State Sen. Clint Dixon (R-Buford) discusses his bills on protections for human-trafficking victims in the Georgia Senate chamber on Feb. 11, 2021. (Photo by Beau Evans)
The Georgia Senate passed two bills Thursday aimed at protecting victims of human trafficking, advancing a key plank of Gov. Brian Kemp’s legislative agenda.
One bill sponsored by state Sen. Clint Dixon, R-Buford, would allow human-trafficking victims to sue their traffickers in civil court for monetary damages.
The other bill, also sponsored by Dixon, would shield human-trafficking victims from public scrutiny if they seek to legally change their names by keeping name-change petitions under seal.
Dixon, a freshman who is one of the governor’s floor leaders in the Senate, said the governor-backed bills aim to protect some of the state’s most vulnerable community members.
“This is an issue that’s crucial to my county and yours … and will help victims of human trafficking,” Dixon said.
Both bills passed unanimously and now head to the House for more voting. Kemp will likely sign them into law should they pass the General Assembly.
The governor has made fighting human trafficking a priority since taking office in 2019, charging the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to crack down harder on traffickers through a multi-agency task force. He also tasked his wife, First Lady Marty Kemp, to lead the trafficking-focused GRACE Commission.
Dixon’s bills follow legislation passed last year that toughened penalties for commercial drivers with human-trafficking criminal convictions and allowed victims to clear their court records of any offenses stemming from activities while they were being trafficked.
Kemp’s agenda this year also includes legislation requiring anyone who seeks a new or renewed commercial driver’s license in Georgia to complete a human-trafficking awareness course.
State officials created a new hotline last September for Georgians to alert law enforcement officers of sexual or labor exploitation and to receive help for victims. Thousands of state government employees have also taken a trafficking-awareness course during the past year on how to spot abuse.
The number for the state’s human-trafficking hotline is 1-866-ENDHTGA.
ATLANTA – The General Assembly gave final passage Thursday to a $26.5 billion fiscal 2021 mid-year budget that covers state spending through June 30.
The state House of Representatives passed the spending plan 165-4. The Georgia Senate then approved it unanimously less than an hour later.
While lawmakers signed off on most of the spending recommendations Gov. Brian Kemp made last month, legislative leaders worked with the governor to add $60 million to provide one-time $1,000 raises to more than 57,000 state employees earning less than $80,000 per year.
According to a statement the University System of Georgia released Friday, income-eligible system employees also will receive the bonuses.
Kemp’s original mid-year budget already had earmarked $1,000 raises for Georgia teachers and school staff including cafeteria workers, custodians and resource personnel.
Front-line state workers including public health nurses, troopers, road crews and child welfare caseworkers deserve raises after stepping up during the coronavirus pandemic, said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Terry England.
“They don’t have the option to only be virtual,” said England, R-Auburn. “They have to have face-to-face contact. … Their jobs aren’t glamorous. But they’re there every day.”
Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia, said the $1,000 bonuses will be funded by a mix of federal dollars and savings from higher Medicaid payments the federal government has been making amid the pandemic.
The mid-year budget, which now heads to Kemp for his signature, restores $567 million of $950 million in cuts to K-12 schools the General Assembly imposed last year as state tax revenues slowed due to the economic impact of the pandemic. Another $73.6 million will go to restore cuts lawmakers made to the University System of Georgia.
The legislature also supported the governor’s recommendation for $20 million to expand broadband service in rural Georgia.
As the mid-year spending plan went through the review process, lawmakers added funds to support 10% raises for correctional officers in both the state prison and juvenile detention systems to help stem alarming turnover rates.
The final version of the mid-year budget also includes additions of $40 million to buy 520 new school buses and $11 million in bond funds repurposed to help the state Department of Public Health train workers in providing COVID-19 vaccines and vaccine reservations.
Lawmakers added $3 million to the $1 million already appropriated to help Georgia’s tourism industry recover following the pandemic. Most of the additional funds will go to the Georgia World Congress Center, which lost all of its convention business to the virus, England said.
The House and Senate also agreed to add $455,000 for domestic violence and assault centers and set aside $100,000 to help the Georgia Department of Labor deal with a huge influx of unemployment claims brought on by the pandemic. The money will be used to hire a chief labor officer to oversee claims and financial audits.
Georgia lawmakers quickly heard then shelved a bill Wednesday aimed at bringing more real-time scrutiny to state tax incentives before they gain approval from the General Assembly.
The bill, sponsored by state Sen. Sheikh Rahman, D-Lawrenceville, would require measures that create or change tax incentives to include an economic analysis that examines the proposal’s impact on state revenues, spending, overall economic activity and the public interest.
Tax-credit bills would have to obtain the analysis before they could clear the state legislature and pass into law, ending the tradition of bringing tax measures at the last minute that squeak through the legislature without substantial scrutiny.
“These expenditures need to be analyzed to see if they will accomplish their stated goal,” Rahman said. “We really don’t know exactly [about economic impacts] unless we have mandated that we need to have fiscal notes.”
Lawmakers on the state Senate Finance Committee did not vote on the bill Wednesday. They also did not vote on an income-tax credit bill aimed at benefitting low-income Georgians and small businesses sponsored by state Sen. Elena Parent, D-Atlanta.
The committee’s chairman, state Sen. Chuck Hufstetler, R-Rome, did not call any votes on the bills Wednesday. He has been among the few Republican state lawmakers to call publicly for closing tax-break loopholes and raising new revenues instead of cutting state spending amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Proposals on tax breaks, credits, exemptions and exclusions routinely crop up in the final hours of Georgia legislative sessions, flying under the radar as lawmakers give a weary thumbs up after months of bill-wrangling.
