Yarbrough: Georgians should get an Official Dirt Act

Let's cut our state legislators a little slack before they begin their deliberations in earnest in the current session of the General Assembly. They need some time to get adjusted. You don't just go to Atlanta and start passing laws. The first thing you do is find out if anybody moved the bathrooms while you were gone, because you just might find yourself in some bureaucrat's new digs for all the wrong reasons.

While our public servants are getting settled in, let me go ahead and give them their list of legislative priorities for the session. This will speed things along, which in turn will get them out of town before they can do us too much damage.

► The Dress for Success Lobby Reform Act: This bill would require all lobbyists to dress like newspaper reporters, which means wearing cheap ties with gravy stains and shoes that haven't been shined since Zell Miller was lieutenant governor. No self-respecting legislator would be caught dead going to a Grateful Dead concert with a reporter, which is what the lobbyists would look like. Reporters would be so embarrassed to look like a lobbyist they would shine their shoes, even though most of them wear Hush Puppies. This bill wouldn't cost taxpayers much, just an occasional shoe shine.

► The You-Break-It-You-Buy-It Education Initiative: If the legislature's answer to budget issues in public education is to furlough teachers, politicians should have to abide by the same law. This bill would furlough legislators two days for every one they propose for teachers. Let's face it, legislators can do us a lot more harm that teachers.

► The Georgia Official Dirt Act: No, this is not a bill to dredge up dirt on any government officials who may have been involved in some hanky-panky in the past. We will leave that responsibility to the aggressive and ever-vigilant Capitol media corps (insert joke here). This is serious. One of my favorite legislators, Rep. Bobby Franklin, R-Cobb County, has tried valiantly, if unsuccessfully,