ATLANTA – A constitutional amendment to legalize online sports betting in Georgia is the only game in town after the state House of Representatives shelved a bill that would not require a constitutional change.
Lawmakers still had not taken up House Bill 86, legalizing sports betting by statute, when the General Assembly’s annual Crossover Day deadline fell shortly before midnight Monday.
With that bill essentially dead for the year, the only sports betting measure left for lawmakers to consider is a constitutional amendment the state Senate passed last week putting the issue on the statewide ballot next year for Georgia voters to decide.
While a coalition of Atlanta’s four professional sports teams was pushing for the House bill, the group is comfortable pursuing the constitutional amendment route, Billy Linville, spokesman for the Georgia Professional Sports Integrity Alliance, said Tuesday.
“We still believe sports betting could be done by statute,” Linville said. “[But] we’re in a strong and positive position. … We’re confident it will move forward.”
The most significant difference between the House bill and the Senate legislation is that constitutional amendments require two-thirds majorities in the House and Senate to pass, while statutes only need simple majorities.
Sports betting cleared that difficult hurdle last week, passing in the Senate 41-10, marking the first time in more than a decade of effort that any expansion of legalized gambling in Georgia beyond the lottery has made it to the floor of either legislative chamber and passed.
“We were not surprised,” Linville said. “This is a popular piece of legislation throughout Georgia. We knew we were in a strong position once we got it to the floor.”
Rep. Ron Stephens, R-Savannah, was the chief sponsor of House Bill 86. But he, too, said Tuesday he believes he can get the constitutional amendment through the House Economic Development & Tourism Committee, which he chairs.
“So many people are more comfortable with pushing this on to voters,” he said. “I’m supremely confident it will come out of committee.”
Stephens said a key reason he favored passing online sports betting by statute is that it could have been put in place quickly, so the state could begin bringing in tax revenue from the proceeds. Going the constitutional amendment route means delaying sports betting until 2023 because it couldn’t be put on the statewide ballot until November 2022.
Under the Senate measure, a state tax of 16% on the proceeds from online sports betting would be divided between need-based scholarships, rural health care and broadband deployment.
“I just hate the loss of that potential revenue,” Stephens said.
An amendment senators approved on the floor of the chamber last week specifies that least 50% of the state’s share of the proceeds from sports betting would be earmarked for needs-based scholarships. The lottery-funded HOPE Scholarships program originally based awards on family income when the lottery was created during the 1990s but soon was converted into strictly a merit-based initiative.
Legislative Democrats pushed for needs-based scholarships to be included in the legislation in order to win their support.
Stephens said needs-based scholarship awards have become increasingly essential as cuts to HOPE awards that began in 2011 have eaten into the tuition coverage it provides. At one time, HOPE covered full tuition, books and fees for eligible students.
“Especially now that HOPE only pays 70% of the scholarship, it’s become a [financial] barrier,” Stephens said.
The constitutional amendment’s Senate supporters also sought to attract votes by putting a provision in the legislation prohibiting bettors from using credit to place bets and limiting the amount of money a bettor could deposit into his or her online account each month.
A major argument against legalizing sports betting has been that it would lead to problem gamblers squandering their paychecks or the family’s grocery money.
“The issue for us was to do what we could with the compulsive gambler to make sure they don’t bet the farm on sports betting,” Stephens said.
With time growing short in the 2021 General Assembly session, Stephens said he plans to bring the Senate legislation before his committee soon.
The Georgia Senate convened to vote on several major bills on voting and elections on March 8, 2021. (Photo by Beau Evans)
The Georgia Senate has struck down a measure aimed at hiking salaries for members of the General Assembly as well as several other top state officials.
The bill, sponsored by Sen. Valencia Seay, D-Riverdale, proposed raising salaries for Georgia elected officials including the lieutenant governor, attorney general, secretary of state, state school superintendent, and the commissioners of agriculture, insurance and labor.
Backers argued the salary increases for state lawmakers would open the General Assembly’s membership to average-earning Georgians and not just more wealthy and retired politicians.
Opponents shot down the measure on Monday’s annual Crossover Day in the General Assembly as less of a priority for lawmakers compared with impactful elections and criminal-justice bills still winding their way through the current legislative session.
The measure failed by a 20-33 vote with most Republican senators and one Democratic senator voting against it.
Under the bill, salaries would have been increased for most statewide positions. The secretary of state’s salary would have risen from about $123,000 to $147,000, and the attorney general’s income would have gone from about $139,000 to $164,000.
The lieutenant governor also would have gotten a salary bump, climbing from about $92,000 to $135,000, according to the bill.
The salary for the speaker of Georgia’s House of Representatives, who is among the state’s most powerful elected officials, would have increased from $99,000 a year to $135,000.
State lawmakers in both chambers, meanwhile, would have earned a salary raise from roughly $17,000 a year to $29,908, marking a cushion aimed at giving more Georgians a chance to seek office and support themselves without financial stress.
A separate but largely identical measure in the House of Representatives sponsored by Rep. Wes Cantrell, R-Woodstock, was scheduled for a vote Monday but did not receive consideration, likely signaling it is dead for the year.
That measure’s chances to advance in the legislature plummeted after the Senate’s vote to scuttle Seay’s bill, despite the pay raises being endorsed by House Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge.
ATLANTA – Georgia Chief Justice Harold Melton Tuesday lifted a suspension of jury trials in Georgia he had imposed for a second time in December.
