ATLANTA – Legislation extending COVID-19 liability protection to Georgia businesses and hospitals until July 14 of next year cleared the state House of Representatives Tuesday.
Lawmakers voted 99-68 along party lines to extend the sunset on a bill the General Assembly passed last June shielding businesses and health-care facilities in Georgia from lawsuits brought by people who contract COVID-19 in all but the worst negligence or recklessness cases.
Majority Republicans argued businesses are still struggling to keep their doors open amid the ongoing pandemic.
“While they’re being attacked by the virus, what we don’t need is for them to be attacked by frivolous lawsuits,” said House Majority Whip Trey Kelly, R-Cedartown, the bill’s chief sponsor.
But Democrats countered that while the legislation looks out for the interests of Georgia businesses, it doesn’t protect essential workers forced to stay on the job at the risk of exposure to the virus.
“They have sustained our economy throughout the pandemic, yet we have no protections in place for these workers … forced to work in unsafe conditions,” said Rep. Bee Nguyen, D-Atlanta.
Rep. Matthew Wilson, D-Brookhaven, said the legislation is unnecessary.
“We haven’t had waves of lawsuits crippling our small businesses,” he said. “There hasn’t been a single recovery.”
Kelley responded that his bill will help the very front-line workers Democrats were defending because keeping businesses open means they will keep getting paychecks.
“Who’s going to take up for these employees when they don’t have any jobs to go to?” he asked.
Rep. Jesse Petrea, R-Savannah, said the liability shield also protects Georgia hospitals and other health-care facilities as they struggle to maintain bed capacity and distribute COVID-19 vaccines.
“This measure will allow health-care providers to continue to stay focused on the most vulnerable in our society,” he said.
Last year’s legislation extends COVID-19 liability protection only through July 14 of this year. The proposed one-year extension now moves to the state Senate.
Georgia Senate members take the oath of office on the first day of the 2021 legislative session on Jan. 11, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
The Georgia Senate unanimously passed a $26.5 billion mid-year budget Tuesday to fund state-run public health, police and schools through June 30, adding more money for initiatives to fight the COVID-19 pandemic and boost broadband internet in rural areas.
The mid-year budget leans on federal COVID-19 relief funds to plug spending gaps in education, public health and other agencies.
The Senate version of the mid-year budget largely mirrors the spending recommendations Gov. Brian Kemp unveiled last month, which avoids imposing additional cuts after shrinking agency budgets by $2.2 billion last June due to the pandemic.
Along with no reductions, the mid-year budget restores more than half of the $950 million cut from K-12 public schools last year. The remaining shortfall will be covered with federal funds to keep school budgets stable.
State House lawmakers backed Kemp’s proposals to add $20 million for expanding broadband internet in rural Georgia, more than $38 million to buy 500 new school buses and $500,000 to jump-start the state’s new hemp farming and medical cannabis initiatives.
Senate lawmakers kicked in more money for state public-health officials to fight the pandemic, slotting in $27 million for epidemiology programs and a vaccine-scheduling system. Five new pandemic-focused jobs would be added to the state Department of Public Health, up from three jobs the House added.
The Senate-passed budget also hands the governor $7.5 million extra in emergency funds to battle the virus and would give state prison guards and juvenile corrections officers a 10% salary raise starting April 1, tapping into savings from eliminating vacant staff positions.
“I think this is a budget we can be proud of,” said Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia. “It certainly is a lot better position than we were facing this time last year.”
Though it received unanimous approval, the budget drew criticism from Democratic state senators for not including more money for public-health services and leaving no room for lawmakers to raise revenue by clamping down on tax breaks and increasing the state’s cigarette tax.
“We believe – I believe – we should have done more,” said Senate Minority Leader Gloria Butler, D-Stone Mountain. “The politics of the day do not drive our best thinking and our best policy and budget-making decisions.”
The mid-year budget now heads back to the House for a final vote before heading to Kemp’s desk for his signature. Lawmakers will then set to hammering out a budget for fiscal 2022.
A bill to limit how local governments in Georgia can impose what energy sources their businesses, houses and other buildings can use faced debate in a state House committee on Monday.
Sponsored by state Rep. Bruce Williamson, R-Monroe, the bill would block city and county governments from prohibiting service connections to local houses and businesses “based upon the type or source of energy or fuel to be delivered.”
It is identical to a separate bill introduced Monday in the General Assembly’s other chamber by state Sen. John Kennedy, R-Macon.
Monday’s debate in a House Energy, Utilities and Telecommunications subcommittee set up a battle between city, county and state leaders over what building-code rules local officials can pursue to reduce harmful future climate change caused by fossil fuels like oil and natural gas.
Supporters say the bill’s legal protections would block local city and county governments from demanding what energy sources local communities can use for their homes and businesses, particularly benefitting farmers who are now struggling to adapt in a changing fuel-consumption market.
“We do not support the government’s picking winners and losers,” said Alex Bradford, the state affairs coordinator with the Georgia Farm Bureau. “This legislation would give some continuity of fairness across the state in ensuring the availability of affordable and reliable energy for our farmers and agriculture.”
