Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan (Photo by Beau Evans)
ATLANTA – Lt.
Gov. Geoff Duncan set an ambitious agenda Monday for a high-profile group of
political, business and academic leaders he is looking to for ideas on how to
make Georgia the technology capital of the East Coast.
The Georgia
Innovates Task Force, co-chaired by former U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson and Georgia
Tech President Emeritus G.P. “Bud” Peterson, held its kickoff meeting to hear
Duncan’s charge to the group and dole out assignments for the work ahead.
“We’re not
looking for short-term sugar highs,” Duncan said. “We want this group to truly
produce meaningful ideas.”
With a
background in business, Duncan has made growing Georgia’s role as a technology
hub a key priority, both during his 2018 campaign and since taking office last
year.
He announced
the formation of the new task force last month and named some of Georgia’s
best-known business leaders to the panel. The list includes Paul Bowers,
chairman, president and CEO of Georgia Power Co.; Marty Flanagan, president and
CEO of Atlanta-based Invesco; and Raphael Bostic, president and CEO of the
Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
The task
force also includes representation from areas of Georgia outside of Atlanta,
including Lori Durden, president of Ogeechee Technical College in Statesboro, and
Barbara Rivera Holmes, president and CEO of the Albany Area Chamber of Commerce.
Peterson
said other states are vying with Georgia to become the technology capital of
the East Coast. But Georgia enjoys some advantages in the competition,
including the presence of the Port of Savannah, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta
International Airport, the U.S. Army Cyber Command in Augusta and the federal
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, he said.
Georgia also
boasts a diverse array of outstanding colleges and universities, Peterson said.
“We can
leverage those institutions to help create an educated workforce that can drive
initiatives like this,” he said.
Peterson
divided the task force into four subcommittees to work on separate aspects of the
technology push including innovation, education and training, entrepreneurship
and initiatives aimed at rural communities.
The
subcommittees are to report back with initial recommendations at the next
meeting of the task force in April. Final recommendations are expected by
mid-summer.
Isakson said
he’s optimistic the panel’s work will pay off.
“If we can
in a timely fashion develop goals and apply our brain power and our dollar
power, we can do a lot of things,” he said.
ATLANTA – The practice of pawning one’s car title to make ends meet could get a bit more restrictive in Georgia under a bipartisan bill filed in the 2020 legislative session.
Using a person’s vehicle as collateral, auto-title loans
provide small sums of money to cash-strapped borrowers quickly, without the
need for a credit check. The loans, which can carry high interest rates into
the triple digits, can cost borrowers their vehicles plus the balance of any
unpaid debt in the event of default.
For proponents, the loans offer a way for people to keep
financially afloat in times of trouble. These borrowers may not qualify for
other kinds of loans offered by lending institutions like banks or credit
unions, according to title lenders. High interest rates help offset the risk of
lending to less financially stable borrowers, they say.
But critics argue the practice contributes to trapping the
state’s most vulnerable populations in a cycle of debt, particularly for
low-income and black communities. Consumer advocacy groups have long called for
more legal guardrails on title loans to curb so-called “predatory lending”
techniques.
Senate Bill 329 would cap interest rates at 36% annually for
auto-title loans in Georgia, closer to how other small-sum loans are regulated.
It would also establish stricter terms for refinancing and set limits on how
much money a lender could collect upon default.
The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Randy Robertson, said it was
inspired by a constituent from Columbus whose elderly father pawned the title
to his car to pay his utility bills, then fell into a hole from the increasing
monthly payments of the loan’s 166% interest rate.
Sen. Randy Robertson. (Official Senate photo)
Robertson, R-Cataula, said he modeled the legislation on
interest-rate caps of 37% that the U.S. Department of Defense placed on loans
approved for military members in 2006.
“I don’t want to kill business and I certainly don’t want to
shut down a lane that a segment of the population may need to get by,”
Robertson said. “What I want to do is bring that lane in line with the closest
thing to it.”
Sen. Chuck Hufstetler, the Republican chairman of the Senate
Finance Committee, is a co-sponsor of the bill along with three Democratic
colleagues: Sens. Zahra Karinshak, Ed Harbison and Sheikh Rahman.
The bill would also move regulation of small consumer loans from the state Department of Insurance to the state Department of Banking and Finance. Gov. Brian Kemp has already figured that move into the state’s budget for the 2021 fiscal year.
Predatory lending or loans of last resort?
Small consumer loans are regulated to varying degrees in
Georgia depending on the loan amount and type, but none can carry interests rates
higher than about 60% annually under the state’s usury cap.
That does not cover loans involving car titles, which state
law considers as pawned items. Pawnshop transactions are subject to interest
rates of 25% per month for the first 90 days, then 12.5% per month for every 30
days thereafter.
