Flanked by state lawmakers, Gov. Brian Kemp signs Georgia’s hate-crimes bill into law on June 26, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
Hate crimes will be punishable in Georgia for the first time in 16 years after Gov. Brian Kemp signed legislation Friday that cleared the General Assembly this week amid tense back-and-forth and tears of joy.
Under legislation Kemp signed Friday, prison time could be meted out for those who terrorize or physically harm others based on their race, color, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, sex, gender, or whether they have a physical or mental disability.
The added penalties would be tacked onto charges for felony crimes and certain misdemeanors like assault or theft. The most severe offenses could add up to two years extra behind bars, plus fines.
The new law also requires state officials to keep data on hate crimes committed in the state for statistical purposes, though records of those crimes will be shielded from public viewing except for alleged perpetrators and victims.
At a signing ceremony Friday afternoon, Kemp said the bill’s passage came as a “silver lining” at a time of social unrest and fears over coronavirus in Georgia. It would not solve all the state’s lingering problems with racism but marked “a powerful step forward,” he said.
“Today as we sign this bill into law, we also reaffirm our desire to put progress ahead of politics,” Kemp said. “We must do our part to ensure that our state is a place where all people, no matter their skin color, can live, work and prosper.”
With Kemp’s signature, the bill restores hate-crimes protections enacted in Georgia in 2000 that were stripped out of state law in 2004 by the Georgia Supreme Court, which ruled lawmakers had not clearly defined a hate crime.
Now, Georgia will no longer count among the few remaining states in the U.S. that do not have a hate-crimes law on the books.
The bill, sponsored by Rep. Chuck Efstration, R-Dacula, was hustled though both chambers in the General Assembly on Wednesday after it had stalled for 15 months in the state Senate.
Its passage provoked the legislature’s longest serving member, Rep. Calvin Smyre, to proclaim through tears that it was his finest piece of work as a lawmaker.
“This is a defining moment and this is a great day in the history of our state of Georgia,” said Smyre, D-Columbus, who co-sponsored the bill. “We will never, ever, ever, ever tolerate hate in our state.”
The breakthrough followed the fatal shooting of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old black man who was gunned down during a pursuit by two white men near Brunswick in February. His death fueled protests this month and prompted powerful lawmakers like Georgia House Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge, to intervene in favor of the hate-crimes bill.
But the bill sparked controversy in the Senate when Republican leaders, wary of protesters focusing their anger on law enforcement, moved to include police officers and other first responders as protected classes alongside race and gender.
Last-minute negotiating led Senate lawmakers to strike an accord that kept the first-responder protections in place but moved them to a separate bill that also passed out of the General Assembly.
Leaders from both parties roundly hailed the bipartisan compromise during Friday’s signing ceremony.
“It all started with the opportunity to actually speak with each other and not to close dialogue,” said Sen. Harold Jones, D-Augusta, who led negotiations for Senate Democratic lawmakers. “And I want to tell the citizens of Georgia that your General Assembly is going to be better for this.”
ATLANTA – The Georgia Senate passed a $25.9 billion fiscal 2021 state budget Thursday that would avoid some of the deepest spending cuts lawmakers have been facing amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The budget, which cleared the Senate 40-13 on the next-to-last day of the 2020 legislative session, would reduce state spending by $2.2 billion. That’s substantially less than the legislature’s appropriations committees had been contemplating earlier in the budget review process.
The smaller reduction would allow lawmakers to cancel all furlough days for teachers and state employees and restore some of the painful reductions that had been slated for behavioral and public health, public safety, agriculture, rural hospitals and child welfare services.
The six-member joint House-Senate conference committee that negotiated the budget deal Thursday took advantage of a more optimistic revenue forecast Gov. Brian Kemp released recently after receiving a smaller-than-anticipated decline in tax receipts resulting from the coronavirus-driven recession.
Legislative budget writers also drew down $250 million from the state’s general fund reserves and $50 million from Georgia’s share of the national tobacco settlement to help offset some of the impact of the cuts.
As a result, the budget would reduce state spending across the board by 10%, a significant improvement over the 14% cuts the governor and legislative leaders had ordered up from state agencies.
Still, the conferees were forced to make difficult decisions, said Rep. Terry England, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.
“There was no option but to have to make some of these cuts,” said England, R-Auburn. “They were not done out of malice but out of necessity.”
While the final version of the budget would do away with furloughs for teachers, it still slashes the state’s K-12 student funding formula by more than $900 million.
However, England noted that local school districts will able to offset some of that reduction with about $457 million in federal aid earmarked for Georgia schools in one of the coronavirus-relief measures passed by Congress.
The budget also includes $19.7 million to fully fund six months of Medicaid coverage for low-income new mothers in Georgia. While the General Assembly just passed a bill authorizing the post-partum coverage expansion, the money to pay for the initiative had been in doubt.
The budget conferees also found enough funding to restore grants to county health departments that had been under threat.
But Senate Minority Leader Steve Henson argued the cuts could have been reduced further or eliminated entirely had the Republican-controlled General Assembly not lowered Georgia’s income-tax rate two years ago.
The dismal budget climate was not just the result of the lockdown of Georgia’s economy to discourage the spread of COVID-19, said Henson, D-Stone Mountain.
“The tax cuts of the past have put us in a vulnerable position,” he said.
Meanwhile, lawmakers passed a separate bill earlier Thursday reducing their own annual salaries by 10% to show solidarity with the spending cuts the various state agencies are absorbing. Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, who presides over the Senate, volunteered last week to take a 14% reduction in his yearly pay.
The House will vote on the budget on Friday, the final day of the 40-day legislative session.