Opponents argue the bill would strip local governments like Atlanta, Athens and Savannah of their ability to honor pledges they’ve made recently on curbing carbon emissions to offset the anticipated destructive future impacts of global warming.
“This bill … seems to anticipate Georgia turning into California,” said Jenette Gayer, director of the nonprofit Environment Georgia.
“I’d urge the committee … to let our communities move forward with crafting a new and exciting energy future in our own very unique Georgia way that many of us probably can’t even imagine today.”
Representatives from several local governments also joined Monday’s committee hearing to voice their opposition to potential attempts by state lawmakers to interfere in the affairs of local authorities.
“This measure begins with a dirty word, especially for a place like Savannah: ‘Prohibition,’” said Nick Palumbo, a Savannah alderman. “Let’s keep the market open to allow cities … the option to choose.”
Williamson, the bill’s sponsor, said it would “put the brakes” on local governments from blocking energy sources to free up consumer choice for fuel consumption and possibly lower prices for fuels like natural gas.
“This measure would give Georgians a resilient path for low energy pricing,” Williamson said. “It gives Georgia consumers freedom of choice … as energy sources are kept low by the competitive forces at work.”
State Rep. Chuck Martin, R-Alpharetta, who chairs the subcommittee, said the bill will likely get a vote later this week before potentially moving to the full committee and the House floor.
ATLANTA – Two Middle Georgia utilities and a Kansas City-based fiber optic company announced a partnership Monday that will bring broadband service to homes and businesses in 18 mostly rural counties.
Central Georgia EMC, Southern Rivers Energy and Conexon will invest more than $210 million to design and build a 6,890-mile fiber network that will provide both improved electric service and high-speed internet access to all 80,000 of the two utilities’ customers. Service is expected to begin as early as June 2021 and continue rolling out during the next four years.
State and local political and business leaders have long identified the lack of broadband connectivity in many parts of rural Georgia as instrumental in holding back rural communities.
The coronavirus pandemic, which has forced many students out of their classrooms to rely on online instruction and hamstrung rural companies trying to conduct business, has given the need for high-speed internet even greater urgency.
“Many economic, medical and other challenges facing rural Georgia can not be fixed by a top-down, one-size-fits-all approach,” Gov. Brian Kemp said during Monday’s announcement at the Georgia Capitol. “[It takes] EMCs, private partners and community leaders working together on creative solutions to close the gap between those with internet service and those without.”
Although a couple of Georgia’s electric membership cooperatives have been providing broadband service for years, the General Assembly first authorized the EMCs to enter the broadband business just two years ago. Since then, EMCs in the North Georgia mountains, West Georgia and South Georgia have launched broadband projects.
Under the deal announced Monday, Central Georgia EMC and Southern Rivers Energy will own the fiber and lease excess capacity to Conexon, which has agreed to serve every EMC customer with fiber-to-the-home internet speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second.
The internet service will be powered by EMC fiber, but Conexon will provide the retail service to homes and businesses and manage account set-up, customer service and billing.
The 18 counties to be served through the partnership announced Monday are Bibb, Butts, Clayton, Coweta, Crawford, Fayette, Henry, Jasper, Jones, Lamar, Meriwether, Monroe, Morgan, Newton, Pike, Putnam, Spalding, and Upson.
“We are marking today this investment not only in rural broadband but in the future of this state,” said House Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge. “This investment will bring the latest generation of fiber optic high-speed broadband to the doorstep of every resident of this region.”
A state Senate committee debated a measure Monday to limit terms for Georgia House and Senate members to 12 years total, as well as doubling the term for state senators from two to four years.
A constitutional amendment proposed by Sen. Greg Dolezal, R-Cumming, would set term limits for state House members at six two-year terms and for senators at three four-year terms. The limits would kick in starting after the 2024 elections.
Currently, both House and Senate lawmakers in Georgia have unlimited recourse to seeking two-year terms. Dolezal’s resolution would also limit Georgia’s lieutenant governor to two four-year terms instead of the current unlimited tenure.
“Term limits are something that have bipartisan support in every state of the union,” Dolezal told members of the Senate Government Oversight Committee Monday.
“The only thing that people seem to agree on is that we should come down here, accomplish our work [and] have it be a season of our life as opposed to perhaps the entire book of our life.”
No votes were taken on the constitutional-amendment on Monday. If it clears committee, both chambers in the General Assembly would have to pass it by a two-thirds vote. It would then be placed on the ballot for Georgia voters to decide.
The resolution met with pushback Monday from freshman state Sen. Nikki Merritt, D-Grayson, who argued term-limited state lawmakers might be more swayed by lobbyists during their final years in office without the incentive of seeking reelection.
“To me, they’d just be more indebted to lobbyists,” Merritt said. “I just don’t feel like they would be as motivated toward the end of their terms to serve their constituents as effectively.”
Dolezal said his resolution aims to oust career politicians from the state Capitol and curb the “influences with an outsized advantage” when wealthy groups and lobbyists back long-tenured state lawmakers who gain political influence over the years.
This story originally attributed a quote incorrectly to Sen. Sonya Halpern. It has been revised to correctly attribute the quote to Sen. Nikki Merritt.
