering in’ (the sitting judges and clerks) you defeat the purpose of the bill,” he said. “If the whole bill doesn’t save money but everybody whose current job is grandfathered in, there’s no cost savings.”
Since that bill can be changed after it’s introduced, it’s likely to be the subject of continuing discussions between the delegation members. Bills introduced after today would have insufficient time to get through the procedures of the House and Senate for passage before the General Assembly adjourns March 20.
Follow Walter Jones on Twitter @MorrisNews and Facebook or contact him at walter.jones@morris.com and (404) 589-8424.