ATLANTA – Restaurants, supermarkets and liquor stores would be able to make home deliveries of beer, wine, and distilled spirts in Georgia under a bill that has cleared the General Assembly.
The state House of Representatives gave the legislation final passage 114-45 Thursday, two days after it cleared the Georgia Senate overwhelmingly.
Supporters argued legalizing home delivery of alcoholic beverages is particularly timely in the midst of a global pandemic that has forced Georgians to shelter in their homes.
“COVID-19 has shown we need this in the state of Georgia,” said Rep. Kasey Carpenter, R-Dalton.
As has been the case with other liquor-related legislation the General Assembly has passed in recent years, the home-delivery bill is subject to approval by local voters.
“A local community can say, ‘Not in our town. Not in our city,’ ” said Rep. Brett Harrell, R-Snellville, who introduced the bill into the House.
The Senate loaded up Harrell’s bill with a number of other related provisions as it made its way through that chamber.
It would broaden the so-called “Sunday brunch bill” the legislature passed two years ago allowing restaurants, hotels and wineries to serve alcohol on premises starting at 11 a.m. on Sundays. Under the new bill, the law would be extended to sales of liquor by grocery stores for off-premises consumption.
The legislation also would expand the current law allowing tastings of limited amounts of beer, wine and spirits from wineries and distilleries to package stores.
The measure now goes to Gov. Brian Kemp for his signature.
Power plants in Georgia will no longer be allowed to burn creosote-treated railroad ties to produce electricity under legislation that passed out of the General Assembly Thursday.
The prohibition measure, House Bill 857, originated from complaints by residents in rural areas outside Athens who have been pestered over the past year by foul smells and water pollution emanating from two new biomass plants.
The plants, owned by the Alabama-based utility Georgia Renewable Power, were initially permitted to burn wood chips as an alternative fuel to coal for electricity production. But their permits were later changed to allow for burning wooden railroad ties coated in creosote, which has been linked to some forms of cancer and respiratory problems.
Residents in Madison and Franklin counties, where the plants are located, lobbied hard in recent months to ban the practice, citing health injuries to themselves and nuisance smells. Their cause was taken up by Rep. Alan Powell, R-Hartwell, who sponsored the measure prohibiting creosote-coated ties from being burned.
Sen. John Wilkinson, R-Toccoa, who worked with Powell on the bill, said the ban on creosote ties would address concerns from residents.
“This has become a problem and we feel for the safety of constituents in those counties that we need this bill,” Wilkinson said Thursday.
Sen. Frank Ginn, a former Franklin County manager, said the plants have been an economic boon in the area but never should have been allowed to burn creosote-coated ties. He urged passage of the bill to force the plants to clean up their act.
“I want to send a message,” said Ginn, R-Danielsville.
Representatives of the international utility conglomerate Veolia, which manages the two plants, have pinned blame for the smell and smoke on start-up issues that they assured residents would be quickly eliminated. And backers of the plants have highlighted the alternative-fuels nature of the operation as well as the tax revenues generated from the plants that benefit the counties.
But the show of support was not enough to save the railroad ties. Powell’s bill cleared the state Senate unanimously and now heads to Gov. Brian Kemp’s desk for his signature.
The bill does, however, contain a carve-out for a similar biomass plant located near Dublin that state regulators have given assurances does not burn creosote ties. That plant, run by WestRock, has also been around longer and was not experiencing the same start-up issues as the facilities in Franklin and Madison, according to regulators.
Georgia students would have fewer standardized tests to submit to at the close of each school year under legislation that passed out of the General Assembly Thursday.
The change eliminates four year-end tests in high school and one in the third grade from the trove of assessments required annually for third graders through seniors in Georgia.
State school officials would decide which four tests should be eliminated for high schoolers. Third-grade students would not have to take a social studies assessment.
Senate Bill 367 cleared the state Senate by a unanimous vote after changes were made in the House late last week. It now heads to Gov. Brian Kemp’s desk for his signature.
The version of the bill that passed Thursday is scaled back from its original language, which aimed to give local school officials more leeway in deciding whether the tests should count toward students’ final grades and how to compare results to schools outside Georgia.
Year-end tests currently count for 20% of a student’s grade but members of the state Board of Education could move to revise that percentage if they wanted.
Under the bill, state education officials would be allowed to study whether some tests are redundant and if they could be eliminated. It would also require local school districts to compile data on how their students fared with the testing to compare performance with schools in other states.
Additionally, schools would have to administer tests within 25 days of the end of spring semester for elementary and middle school students, and on a date to be determined by the state Board of Education for high schoolers.
The bill, sponsored by state Sen. P.K. Martin, came after many teachers and school professionals in Georgia urged the governor and state education officials for fewer tests.
Kemp made the bill by Martin, R-Lawrenceville, part of his agenda for the 2020 legislation session that wraps up this week. He has also pushed for rolling back some standardized tests overall in Georgia.
The governor has already taken steps to waive all tests for the upcoming school year amid the coronavirus pandemic. That decision first requires federal approval.
Martin said Thursday that his bill would “serve the students and teachers in the state very well.”
Some House lawmakers expressed skepticism about reducing year-end tests before voting to approve the measure. Rep. Randy Nix, R-LaGrange, worried fewer tests could dampen students’ motivation to score high marks.
“There’s a fine balance between accountability and just doing away with tests,” Nix said at a hearing last week.
But the measure drew support from teacher and school administration associations that have framed the large amount of annual testing as a burden for teachers and students.
Margaret Ciccarelli, legislative services director for the Professional Association of Georgia Educators, touted how Georgia students churned out good work in recent months despite being forced to continue their studies remotely after classrooms shut down due to the virus. “I want to lift that up as a demonstration of commitment and accountability,” Ciccarelli said last
