Baseball Anyone?
Has anyone ever heard the term legislative process associated with the game of baseball? Well if you haven’t you are about to now.
On Thursday there was suddenly an opening of the dark clouds in the State Legislature and the light beamed down from the heavens. No it was not the moment spoken about in the book of Revelations it was the Alabama Senate finally moving ahead with legislative issues.
With that said the House is now preparing for the last we can pass bills and still have a chance of the Senate passing them and then it becoming law. While the chances of a bill passed this Tuesday becoming law are about as likely as me winning the lottery there is still a theoretical possibility.
On Tuesday the House will have a 10 minute calendar. This special order calendar is commonly referred to as the “baseball calendar.” Everyone gets a chance at bat. The way it works is like this, every bill on the calendar has 10 minutes to be passed by the House, if it cannot be passed in 10 minutes then the sponsor must carry the bill and we go to the next bill on the list. These are usually non-controversial bills and offer every members of taking home at least a small victory for the legislative session.
Every session there is one day set aside for playing baseball in the House and Senate. Since the Senate has finally come together for some action they don’t have time for baseball this session. They will be busy dealing with flood of bills that have built up from the House most of this session.
Currently there are 40 bills on the baseball calendar for Tuesday. Batter up!!!
I found it very interesting that the open disclosure bill was killed by one vote. The same man who introduced the 62% pay increase in the House. I guess we know who is “safe” enough that the Dem leadership can hide behind.
Comment by Susan — May 30, 2007 @ 7:19 am
Yes, it was discouraging to see this. What bothers me most is how fair this bill was to the entire process. Rep. Ball was pushing for just complete transparency for every state official not just legislators. Why shouldn’t the people know how every tax dollar is being spent and who it is being spent on?
This defeat also highlights some of the problems we had in the Rules Committee trying to get this bill on the calendar. It was blocked at every turn in the road.
Comment by Rep. Cam Ward — May 30, 2007 @ 12:01 pm