Consumer protection advocates view pawn designation as a
loophole that has prompted auto-title lending to swell in Georgia. The
nonprofit group Georgia Watch estimated that 755 title lending companies were
open in Georgia in 2018 and cumulatively collected nearly $200 million in
interest.
Georgia Watch’s executive director, Liz Coyle, said those
companies often prey on struggling borrowers desperate for cash and willing to
reup on high-interest loans for years to keep from losing their cars.
“Pawning your car title is not the same as pawning your
grandfather’s watch,” Coyle said. “It’s a debt trap.”
Robert Reich, president and CEO of Atlanta-based lending
company Community Loans of America, disagreed with that characterization. In a
statement, he said the high interest rates reflect the riskiness of these loans
and argued they should be regulated by local county and city rules, not by the
state.
“These are high-risk financial transactions and we look
forward to working with the author to educate further about our industry in
hopes of allowing the non-banked customers options that would not otherwise
exist,” Reich said.
A better approach, Reich said, would be to go with
regulations proposed in legislation brought in 2017 by Rep. Brett Harrell,
R-Snellville, which would limit loan terms but largely keep the same interest
rates. Georgia Watch has called that measure not tough enough. It stalled in
the state House.
For his part, Robertson framed his bill as a means to rein
in small loans that could help ease the “generational poverty” that can spur
people to commit crimes.
Robertson, a retired major with the Muscogee County
Sheriff’s Office, said many Georgians who wind up in jail were raised in
families that had to tap “quick-cash type businesses” to make ends meet.
“This empties jails and prisons,” Robertson said of his
bill. “We have to stop the behavior that’s causing them to be incarcerated, and
I think that being dependent on predatory lending is part of that behavior.”
ATLANTA – Two
recent critical audits of Georgia’s generous film tax credit are helping build
support for legislation calling for greater scrutiny of all of the myriad tax
incentives the state offers to attract jobs.
A bill the
Senate Finance Committee passed unanimously Feb. 3 calls on the governor’s
office to contract with independent auditors to review up to five tax-incentive
programs each year and determine whether their economic impact is worth what
the state spends on them.
The General
Assembly approved a similar measure last year, but Gov. Brian Kemp vetoed it. In
his veto message last May, Kemp argued the audits should be conducted
independently because the state auditor is responsible for preparing fiscal
notes on all proposed tax breaks.
“The
governor made the right choice,” said Sen. John Albers, R-Roswell, chief
sponsor of Senate Bill 302. “We found an area in the bill to have an
independent third party do the audits.”
The audits
of the film tax credit, released last month, faulted the way the program is
administered and asserted the credits have had less economic impact than
supporters have touted.
The audit on
the impact of the film tax credit concluded the Georgia Department of Economic
Development used an inflated multiplier to calculate the dollar value of the program’s
economic impact and reported misleading job numbers.
But Thomas
Cunningham, chief economist for the Metro Atlanta Chamber, told lawmakers Feb.
4 that even the lower economic impact numbers the audit found demonstrate the
tax credit’s value.
The audit
reported Georgia provided $667 million in tax credits to film producers in 2016
– making the credit far and away the most expensive in the state’s arsenal. The
credits generated $4.6 billion that year in return, including direct and
indirect spending, increased tourism and studio construction, the audit found.
That’s
nearly a 7-1 return on investment, Cunningham told members of the House Working
Group on Creative Arts and Entertainment during two days of hearings on the
film tax credit program.
“It looks
like the returns are fairly decent,” he said.
Cunningham
and others defended the film tax credit as a better investment than many other
economic carrots the state offers.
“Here, you
get the spending up front and the tax credits after the fact,” he said. “It’s
not like a typical economic development incentive, [where] you’re giving money
up front and hope you get the jobs later on.”
The second
audit found the film tax credit program is so poorly managed that film
production companies have received credits to which they were not entitled or
more in credits than they had actually earned.
Both state
bureaucrats in charge of the program and representatives of the film industry
who testified during the hearings conceded administration of the credit needs
to be tightened.
Andrew
Capezzuto, general counsel for the Georgia Department of Economic Development, said
one shortcoming in the current program is that it allows film companies to seek
audits of the credits they receive but doesn’t require them.
“We believe
a large majority of the issues identified by … the audits could be resolved by
mandating audits for all taxpayers getting this credit,” he said.
“There are
ways we can tinker with [the program],” added Atlanta entertainment lawyer Stephen
Weizenecker. “But I don’t think we should destroy it or make changes that would
destroy what we’ve created.”
Film executives
shooting productions in Georgia have reason for concern. Given the tight budget
facing the governor and the General Assembly this year, there’s been discussion
of putting a spending cap on the film tax credit.