Rahman’s bill would require tax-break measures and their amendments that do not receive tailor-made economic analyses to be halted before they can move forward in the legislative process. Measures without an analysis that pass the General Assembly would be repealed, according to the bill.
Hufstetler, an anesthetist who has chaired the Finance Committee since mid-2019, said he was concerned Rahman’s bill could force the state auditor to turn around large numbers of tax-break analyses at the last minute during legislative sessions.
“What if [the state auditor] gets 500 bills?” Hufstetler said. “I like the idea, don’t get me wrong…. We are all over the map of when something gets close scrutiny and when something doesn’t.”
Despite his skepticism Wednesday, Hufstetler has called recently for shining more light on Georgia’s $9.5 billion tax-incentive structure, particularly after the COVID-19 pandemic battered state tax collections so badly last year it prompted $2.2 billion in state-agency spending cuts.
Hufstetler has also publicly backed hiking the state’s tax on tobacco products from the current 37 cents a pack to the national average of $1.81, a move capable of raising an estimated $700 million in additional revenues per year.
So far, lawmakers in the Republican-controlled General Assembly have only advanced a measure by state Sen. John Albers, R-Roswell, to audit five tax-credit programs each year on a rotating basis. They have not shown interest yet in levying higher taxes on cigarette purchases.
President Donald Trump rallied for Republican U.S. Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler ahead of the Senate runoff elections in Dalton, Georgia, on Jan. 4, 2021. (Photo by Beau Evans)
Fulton County authorities have launched an investigation into alleged attempts to influence Georgia’s 2020 elections including a call former President Donald Trump made in January pressuring state election officials to overturn his losing results.
In a letter sent Wednesday, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis notified several state officials her office is investigating possible illegal acts of soliciting election fraud, false statements, conspiracy and racketeering stemming from the Nov. 3 general election.
Trump, who is not mentioned by name in the letter, made a series of widely publicized phone calls in the waning days of his tenure to Georgia officials including Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to reverse his 11,779-vote loss in the state to current President Joe Biden.
The call has since become part of a second round of impeachment proceedings leveled at Trump over alleged moves to influence the 2020 elections and incite violence among supporters who rioted at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
Willis, who defeated former longtime Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard last summer, said in her letter investigators would soon start issuing subpoenas ahead of empaneling a grand jury in March.
Her letter was sent to several state officials who had contact with subjects of the investigation including Raffensperger, Gov. Brian Kemp, Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr and members of the General Assembly. It was obtained by Capitol Beat News Service and other news outlets on Wednesday.
“I know we all agree that our duty demands that this matter be investigated and, if necessary, prosecuted in a manner that is free from any appearance of conflict of interest or political considerations,” Willis said.
“The Fulton County District Attorney’s office will conduct itself in a manner that will build public confidence in our elections, our law enforcement system and our judicial process.”
Trump’s claims of election fraud in Georgia were roundly rejected by federal courts and Republican officials including Raffensperger and Kemp, who quickly became targets of the former president’s anger.
Several Republican-led hearings were held in the General Assembly in the weeks after the Nov. 3 that allowed former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani – Trump’s personal attorney at the time – and others to air a host of fraud claims that went largely unchecked.
Despite lacking evidence, the fraud claims have prompted Republican state lawmakers to prepare a package of bills in the 2021 legislative session aimed at boosting requirements for Georgians to prove their identity to vote by mail, following record numbers of absentee ballots cast in the 2020 elections.
Gov. Brian Kemp (at podium), unveiled $1,000 bonuses for state employees on Feb. 10, 2021, while flanked by Georgia House Speaker David Ralston (left), Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan (right) and top-ranking General Assembly lawmakers. (Photo by Beau Evans)
ATLANTA – Georgia officials unveiled plans Wednesday to give $1,000 bonuses to a large chunk of state government employees amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The one-time supplemental payments would go to around 57,000 state workers making salaries less than $80,000 annually, adding to $1,000 checks Gov. Brian Kemp has already pledged this year for K-12 public school teachers and staff.
Kemp joined Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, Georgia House Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge, and top General Assembly budget writers Wednesday to announce the one-time checks.
“We have worked long beside one another during this pandemic,” Kemp said at the state Capitol in Atlanta Wednesday. “And we will continue to do that.”
State officials gave few details Wednesday on how the bonus would be paid other than it would entail $59.6 million to be included in the state’s mid-year budget.
Georgia Senate lawmakers passed the $26.5 billion amended 2021 budget Tuesday, sending it back to the state House for final revisions where the $1,000 checks will be added, according to Ralston.
“We wanted to extend that $1,000 bonus beyond our teachers to many of our front-line state employees who have also served our citizens through the worst days of this pandemic,” Ralston said.
The bonus would benefit state public-health workers, state troopers, labor department employees, food inspectors, child-support caseworkers and staff from other state agencies.
It would not, however, go to employees under the state Board of Regents — which oversees Georgia’s public college and university system — as well as “some state authorities,” Ralston said. He did not elaborate on those authorities.
House and Senate lawmakers still have to finalize the mid-year budget before moving on to the fiscal 2022 budget that funds state agencies and public schools throughout the fiscal year that starts July 1.
Kemp has directed budget-writers to avoid any spending cuts similar to the $2.2 billion reductions imposed last year as the pandemic pummeled Georgia’s economy. State revenues have since rebounded for officials to craft upcoming agency budgets with a rosier outlook.
