ATLANTA – A Georgia Senate committee Thursday tacked a fee favored by ride-share companies like Uber and Lyft onto a measure aimed at relieving income taxes for farmers hit hard by Hurricane Michael.
A proposed 50-cent excise tax for
ride-share bookings cleared the Senate Finance Committee after some lawmakers
questioned whether it should be added to legislation before the Georgia House
of Representatives meant for such a different purpose.
The original meat of House Bill 105,
sponsored by Rep. Sam Watson, involves an income-tax exemption for farmers
receiving federal disaster aid payments to recover from the destruction the
Category 5 storm brought to the heart of Georgia’s agriculture industry in late
2018.
The excise tax, which acts like a flat fee, stems from separate legislation to collect sales taxes from third-party retailers like Amazon and Google that facilitate online transactions for other businesses.
That legislation stumbled last year amid
opposition from Uber, which argued paying sales taxes would drive costs up too
high for its riders and drivers. The San Francisco-based company supports
paying the fee instead of a sales tax.
An amendment brought to Watson’s bill on
Thursday proposes such an exemption, while separately charging Uber and Lyft a
new 50-cent fee per ride for single-person bookings and a 25-cent fee for
shared rides. The fee would also apply to other transportation companies like
taxis and limousines.
Revenues would be dedicated to funding
transportation infrastructure repairs and public transit upgrades. Sen. Steve
Gooch, who pushed for the amendment to be added onto Watson’s bill, framed the
fee as a way to raise as much as $40 million a year for transportation
projects, particularly in more isolated rural areas.
“This is an attempt to protect
transportation,” Gooch, R-Dahlonega, said Thursday. “We know we need more
money. This is a way to do it without having to dip into the general fund.”
Barring a quick passage of the fee into
law, Uber and Lyft will be subject to the same sales tax collections that other
big marketplace facilitators face starting on April 1.
“If
action is not taken by April 1, Georgians will end up paying one of the highest
taxes in the county on ridesharing – making trips more expensive for students,
seniors, and commuters alike,” said Uber spokeswoman Evangeline Georgia.
The combined Hurricane Michael-Uber fee
bill by Watson passed out of the committee by a 9-1 vote. It heads next for the
Senate floor.
A similar 50-cent fee on Uber and Lyft rides had previously been slated for inclusion in a measure sponsored by Rep. Kevin Tanner, R-Dawsonville, that seeks to drum up more funding for rural transit services.
On Wednesday, state officials announced farmers in in the southern part of the state could start applying next month to receive Hurricane Michael recovery funds as part of a $347 million federal aid package.
ATLANTA – Legislation
aimed at two biomass plants in Northeast Georgia that have drawn a public
outcry over the burning of railroad ties treated with creosote cleared a state
Senate committee Thursday.
The bill
would ban the practice, which has generated complaints from neighbors that it’s
fouling their air and polluting their water. It could reach the full Senate for
a vote as early as next week.
Birmingham,
Ala.-based Georgia Renewable Power (GRP) opened the plants last year in Madison
and Franklin counties northeast of Athens. The plants burn creosote-treated ties that have outlived
their usefulness and sell the ash to Georgia Power Co. as an alternative fuel.
The bill’s
supporters say the company misrepresented the project when it first approached
local elected officials by claiming the plants would burn clean wood chips
rather than railroad ties treated with creosote, which has been linked to some
forms of cancer and respiratory problems.
“They need
to be burning the material they said they’d burn,” Sen. John Wilkinson,
R-Toccoa, the bill’s sponsor, told members of the Senate Regulated Industries
Committee.
David Groves
of Veolia Energy, who manages the two plants for GRP, told the committee the complaints
from neighbors were the result of start-up issues surrounding the plants’
operation. He said more than $1 million is being spent on conditioners to
reduce fly ash and silencing systems that will reduce the noise coming out of
the plants.
“The plants
are state of the art. The pollution controls are state of the art,” he said.
“This is not new technology.”
Groves said
the plants rely on railroad ties treated with creosote and might be forced out
of business if they have to switch to other types of wood that have been harder
to get.
“It would be
a real shame for these communities and set a bad precedent for Georgia,” he
said.
Testimony
before the same committee on Tuesday indicated the two plants have become the
largest taxpayers in their respective counties.
Sen. Frank
Ginn, R-Danielsville, noted Thursday the plant in Madison County is generating
$4.7 million a year in tax revenue. But he said it must be operated
responsibly.
“We want to
make sure that plant is a good asset for the community and not a nuisance,” he
said.
The
committee approved an amendment to the bill Thursday essentially carving out a
similar biomass plant operated by WestRock near Dublin.
