Georgia Sen. William Ligon (Credit: Georgia Senate official photo)
ATLANTA – Legislation aimed at protecting the pristine environment of the Satilla River corridor in southeastern Georgia is moving in the General Assembly late in this year’s legislative session.
The House Natural Resources & Environment Committee approved a bill Wednesday that would prohibit landfills from being built within three miles of the river’s highwater mark.
The Satilla, a blackwater river contained wholly within the state of Georgia, is a unique resource for fishing and paddling that draws visitors from across the state, said Sen. William Ligon, R-Brunswick, who introduced the bill into the Senate.
“It’s a winding, slow-moving river … with a lot of wildlife,” Ligon told committee members. “It’s really a state treasure.”
Ligon’s bill was prompted by a controversial proposal to build a landfill in Brantley County in the area the legislation aims to protect.
The measure would not affect that project because it is currently the subject of a lawsuit, Ligon said. However, it would prohibit construction of future landfills in that area, he said.
Ligon noted that the state has invested in the Satilla River corridor by creating a wildlife management area there and funding marsh restoration efforts.
“There are certain areas that are proper for landfills and certain areas that are not,” he said. “You wouldn’t take your garbage can and put it in your living room.”
The committee approved the legislation 12-6, sending it next to the House Rules Committee, which decides which bills go to the full House for a vote.
Supporters will have to move quickly to pass the bill. Wednesday is Day 38 of the 40-day legislative session.
Legislation to increase the fees for storing toxic coal ash at landfills in Georgia passed out of the General Assembly Wednesday.
Senate Bill 123, sponsored by Sen. William Ligon, would raise the fee for coal ash disposal from $1 per ton to $2.50 per ton, matching the fees charged for other items.
The increase is intended to discourage an influx of coal ash being transported to Georgia from power plants in surrounding states.
The bill also erases a carve-out for coal ash disposal the General Assembly passed in 2018 that charged $2.50 per ton for all kinds of waste storage except coal ash, which was set at $1.
The bill by Ligon, R-Brunswick, passed out of the Georgia Senate Wednesday after clearing the state House of Representatives earlier this week. It now heads to Gov. Brian Kemp’s desk for his signature.
Under the bill, 20% of the revenue generated by the coal ash fees would go to local governments for recycling, litter control and improvements to areas adjacent to landfills such as repairs to local roads affected by the hauling of solid waste to landfills and beautification initiatives.
Any contracts effective on Sept. 1, 2020, between landfills and local governments where the dumps are located would not have to adopt the lower fee for coal ash unless the contract was renewed, amended or otherwise changed.
The bill stemmed from concerns by local environmentalists that the lower disposal fee could spur out-of-state power companies to send Georgia massive amounts of coal ash.
The ash, which is the byproduct of burning coal at power plants to generate electricity, can contain compounds causing cancer after long exposure.
Five landfills in Georgia have taken in millions of tons of coal ash since 2017, much of it originating from power plants in Florida and North Carolina, according to state Environmental Protection Division records.
Environmentalists’ concerns come as the state’s top energy producer, Georgia Power, is moving away from storing coal ash in liquid ponds and instead disposing of it in dry landfills. The company has previously touted the economic benefits of recycling coal ash into materials like concrete.
Lawmakers do not appear likely to pass any legislation this year requiring Georgia Power to install impervious lining around every site where coal ash is stored, including ash ponds set for permanent closure in the coming years.
Georgia Power is in the process of closing all 29 of the large pond areas that store coal ash. But environmentalists worry some ash ponds will be sealed in place forever without any protective lining, creating the potential for groundwater contamination.
The power company has insisted its plans for closing the ponds should keep liquid ash from leaching into the groundwater surrounding coal plants.
The General Assembly passed legislation Wednesday to keep in place certain unemployment benefits that were expanded in Georgia during the coronavirus pandemic.
Final passage of Senate Bill 408, by Sen. Brian Strickland, comes as Georgia continues grappling with the economic fallout from coronavirus, which prompted roughly 2 million people to file unemployment claims and shot the state’s jobless rate up to nearly 12% in April.
Amid the pandemic, those who qualified for unemployment benefits were granted leeway to collect payments for up to 26 weeks instead of the usual 14 weeks, and enjoyed a boost in the allowance rate that let them keep up to $300 per week in wages earned – instead of the usual $50 – on top of their benefits.
Those expanded benefits are set to expire once Gov. Brian Kemp ends the state’s public health emergency, which currently runs through June.
“Those provisions are temporary and they will end,” Jeffrey Babcock, the labor department’s legal services manager, told state lawmakers last week.
But language added to the bill by Strickland, R-McDonough, would let the state labor commissioner keep those expanded benefits largely in place, depending on the state’s jobless rate.
“The purpose of this bill is to get some more permanence to that,” Babcock said.
The number of weeks would increase incrementally from 14 weeks when the state’s jobless rate is 4.5% up to 26 weeks when the jobless rate is 10% or higher. The labor commissioner would also have authority to set the weekly deductible threshold at between $50 and $300.
The bill would also grant the labor commissioner powers during a statewide governor-declared emergency to modify the maximum benefit amount and relax rules on claims processing, unemployment insurance tax filing deadlines and work-search reporting.
And the bill would allow the labor commissioner to establish a work-sharing program that lets employers avoid layoffs by reducing their employees’ work hours but giving them prorated unemployment benefits.
