Ellington

To channel Ivan Drago, the Italian Stallion's Soviet nemesis in Rocky IV: If a bill died this week, it died.

Tuesday was the deadline for bills to make it out of committee in the chambers where they originated and onto the calendar for floor debate.

On Monday, just before the drop-dead date, more than 2,000 pieces of legislation floated around the various House and Senate committees, giving lawmakers one day to sort through them all.

So how did they do? At press time, the House calendar had swelled to 210 items compared to 150 in the Senate.

Many of the bills likely to spark debate made it through long before the deadline, including Mississippi's version of Arizona and Alabama's immigration laws, HB 488. Brookhaven Republican Rep. Becky Currie introduced the bill, which passed the House Judiciary B Committee the week before and sailed through the Education Committee late last week.

Following a fiery presentation from Washington, D.C.-based Black Alliance for Education Options, the House Education Committee agreed to move the charter schools bill along. The Senate previously voted on the bill.

So far, Gov. Phil Bryant has signed just one bill that allows the Hancock County Tourism Development Bureau to collect tourism-related taxes.