Lauren Curry,
deputy director of the Georgia Environmental Protection Division, said the
Dublin facility does not burn creosote – although it is allowed to under
current law – and has a larger buffer from nearby properties than the plants in
Northeast Georgia. The Dublin plant also has been around longer and, thus, is
not experiencing the same start-up challenges, she said.
Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr talks at the State Capitol on Jan. 27, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
ATLANTA – A new investigative unit tasked with cracking down on human trafficking in Georgia has started paying dividends after its creation last year, according to state law enforcement officials and Gov. Brian Kemp.
Attorney General Chris Carr announced
Thursday indictments were handed down recently for four people charged with
human trafficking in Gwinnett, Chatham, Greene and Cobb counties.
Carr said more arrests and indictments
are expected to come from his office’s Human Trafficking Prosecution Unit,
which was launched last spring after.
“This is just the beginning,” Carr said
at a news conference Thursday. “We will stop at nothing to seek justice on
behalf of these victims.”
Kemp made going after human traffickers a high priority when he took office last year, citing Georgia’s unenviable status as a state with one of the highest rates of human trafficking in the nation. He formed a state commission to tackle the issue and installed his wife, first lady Marty Kemp, as one of three co-chairs.
On Thursday, the governor also
highlighted a new training program required for all state employees focused on
identifying signs of human trafficking and victimization.
“We won’t stop until we put an end to
this modern-day slavery in our state,” Kemp said.
Last year, state lawmakers budgeted about
$171,000 for four staff members in the new human trafficking unit. House
lawmakers have recommended reducing that budget this fiscal year by about
$87,000 due to hiring delays. Kemp’s fiscal year 2021 budget proposes an
additional roughly $194,000 for the unit.
Meanwhile, state lawmakers have targeted
human trafficking with bills in the 2020 legislative session.
Legislation aimed at helping victims of
human trafficking clean up any criminal records they may have cleared the
Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.
Senate Bill 158, sponsored by Sen. Brian
Strickland, would let victims petition the court to vacate convictions for
crimes committed while they were being trafficked. Strickland, R-McDonough, who
is one of Kemp’s floor leaders, said the measure would reduce a major barrier
that keeps many formerly trafficked persons from finding stable employment.
“These are people that are trying to find
their way away from something that’s all they know,” Strickland said Wednesday.
Another measure, House Bill 823 sponsored
by Rep. Houston Gaines, R-Athens, would impose a lifetime ban on driving a
commercial vehicle for persons convicted of human trafficking-related offenses.
The ban would only apply for people who used commercial vehicles to traffic
victims.
Other legislation includes a measure
closing a loophole in state law aimed at punishing foster parents who sexually
abuse children in their care. House Bill 911, introduced by Rep. Ed Setzler,
R-Acworth, passed out of a House Judiciary Non-Civil subcommittee on Wednesday.
ATLANTA – Halloween signs and legal hurdles tripped up legislation aimed at requiring repeat sexual offenders to wear electronic ankle monitors for life in Georgia that a state House panel examined Wednesday.
Lawmakers are hustling to continue
monitoring sex offenders classified as “sexually dangerous predators” following
a Georgia Supreme Court ruling last year that upended the practice of automatic
lifetime ankle monitoring absent a judge’s sentence.
As a result, more than 400 sex offenders
deemed at risk for committing future crimes had been freed from their lifetime
monitoring punishments as of last October, totaling nearly half of the state’s roughly
1,000 sexually dangerous predators.
House Bill 720 would automatically impose
lifetime electronic tracking on sexual predators with multiple sex-offense
felony convictions. That should keep the state’s most dangerous sexual
predators from flying under the radar while Georgia’s rules on electronic
monitoring are in flux, said the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Steven Sainz.
“This looks at trying to identify the
population that has committed an offense and are most likely to be needing that
additional monitoring,” said Sainz, R-Woodbine.
But the measure does not tackle the
overarching issue of giving judges in Georgia full discretion to include
lifetime ankle monitoring as a form of probation included in an offender’s
original sentence, regardless of whether the crime was a repeat offense, Sainz
said.
He noted that proposal on judicial
discretion may come in a separate bill not yet introduced in the 2020
legislative session.
Currently, Georgia law gives the state
Sexual Offender Registration Review Board sole authority to classify sex
offenders in a way that forces them to wear ankle monitors for life.
That was the arrangement until last
March, when the state’s high court said lifetime monitoring would be
unconstitutional if not part of a judge’s original sentence.
A Georgia Senate study committee recently
recommended changing state law to give judges authority to incorporate lifetime
ankle monitoring into a sentence, which would factor in information provided by
the review board.
Members of a House Judiciary Non-Civil
subcommittee did not vote on Sainz’s bill’s Wednesday amid concerns from some
lawmakers and criminal defense attorneys who objected to the measure’s broad
scope – as well as a last-minute change requiring repeat sex offenders to post warning
signs outside their houses for Halloween.