The bill passed out of the state Senate by a 49-1 vote Wednesday with Sen. Bill Heath, R-Bremen, voting against. It now heads to Kemp’s desk for his signature.
Originally, Strickland’s bill only proposed to allow employees to continue using earned sick leave for family care beyond July 1, when that provision in state law is set to expire.
Voters wait in line at a precinct in Cobb County on May 18, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
Georgia House lawmakers moved legislation Wednesday that would prohibit the Secretary of State and local elections officials from sending out absentee ballot request forms unless a voter asks for one.
The House Governmental Affairs Committee tacked the proposal onto a measure, Senate Bill 463, that aims to curb wait times at polling places by splitting up large precincts into smaller ones and establishing less restrictive rules for signatures to match what is shown on a voter’s ID card.
The bill was also amended Wednesday to allow poll workers to work in precincts outside the county in which they live and raise the age for moving elderly voters to the front of the line at polling places from 70 to 75 years old.
State lawmakers have been mulling ways to avoid a repeat of the June 9 primary election that drew long lines in several counties largely in the Atlanta area and overwhelmed elections workers struggling to process tens of thousands of absentee ballots in some counties.
An amendment to Senate Bill 463 brought in the House committee would prevent elections officials from sending out “unsolicited absentee ballot applications.”
State law allows any registered voter to request an absentee ballot via an application that can be returned by mail or in person to their county registrar’s office. It is silent on whether elections officials can send out those applications on their own initiative.
But as concerns mounted over coronavirus in March, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger took steps to proactively send absentee request forms to all of Georgia’s nearly 7 million registered voters ahead of the primary. That led to more than 1 million votes cast by mail in the primary, smashing previous state records on absentee voting.
The amendment brought Wednesday would eliminate chances of a repeat scenario in which every Georgian receives an absentee application from the state, though Raffensperger has already said he does not plan to issue those forms again for the Aug. 11 primary runoffs.
Republican lawmakers, who control both chambers in the General Assembly, framed the proposal as needed to curb problems seen in processing huge numbers of absentee ballot request forms during the June 9 primary.
“It is in no way an attempt to remove the ability to vote or request in any manner,” said Rep. Shaw Blackmon, R-Bonaire, who chairs the committee. “It is just a capacity issue.”
But Democratic lawmakers argued the ban would strip the ability of local elections officials to send out mail-in request forms on their own if they wished to do so, particularly as a tool to reduce in-person voting as fears continue over coronavirus.
“This ties the hands of local governments if they want to do that,” said Rep. Renitta Shannon, D-Decatur. “And all we’ve heard in the last couple days is the counties need to get it together.”
Lawmakers on the committee also approved changes to the bill that call for the Secretary of State’s office to set up an online portal for voters to request absentee ballots.
The bill, sponsored Sen. John Kennedy, R-Macon, passed out of the committee by a party-line vote Wednesday and now heads to the full House for a vote.
The Georgia Senate passed legislation Tuesday allowing restaurants, grocery stores and other businesses licensed to sell alcohol to make home deliveries of beer and wine in Georgia.
Senate passage of House Bill 879, sponsored by Rep. Brett Harrell, comes after many Georgians clamored for alcohol deliveries amid recent stay-at-home orders prompted by the coronavirus pandemic.
It cleared the Senate by a 49-9 vote and now heads back to the state House of Representatives.
Grocery stores would include the upscale Whole Foods, which is owned by Amazon and would be able to utilize the internet sales giant’s online vending platform, Senate lawmakers confirmed at a committee hearing last week.
Liquor stores would also be allowed to make deliveries after Senate lawmakers pushed through an amendment to the bill late Tuesday permitting them to do so. Backers of that change said letting liquor stores join the delivery bunch would help many mom-and-pop businesses keep afloat.
Deliveries could only be made by retailers or third-party vendors who are licensed to drive in Georgia, are at least 21-years-old and have completed training on proper deliveries. Recipients would have to show photo ID and sign off for a delivery when it’s brought to their homes.
Businesses making deliveries would also need to follow any local rules that counties and cities have on alcohol sales, including purchase hours and whether restaurants can serve adult beverages. If the bill is passed into law, local governments could still move to ban alcohol deliveries in their own communities.
The measure by Harrell, R-Snellville, comes as restaurants and other food-service businesses in Georgia continue reeling from the economic fallout of coronavirus, which spurred many restaurants to close or lay off workers.
Karen Bremer, chief executive officer of the Georgia Restaurant Association, said at a hearing last week the state’s restaurant industry had lost more than $4.8 billion in sales over the past 15 weeks and saw more than 300,000 restaurant workers lose their jobs.
She called for passage of the deliveries bill to help restaurants recover.
“I think it’s a great piece of legislation,” Bremer said. “It takes care of a lot of issues.”
Kathy Kuzava, president of the Georgia Food Industry Association, also praised the measure last week. She noted grocery stores have seen their delivery sales increase in recent years but particularly since the pandemic took hold, during which some grocers reported deliveries had doubled.
“You are making a lot of customers and retailers happy in the state,” Kuzava said. “Your constituents will be very, very pleased.”
Not everyone has cheered the bill. The Georgia Baptist Mission Board came out against it on grounds it could increase alcohol consumption in the state.
“This is not the expansion of Coca-Colas and Pepsis,” said Mike Griffin, a lobbyist for the board. “This is a different type of beverage.”
