Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Gonzo Lawmakers - Day 6

A daily recap of the Georgia Public Broadcasting show "Lawmakers". The show airs weekdays at 7:00pm with a replay at 5:30am the following weekday.

Annnnnnd we're back. Recess over. Time for everyone to get to work.

* Ummmm. I thought my DVR was broken but apparently not. There's a frozen shot of a jacketless David Zelski while the promos play. While the PBS people are away the gremlins will play.

* Budget briefings. This should be exciting. Cuts. Cuts. Cuts. First metaphor alert - "we're getting down to the bone"

* DHR has eliminated 45 real positions. Take that Wooten!

* Chancellor Davis of the University System says "we are not a cost to the state".

* Minoo!

* Transportation. The T-SPLOST is coming! The T-SPLOST is coming! More Eggs and Issues basement tapes.

* Interviewing the Appropriations Chairs. Ben Harbin is wearinng a polka dot bowtie. Not a good choice. I'm sure Dick Williams would disagree. He also needs more pancake. I wonder if the budget cuts have affected the makeup department.

* Sen. Jack Hill won't call the elimination of the Property Relief Grant a tax increase. He calls it a "sensitive tax issue". heh

* Note to Rep. Harbin. You are always on camera! For a moment he looked either distracted or possibly violently ill.

* Despite budget crunch, trauma funding is a priority. According to Sen. Hill the Chinese symbol for crisis is the symbol for opportunity. That sounds like a wives tale. Gonna have to look that up.

* Teachers already got their pay raise while other state employees have not. That brings back fond memories 1992. A truism - teachers always get their raise.

* Hard to write a budget with the hopes of Congress sending us some pork, um sorry, I mean bailout money.

* Zero based budgeting got out of committee. Another Shafer win. It basically requires periodic reviews of the entire budget. I bet you thought they did that anyway. If you knew all what they don't do, you'd probably gather the neighbors and march on the Capitol.

* There are 119 departments in state government! Suddenly I'm feeling very libertarian.

* There's something in QBE (Quality Basic Education) called Class Cards that cost $11 million. What the hell's a class card? Superintedent Cox is explaining. It's a fancy way to say classroom supplies. Are they like credit cards?

* DOT Commissioner Gena Evans is talking transportation deficits. It's nothing but doom and gloom in that department.

* The anniversary of the Dixie Crystal Plant explosion is being used to push a trauma network.

* Sen. Harp wants to restrict how lawyers advertise. Really? Really? A Republican just used the term "regulate". The lack of money is making people slap crazy.

* Rep. Ron Stephens (R-Savannah) just said "ideer" just like Wilson does. It must be a coastal Georgia thing.

* Casey time! I was a little worried we would have no mention of the lite guv.

* That's a wrap!

2 comments:

Sara said...

http://pinyin.info/chinese/crisis.html

Lucid Idiocy said...

Grift - the class cards are the $100 teacher gift cards teachers can use to buy supplies for students. Perdue put them in a couple years back.

By shifting the funding into QBE, instead of making it a separate line item, it basically makes the program optional for school districts.

They can either fund the cards, or fund something else.

Same thing goes for the graduation coaches program, which was also moved from its own line item and into QBE.