ATLANTA – Legalizing
sports betting in Georgia would convert what’s already going on illegally into
a regulated activity that would offer greater protection for consumers and much-needed
tax revenue for the state, supporters said Tuesday.
Top
executives with Atlanta’s pro sports teams and gaming industry lobbyists urged
the state Senate’s Regulated Industries Committee to pass legislation to allow
sports betting online and steer a portion of the proceeds to education.
The bill,
sponsored by Sen. Burt Jones, is modeled after Tennessee, which recently took
advantage of a 2018 U.S. Supreme Court ruling allowing states to legalize
sports betting by setting up an online sports book in the Volunteer State.
Jones,
R-Jackson, argued the Georgia Lottery has become financially strapped in recent
years as increasing demand for lottery-funded HOPE scholarships has outstripped
the growth of ticket sales. The General Assembly passed legislation in 2011
that has gradually reduced the percentage of tuition HOPE covers for all but
the highest-achieving students.
“If we don’t
do something to evolve the lottery system … we’re going to be in a situation 10
years from now that’s almost desperate,” Jones said.
The CEOs of
the Atlanta Braves, Hawks and Falcons testified they need sports betting to better
connect with a younger fan base increasingly fixated on their digital gadgets.
“The future
of being a sports fan is about having dialogue with your team,” Braves CEO
Derek Schiller said.
“It’s about
engagement, having something to do while watching a game, multi-tasking,” added
Hawks CEO Steve Koonin.
Stacie
Stern, manager of government affairs for FanDuel, which has expanded its online
business from fantasy sports into sports betting, said legalizing sports
betting in Georgia would add a level of consumer protection not available as
long as the activity remains illegal. She said bettors would have to set up an
account and fund it, so they couldn’t run up a huge credit card bill.
“Bettors are
not betting with a digital equivalent of an IOU,” Stern said.
Jones’ bill
also would require bettors to be at least 21 years of age. Companies offering
apps under Georgia’s sports betting program would be required to have
“geofencing” technology to ensure all betting takes place inside the state.
It’s unclear
whether legalizing sports betting in Georgia would require a constitutional
amendment. Jones introduced one several days after putting in his sports
betting bill as a precaution.
But on
Tuesday, Atlanta lawyer Robert Highsmith told committee members the legislation
creating the Georgia Lottery specifically prohibited casinos and pari-mutuel on
horse racing but said nothing about sports betting.
“If you can
offer Keno on an app, surely a sports book isn’t a far departure from that,” he
said.
The
committee did not vote on Jones’ bill Tuesday. With the General Assembly headed
toward “Crossover Day” next week, the deadline for bills to pass at least one
legislative chamber, the panel likely would have to vote on the measure at its
next meeting Thursday in order to keep it alive.
ATLANTA – A popular program allowing dual enrollment in high school and college classes in Georgia would get new restrictions under legislation that gained final passage in the General Assembly Tuesday.
Supporters of House Bill 444, introduced by state Rep. Bert Reeves, say the amount the state spends for high school students to take an array of college classes has grown too large to keep the program financially afloat.
Reeves, R-Marietta, has pointed out costs for the program allowing high-school students to take post-secondary classes have swelled from around $23 million in 2015 to as high as around $140 million projected for the 2021 fiscal year.
During that time, Reeves said the program
has stretched far beyond the boundaries of its original intent, which was to
better prepare Georgia students for higher learning and professional training.
“Its goal was never to replace high
school with college,” Reeves said from the floor of the House of
Representatives on Tuesday. “Its goal was to let students get a jump-start.”
Reeves’ bill would cap dual enrollment at 30 hours per year for most students and scrap several course offerings that do not deal with core subjects, such as aerobics classes.
College-level classes would also be nixed
for freshman high schoolers and 10th graders would be limited to courses at
technical schools only unless they qualify for the state’s Zell Miller
scholarship, which requires students to maintain a 3.7 grade point average or
better.
Only upper-class students in the 11th and
12th grades could take classes at college and universities in Georgia.
The bill would grandfather in many
students currently participating in the program but would set limits on others
who have already signed up for a heavy course load for this summer.
Overall, the proposed changes would rein
in the program enough to keep it within a roughly $100 million budget for this
year, Reeves said.
House lawmakers passed the measure
Tuesday by a 103-67 vote that fell mostly along party lines. It now heads to
Gov. Brian Kemp’s desk for his expected signature.
Some Democratic lawmakers questioned
whether the hours cap is needed since the dual-enrollment program only eats a
small fraction of the state’s education budget.
Rep. Brenda Lopez Romero, D-Norcross,
noted the program’s costs represent less than 2% of all K-12 and higher
education spending in the state.
“This is not a runaway program,” Lopez
Romero said Tuesday.
Backers insist the belt-tightening will
make a big dent, particularly as lawmakers look to trim the state budget amid
sluggish tax revenues and lingering impacts on the agriculture industry from
Hurricane Michael in 2018.
“This is a way to keep this great program
functioning and not come unglued with runaway costs,” said Rep. Ed Setzler,
R-Acworth.
Reeves’ bill has support from Kemp, who
also backs separate legislative efforts to reduce the number of standardized
tests students in Georgia need to take each year.
Kemp, in a mid-January statement, said the enrollment limits would help preserve the program for students across the state as an “opportunity to learn skills that prepare them for a successful career” in Georgia.
CORRECTION: This story previously stated that costs for Georgia’s dual enrollment program stood at around $140 million in 2018. That dollar amount is in fact the high-end projected figure for the 2021 fiscal year, according to Sen. Bert Reeves.