Rep. Josh McLaurin, D-Sandy Springs, said
he opposed an amendment to the bill brought Wednesday concerning the Halloween
sign, which would legally have to say: “No candy, treats, or treat-or-treating
at this residence.”
The sign, which McLaurin called a
violation of free-speech protections, would have to be displayed every year on
Oct. 30 and Oct. 31.
“It’s just downright humiliating to have
to post that at your house,” McLaurin said. “And I understand that sexual
offenses are extremely serious. My concern would be that the dignity of a
person – and particularly with regard to their First Amendment interests – is
seriously implicated by this type of statutorily mandated language.”
Sainz said after Wednesday’s hearing that
he plans to keep the Halloween sign requirement but might modify what it says.
The bill could also cast too wide a net
over who might be subject to a lifetime-tracking sentence, McLaurin said. He
noted state law already sets lifetime imprisonment as the maximum punishment
for several violent crimes like murder and rape. Adding separate lifetime
penalties for various sexual offenses could cause legal murkiness, he said.
“My concern is this bill won’t do the
thing it’s supposed to do,” McLaurin said.
Officials on the state review board have
said they’re well-positioned to decide who should merit lifetime monitoring
because the board has comprehensive access to key information like an
offender’s criminal records, psychological profile and behavior history while
incarcerated.
But critics argue the review board has
too much leeway to set the stiff punishment, often doing so long after a judge
hands down a sentence or an offender is released from prison. They have also
claimed the review board’s methods for classifying offenders as sexually
dangerous predators are not transparent.
Broadening the kinds of sexual offenses that
could prompt lifetime monitoring could complicate the issue more than
clarifying it, said Jill Travis, executive director of the Georgia Association
of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
“We would continue to recommend that the
need for this lifetime monitoring should be tied to individuals’ sexual
dangerous and not a specific crime,” Travis said.
The subcommittee’s chairman, Rep. Ed
Setzler, R-Acworth, said he wants to see some tweaks to the bill but expects it
to eventually head to the full committee.
Hurricane Michael made landfall as a powerful category 5 storm on Oct. 10, 2018. (National Weather Service)
ATLANTA – Georgia has landed $347 million in federal disaster aid to help farmers in southern, largely rural parts of the state recover from the devastation to crops and structures caused by Hurricane Michael in late 2018.
The flush of federal block grants comes
more than 16 months after the Category 5 hurricane hit Southwest Georgia on
Oct. 10, 2018, battering farms and forests in the agricultural heartland of the
state.
The National Weather Service reported it was the strongest hurricane to directly affect Georgia since the last decade of the 19th century.
Researchers at the University of Georgia
estimated the historic storm caused more than $2 billion in damage to numerous
crops and commodities including pecans, peanuts, cotton, soybeans, timber,
poultry and beef.
With the new federal grants, farmers and forest landowners in 95 counties in the southern half of the state can apply for recovery funds starting next month.
The grants will cover losses in beef,
dairy, fruit, vegetable, pecan, poultry and timber operations. It will also be
available for “certain losses for uninsured infrastructure,” Georgia
Agriculture Commissioner Gary Black said Wednesday.
Black said the federal aid influx was a
long time coming. But he cautioned struggling farmers to temper expectations
for restoring their operations fully back to pre-hurricane form.
“No one will approach being made whole,”
Black said at a news conference Wednesday. “What I hope is that these resources
will help restore a measure of confidence in the marketplace.”
Tripp Cofield, the national policy
counsel for the Georgia Farm Bureau, said the aid package will particularly
help prop up industries like timber, dairy and beef, which missed out on
earlier rounds of recovery funding.
“I think it will absolutely help farmers.
I do,” Cofield said Wednesday.
Gov. Brian Kemp said the federal aid
package comes as welcome relief after the state allocated nearly $300 million
for farmers following the storm to kickstart the recovery process.
“We know that this was a generational
event and it will take a long time to recover,” Kemp said. “But we continue to
fight for you.”
The application period for the new
federal grants runs from March 18 through April 8 and will have to be done
entirely online at www.farmrecovery.com.
The $347 million aid package adds to
another share of federal dollars Georgia secured from the U.S. Department of
Agriculture. Both funding sources come from a 2017 wildfire and hurricane
recovery program that earmarked $3 billion for several disaster-struck states.
Georgia counties in the state’s
southwestern corner have also received more than $100 million in assistance
grants from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help rebuild damaged
public infrastructure like roads, bridges and utilities.
The federal grants announced Wednesday
are part of a roughly $19 billion disaster-aid package the U.S. House of
Representatives passed and President Donald Trump signed last June following
disputes over allocating funds to Puerto Rico for the U.S. territory’s own
hurricane recovery efforts.
