Today democracy lost two more battles to lobbying by the League of Municipalities. [Shades of Jim Black!] Speaker of the House, “Representative?” Joe Hackney, decided to hinder the citizens’ rights to access public records. His counterpart, Senate Majority Leader Tony Rand, further trampled on our citizens’ rights by refusing to allow HB2367, the Annexation Moratorium, to reach the Senate floor. Despite HB2367 having been passed by an overwhelming majority in the House, despite the pleas of hundreds of thousands of abused citizens, despite 33 of his fellow Senators requesting that the bill be heard, and despite the long and arduous study by the House Select Committee on Annexation into the abuse of the current law, leading them to introduce the bill, Senator Rand killed it singlehandedly. Acknowledging that abuse is going on, Senator Rand chose to allow it to continue. He first excused this decision by saying that the bill doesn’t meet the “rules” to be considered in the Short Session because it is from a House Select Committee [which twice asked the Senate to be a part of the study and were refused]. The rules do allow it. Senate Joint Resolution 1573 from 2007 specifically states that bills implementing the resolutions of study commissions and select committees may be heard. In this Short Session, HB2188, also a bill from a House Select Committee, was ratified by the Senate. Instead of working with the House, Senator Rand has totally disregarded all the conscientious work they have done to address the wrongs being done under the current law. The refusal to allow a vote on HB2367 was just a stall to allow the League to continue to use their weapons of mass destruction [the law and the cities] to steal more land and do more damage to the people of this state! Have you ever noticed that most of the bills The League supports have to do with the taking away of rights from the people and giving them to some form of government? As long as our House and Senate are controlled by two men who listen to lobbyists rather than the people, the citizens of our state will not receive justice. It is time for a change of leadership and an in depth investigation of the League’s publicly funded budget and its obvious and continuing damage to the interests of the citizens of this state.