Melton’s statewide judicial emergency order, the 12th he has issued since the coronavirus pandemic struck Georgia last March, will allow jury trials to resume immediately if it can be done safely and according to a plan developed with input from local judicial officials.
The state’s courts have remained open since Melton issued his initial order a year ago, but jury trials were suspended due to the number of people required to be present at courthouses.
Melton first lifted the suspension of jury trials last October but prohibited them again in December following a spike in COVID-19 cases. Tuesday’s order noted that cases of the virus once again have subsided.
Jury trials are “fundamental to the American justice system,” Melton declared in a public service announcement due to air soon in which he appeals directly to Georgia citizens.
“You and every citizen are critical to this process because we cannot conduct a trial by jury without jurors, without you,” he said. “We have put into place the most rigorous safety protocols available.”
Safety precautions that will accompany jury trials include temperature checks, masks, plexiglas barriers, touch-free evidence technology, constant surface cleaning and the reconfiguration of courtrooms and jury spaces to ensure social distancing.
As with previous judicial emergency orders, Melton urged all courts to use technology to conduct remote judicial proceedings where practicable and lawful as a safer alternative to in-person proceedings.
The new order is set to expire April 8.
Melton is expected to address the judicial system’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic in detail when he delivers his final State of the Judiciary address to a joint session of the General Assembly March 16. The chief justice announced last month he is leaving the court on July 1.
Legislation to extend the statute of limitations for Georgians who were sexually abused as children to sue their abusers years later as adults has cleared the state House of Representatives.
House lawmakers passed the bill unanimously late on Monday’s annual Crossover Day deadline and sent it on to the Georgia Senate.
Sponsored by Rep. Heath Clark, R-Warner Robins, the bill would extend the deadline for victims to bring lawsuits against their childhood abusers from age 23 to 38, an increase from current law but pared back from an earlier version of the bill that set 52 as the cut-off age.
A previous stab by Clark at the bill stalled in the Senate last year as the General Assembly paused the legislative session due to COVID-19.
Speaking from the House floor on Monday, Clark said his bill aims to bring justice for Georgians sexually abused as children and to hold accountable both their abusers and the organizations that turned a blind eye.
“These organizations were breaking the law of Georgia by not reporting the events that were happening under their care,” Clark said. “So we are going after the criminals.”
The bill would let victims sue their alleged abusers up to a year after realizing that past abuse has led to present-day trauma, effective July 1. Research shows adults often tend to recognize the impacts of childhood sex abuse decades after it happened.
Controversially, the bill would also give victims a four-year window to sue public and private organizations like the Catholic Church and the Boy Scouts of America for harboring predators on staff who abused them as children.
Under the bill, victims would have to prove with “clear and convincing” evidence – a high legal hurdle – that those organizations both knew about the abuse and let it happen under their watch.
Lawsuits could only be brought if the abuse happened since July 1, 1983, marking another pull-back from earlier versions of the bill that made abuse that occurred since 1973 subject to litigation.
Trial attorneys have warned opening the lawsuit window for victims decades after their abuse could open a floodgate of litigation in Georgia, noting hundreds of suits were filed in New York shortly after that state passed a similar statute-of-limitations extension in 2019.
Representatives from the Boy Scouts and Catholic Church, which have both been rocked by child sex-abuse scandals in recent years, also previously opposed the bill on grounds that litigation could expose their organizations to huge legal fees.
A measure to create a citizen-led oversight commission for investigating and punishing bad-apple district attorneys in Georgia passed in the state House of Representatives on Monday.
Sponsored by Rep. Joseph Gullett, R-Dallas, the bill would set up a so-called “Prosecuting Attorneys Oversight Commission” to discipline and potentially remove local district attorneys and solicitors-general who abuse their office.
The bill follows controversy over the botched investigation into Ahmaud Arbery’s shooting death by Southeast Georgia prosecutors who had ties to the accused gunmen.
Made up of eight members, the oversight commission would be tasked with evaluating complaints alleging a district attorney’s or solicitor-general’s misconduct in office, incompetence, criminal behavior or mental incapacity.
The commission could then vote to punish the district attorney or solicitor-general by reprimanding them, removing them from office or forcing an early retirement. Commission members could convene in April 2022 and start receiving complaints in July 2023.
Five attorneys appointed by top state officials would serve on an investigative panel as part of the commission. The other three members would include a district attorney, a former judge and a citizen member who would hear evidence from the investigation.
Gullett’s bill passed by a 104-61 vote on Monday night and now heads to the state Senate.
Rep. Stan Gunter, R-Blairsville, a former district attorney in the Enotah Judicial Circuit, said the oversight commission would help weed out “bad apples” among Georgia’s prosecutors.
“A commission would be a good thing to assist the district attorneys in quelling these problems,” Gunter said from the House floor. “This is something we need for those people who can’t control themselves in office.”
Gullett’s bill comes after a local district attorney and attorney general were forced to recuse themselves due to close ties with the accused shooters in the death of Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man who was gunned down by two white men during a confrontation near Brunswick last year.
The lag between the February shooting and the May arrests sparked outrage over Brunswick Judicial Circuit District Attorney Jackie Johnson’s and Waycross Judicial Circuit District Attorney George Barnhill’s handling of the case.
Gullett’s bill also advanced as the House passed a measure Monday to repeal Georgia’s citizen’s arrest law, which was used as a defense for the two accused shooters in the Arbery killing.
The two bills figure as part of a criminal-justice legislative push following Arbery’s death and protests last summer against racial injustice and police brutality.