“We might
need to tailor [the program] a little differently,” said Sen. Chuck Hufstetler,
R-Rome, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. “We need to get the best bang
for our buck.”
State Rep.
Matt Dollar, R-Marietta, the House working group’s chairman, declined comment
on the possibility of a spending cap on the tax credit. But he said the two
days of hearings highlighted the industry’s impact in a much broader sense than
what could be found in the audits.
“It’s given us a good picture of what this is meaning to Georgians,” Dollar
said.
The industry’s supporters like to point out where Georgia was in terms of the film industry before lawmakers adopted the tax credit. In 2007, the year before passage of the credit, film production in the state accounted for a mere $242 million in economic activity. “We’ve created a new industry out of nothing,” said Brian Robinson, spokesman for the Georgia Screen Entertainment Coalition, a film industry advocacy group affiliated with the Georgia Chamber of Commerce. “There’s a really good story to tell about the economic impact this is having”
ATLANTA – Legislation
that would close a loophole in Georgia law pertaining to sexual misconduct by a
foster parent was introduced in the state House of Representatives this week.
House Bill
911, sponsored by Rep. Ed Setzler, R-Acworth, would add “improper sexual contact” by a foster parent with a
foster child to a section of the state code that deals with sexual misconduct
by an employer with an employee.
Foster
parents convicted of the most serious form of the offense could face prison sentences of up to 25 years and fines
of up to $100,000.
The bill is
part of a legislative package Gov. Brian Kemp is pushing this year aimed at
making it easier for Georgians to become foster parents. The package also would
triple the state tax credit for foster parents from $2,000 to $6,000 and lower
the age requirement for unmarried Georgians to become foster parents from 25 to
21.
Foster care
is a priority issue both for the governor and First Lady Marty Kemp.
“This
legislation closes a dangerous loophole and prohibits foster parents from
engaging in improper sexual behavior with children in their care,” she said in
a prepared statement. “Moving forward, we will continue to devote our efforts
to protecting the most vulnerable in our state from sexual misconduct.”
Setzler’s
bill is being cosponsored by Rep. Jodi Lott, R-Evans, one of Kemp’s floor
leaders in the House.
ATLANTA – Undocumented students could pay in-state college tuition in Georgia under a bill Democratic lawmakers filed this week that aims to overturn longstanding state law prohibiting those students from paying lower school costs.
Sponsored by House Minority Leader Bob Trammell, D-Luthersville, House Bill 896 would let non-citizen students pay in-state tuition if they attended high school in Georgia for three or more years, earned a diploma and are applying for legal immigration status.
Trammell said the measure would help
Georgia retain more students who would pick up jobs in the state after
graduating.
“It’s cost-prohibitive for students to
advance their education in Georgia,” Trammell said. “As a consequence, we’re
losing talent in Georgia to other states.”
Students who are not U.S. citizens have been largely barred from qualifying for in-state tuition in Georgia since 2008 — though state law does give universities leeway to allow in-state tuition for green-card holders, refugees and asylum seekers. In-state tuition tends to be much lower than out-of-state rates.
A spokesman for the University System of
Georgia, which oversees 26 colleges in the state, declined to comment Thursday
on pending legislation.
Christian Olvera, a student at Dalton
State College whose parents migrated from Mexico, has had to pause his studies
for long stretches of time to work so that he could pay his out-of-state
tuition. Olvera pays about $6,000 per semester currently, three times more than
the roughly $2,000 he said he would for in-state tuition.
He said allowing in-state tuition would
keep droves of students in Georgia who otherwise cannot pay for college.
“It’s a dream crusher, really,” Olvera
said. “In order to keep Georgia the No.-1 business state, we’d love to keep
those students coming out of high schools with good GPAs and bright futures.”
The bill would cover so-called “Dreamers” like Olvera who are protected from deportation under the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy but are not legal permanent residents. They arrived in the U.S. as children with their parents and possess temporary work authorization permits.
There were about 21,000 Dreamers in
Georgia as of June 2019, according to the nonprofit Migration Policy Institute.
Georgia is one of five states that either
deny in-state tuition for undocumented students or prohibit them from enrolling
in college entirely, according to the National Conference of State
Legislatures.
Trammell’s bill would not tamper with a policy held by three prominent schools – the University of Georgia, Georgia Tech and Georgia College and State University – that bars DACA students from admission.
The bill was filed Wednesday around the same time state Rep. Philip Singleton, R-Sharpsburg, introduced legislation that would toughen state law requiring city and county law enforcement agencies to cooperate with federal immigration authorities.
This story was updated to clarify Georgia law that note that universities have discretion to allow in-state tuition for some green-card holders, refugees and asylum seekers.