ATLANTA – Nearly 250,000 state employees, including 132,000
educators, would be able to take up to three weeks of paid parental leave under
legislation introduced into the Georgia House of Representatives Tuesday.
The bill would apply to parents following the birth of a
child of their own, an adopted child or a foster-care placement. It’s modeled
after a policy the House adopted for its employees last summer and since embraced
by the state Senate, House Speaker David Ralston said. Any state employee with
six months of creditable service would be eligible, regardless of gender.
“We in the House believe in a culture of life in Georgia,”
said Ralston, R-Blue Ridge. “That includes giving families time to welcome new
additions into their home.”
Rep. Houston Gaines, R-Athens, the bill’s chief sponsor,
said the measure also would help the state attract and retain quality employees.
Many other states and private businesses offer parental paid leave to their
employees.
“As we seek to recruit and retain the best and
brightest employees to serve Georgia’s citizens, this is an important step in
helping our employees maintain a healthy work-life balance,” Gaines said.
Ralston said setting paid parental leave at three
weeks is an idea the House borrowed from some of Georgia’s biggest private companies,
including Home Depot and Coca-Cola. He said he hopes smaller businesses will
see what the state is doing and follow suit.
“Our goal is not to dictate to the private sector,” he
said. “Hopefully, they will draw inspiration from this.”
If the General Assembly passes the bill and Gov. Brian
Kemp signs it, the measure would take effect July 1.
ATLANTA – The Georgia House of Representatives overwhelmingly
passed legislation Tuesday aimed at ending “surprise billing” in Georgia, unexpected
medical charges that can add up to thousands of dollars and bankrupt families.
The bill primarily would affect unexpected bills for
services a patient receives at a hospital inside their insurance plan’s network
from an out-of-network specialist such as a radiologist or anesthesiologist. The
Georgia Senate unanimously passed similar legislation last week.
However, the version of the bill the House approved 164-4 on
Tuesday also would apply to emergency services a patient receives from a
hospital outside of his or her insurance plan’s network, said Rep. Lee Hawkins,
R-Gainesville, the House measure’s chief sponsor.
“It cleans up a lot of in-network and out-network obstacles
for the patient,” Hawkins said.
Both the House and
Senate bills would require insurance companies to pay out-of-network physicians
either a contracted amount based on rates charged in 2017 for various
procedures, or a higher charge the patient’s insurance company proposes.
Disputes between
the insurer and provider would trigger an arbitration process overseen by the
state Department of Insurance, which would contract with outside arbitrators to
decide the final bill.
Lobbyists for
Georgia insurers, hospitals, physicians and consumer advocates have been
working for five years to come up with language all sides could agree on.
Hawkins said House Bill 888 is the result of those efforts.
Also on Tuesday,
the House passed a second measure addressing surprise billing. The legislation,
which passed 170-1 and now moves to the state Senate, would set up a rating
system patients could use to determine which physician specialty groups in
their insurance plan’s provider network serve a given hospital.
“We’re trying to shed a light of transparency on these plans,” said Rep. Mark Newton, R-Augusta, chairman of the House Special Committee on Access to Quality Health Care and the bill’s chief sponsor.
Newton’s bill
would apply to anesthesiologists, pathologists, radiologists and emergency room
doctors, the specialists typically responsible for the most cases of surprise
billing.
Under the
legislation, when an insurance company advertises a hospital as in its coverage
network, the insurer would have to disclose that hospital’s “surprise bill
rating.” If that rating is less than four, the insurer would be required to
disclose which of the four specialties are not in its network.
Senate Education Chairman P.K. Martin sponsored a bill to reduce the number of required school tests in Georgia. (Official Georgia Senate photo)
ATLANTA – The Georgia Senate passed legislation Tuesday to reduce the number of standardized tests the state’s public school students must take each year.
Under Senate Bill 367, five tests would be scrapped including exams in American literature, geometry, physical science and economics.
The bill passed unanimously out of the
Senate and now heads to the state House of Representatives.
Its sponsor, Senate Education Committee
Chairman P.K. Martin, said too much testing is the top concern he hears from
students and educators in Georgia.
“This places too much pressure on our
students [and] on our teachers,” Martin, R-Lawrenceville, said from the Senate
floor.
Besides fewer tests, the legislation
would require the remaining tests to be given within 25 days of the school
year’s end instead of at any time, so that teachers could focus more on
teaching class subjects rather than preparing for exams.
Additionally, the changes would allow
school districts to discontinue a practice of comparing Georgia’s testing
standards with other states and let them abstain from “formative assessments”
meant to see how much students learned in a school year.
Representatives from several teachers’
groups voiced support for the bill last month at a Senate committee hearing,
including the Professional Association of Georgia Educators and the Georgia
Association of Educators (GAE).
State School Superintendent Richard Woods
also supports fewer exams and has given assurances the Georgia Department of
Education will make sure less testing does not hurt student performance.
The bill’s passage in the Senate advances
a key plank of Gov. Brian Kemp’s agenda in this year’s legislative session. He
has made rolling back some standardized tests in Georgia a key component of
changes he wants to see for the state’s public schools.
The bill’s move to the House also follows
Senate passage of a measure that would cap participation in the state’s popular
dual enrollment college credit program. That measure, House Bill 444, proposes
limiting enrollment to 30 hours per eligible student to prop up the program’s
struggling finances.
The dual-enrollment bill, sponsored by Rep. Bert Reeves, R-Marietta, passed out of the Senate in late January by a 34-18 vote.
