State lawmakers have been sworn in and the 2013 session of the Georgia General Assembly is now officially underway.

One of the first orders of business in the Senate was restoring power to Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle and imposing a $100 cap on gifts from lobbyists to Senate members.

“We feel like the Senate is taking a vital step in getting a gift cap in place from day one,” Senate Majority Leader Ronnie Chance tells WSB’s Sandra Parrish.

But some members complained the new rules contain too many loopholes to be affective.

“A lobbyist could give a $99 gift five times or however many times in the same day,” says Sen. Vincent Fort (D-Atlanta).

Senators also passed new rules to give authority back Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle to appoint committee chairmen and assign members to those committees.

The ability to do so was stripped from him two years ago and given to a committee of members in an effort led by then Senate President Pro Tem Tommie Williams who spoke angrily from the well today that the people’s interests will no longer be served by the actions of one person.

“This is just how we lose our freedom, one little vote at a time,” he says.

But the new rules passed overwhelmingly on a vote of 42-12.

House Speaker David Ralston calls the gift caps nothing more than gimmicks and says the House plans to introduce legislation this week for a total gift ban.

He says it will also require anyone who lobbies for a bill to be registered as a lobbyist.

“We’ve got people down here prowling the halls of this Capitol on a regular and frequent basis advocating for or against issues that need to be registered as lobbyists and they’re not and we need to tighten up on that,” says Ralston.

Other issues lawmakers will tackle this session include signing off on a new stadium for the Atlanta Falcons.

Legislative action is required in order for the Georgia World Congress Center to raise the amount it can borrow against Atlanta's hotel/motel tax from $200 million to $300 million dollars.

A new stadium for the Falcons is estimated to cost $1 billion, of which, a third would come from public money.

Recent polling shows most Atlantans are opposed to a new stadium by a ratio of 70 to 30 percent.

"The advocates of that project certainly have some convincing to do," says Ralston. "I think the burden of proof is on them to show the need."

Other bills that were pre-filed for the session include allowing pari-mutuel betting, requiring applicants for state benefits to only prove their citizenship one time for the same benefit, requiring carbon monoxide detectors in public schools, and allowing guns on college campuses and in churches.