Georgia Food Industry Association

Legislative Link

March 16 th , 2007

Sunday Sales Grassroots Help Needed

You should have received an Action Alert prior to this message. However if you have not please click the following link and go through the easy steps in order to send an email to Lt. Governor Casey Cagle and your State Senator.

http://foodaction.net/campaign/sunday_sales2

The emails are working and we need as many emails generated as possible. Feel free to send this link to any friends you feel may be interested in help out!

Sunday Sales Update

We are excited to report that the Sunday sales measure passed out of the Senate Regulated Industries committee Tuesday morning.

The subcommittee that met immediately prior to the full committee made two changes to the bill.  The first change gives local governments the power to fix the precise hours of Sunday sales, meaning the time could be set to begin at noon or anytime thereafter and end anytime prior to midnight at the local government's discretion. The second change provides that a referendum can be initiated to repeal Sunday sales in any county which uses the proposed new law to approve Sunday sales. The repeal referendum could be initiated by local officials or by a petition signed by 35 percent of the local government's voters.  This measure is in keeping with the language included in the liquor by the drink Sunday sales bill that passed in 1996.

Now the bill goes to the powerful Senate Rules committee .  While we are encouraged by the statements that Rules Chairman Sen. Don Balfour (R-Snellville) has made to the press indicating that the bill will go to the floor, we fully recognize that it's going to be a good old fashion uphill political fight to get it to the floor, not to mention passing it.  To that end we have set up several meetings with key members of legislative leadership over the next several days.  We will keep you posted on any important developments that come from those meetings.

Thank you for your continued support and we look forward to reporting another key victory in the next few days!

Pot Candy Ban Legislation Passes Committee

Senator Vincent Fort's (D-Atlanta) Senate Bill 258 , which would make marijuana flavored candy and other products illegal, passed out of the Senate Agriculture committee on Wednesday. The bill now goes to the Senate Rules committee to await a floor vote.

Burdensome Rebate Bill Halted

Legislation by Rep. Matt Dollar (R-Marietta) which would require any company giving a rebate to submit notification of payment to a customer within 30 days was sent to subcommittee after a lengthy hearing in the House Agriculture and Consumer Affairs committee. Many members of the committee had concerns about House Bill 567 and the wording of certain language in the bill which they saw as a burden on business.

Previous Legislative Links and GFIA are available on the GFIA's website at www.gfia.org .

Questions? Comments? Concerns?

Kathy Kuzava – (404) 819-7744                             Jason Bragg (478) 719-9167

kkuzava@gfia.org                                                  jbragg@gfia.org