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To: SE who wrote (7521)	2/21/1998 9:51:00 AM
From: DJB	Respond to of 10368

Hi Scott, Just want to thank you for your great effort and all the time you have put into your analysis. Your posts are extremely informative. My nerves have been calmed after reading you posts. Also glad to hear Rodney is ok. Please tell him that he is welcome back to this SI thread anytime. Thanks again, Dennis

To: SE who wrote (7521)	2/23/1998 1:31:00 PM
From: T.K. Allen	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10368

Scott: Here are results of my research into the issue of "bill sponsorship". To recap the issue, for those out there who don't remember, I claimed that there are a minimum of 23 votes in the South Carolina Senate to ban video poker because this is the number of Senators signed on as "sponsors" of the bill. John Orton (through Scott Edwards) suggested this number may be high because some opponents of the proposed ban may have signed on as sponsors because this is the only way they would be eligible (under rules of parliamentary procedure) to amend the bill. I disagreed with JTO and here we are. I contacted Ms. Faye W. Blanton (Secretary of the Senate for the State of Florida and a veteran parliamentarian - 850-487-5270). She confirmed that bill sponsors are those legislators who support the bill and are willing to facilitate moving the bill through the law-making process. She also confirmed that amendments can be offered by ANY Senator when the bill reaches the full Senate. She stated that this is standard parliamentary practice as defined by Mason's Manual, Roberts Rules of Order and Jefferson's Manual of Parliamentary Practice. She said that, although she could not speak for the State of South Carolina, it would VERY unusual for a legislative body to adopt a rule which would limit amendments only to sponsors and that she has never heard of such a thing. There are 50 rules specific to the SC Senate (see lpitr.state.sc.us. Among these is Rule 42 which states "In all cases not embraced by the foregoing Rules, the Senate shall be governed by such rules as are laid down in Jefferson's Manual of Parliamentary Practice." I have read all 50 of these rules (most are very short) and there is no mention in any of them of amendments being limited only to sponsors of a bill. I have also posed the question (specific to South Carolina) in an email to the American Institute of Parliamentarians (http://www.connix.com/~aip/). I hope to receive a response from them soon. I have not talked to Mr. Frank Caggiano (Clerk & Director of Senate Research for the South Carolina Senate) because I do not have a phone number for that office and, frankly, I don't want to waste money on a long-distance call. If you browse around in the bills filed for the South Carolina General Assembly this year, you will find many who only have one or two sponsors but have many amendments. Bill #559 is a pretty good case in point. This bill has only two sponsors but there have been many amendments including a House - Senate conference committee. A conference committee is where a bill goes when the companion bill passed by the other house is not identical to current version (in the case of our favorite, bill #947, the companion bill is #4577). Conference committees are often a real "sausage mill" - bills sometimes come out the other end of a conference committee bearing little resemblance to the bill that went in. The bottom line to all this? JTO is wrong and I will stand by my statement that bill 947 (which would ban video poker) will receive a MINIMUM of 23 votes (the number of sponsors), very possibly a few more (Gov. Beasley claims to have 26), and conceivably 29 (enough to break filibuster and pass the bill). Regarding Senator Land's threat to filibuster the budget bill if it contains a VGM-banning provision, I think he will have less support for that filibuster than for one limited to bill 947. He will step on a lot of toes if he filibusters the whole state budget. Although I have been a long-time believer that prohibition efforts will fail because there is too much money for legislators to give up, I have been surprised by the strength of the anti-VGM movement and now consider this issue a toss-up. I hope VGMs survive because I think AB&G (and my investment in them) will have a major problem if they don't. TKA