Thousands gathered outside the State Capitol to protest police brutality and racial injustice as lawmakers met for the 2020 legislative session on June 19, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
A repeal of Georgia’s citizen’s arrest law that still allows people to detain suspected criminals in self-defense scenarios advanced in the state House of Representatives on Thursday.
Legislation repealing the slavery-era citizen’s arrest law comes after the death of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man gunned down near Brunswick last year by two white men who suspected him of burglary and tried to undertake a citizen’s arrest.
Sponsored by Rep. Bert Reeves, R-Marietta, the bill has broad support from advocacy groups including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the NAACP, as well as state Democratic leaders.
“We do not want private citizens, untrained, playing police officer,” Reeves said at a House Judiciary (Civil) Committee hearing on Thursday.
The committee passed his bill unanimously and sent it to the full House.
Reeves’ bill would scrap a state law in effect since 1863 that lets private citizens arrest someone who commits a crime in their presence or during an escape attempt, while still permitting off-duty police officers and business owners to detain those believed to have committed a crime on their property.
The changes would not affect Georgia’s self-defense and stand-your-ground laws, which require different legal standards for people to use reasonable force to protect themselves than the broad leeway to detain under the current citizen’s arrest law, Reeves said.
Criminal-justice advocates turned out Thursday to voice support for the bill. The president of the NAACP’s Georgia chapter, Rev. James Woodall, called it “very necessary legislation” that will right longstanding wrongs in Georgia law.
“Ultimately, we think this is a good bill,” Woodall said. “We think it’s good policy and we think it will save lives all across Georgia.”
Marissa Dodson, public policy director for the nonprofit Southern Center for Human Rights, said the bill would end vigilante justice often committed with racist motives that has been allowed to exist in Georgia since during the Civil War.
“We don’t want people to step into the shoes of officers in law enforcement,” Dodson said. “We want people instead to call upon them when it’s necessary.”
Repealing citizen’s arrest is set to be the biggest legislative win this year for Georgia Democrats who have also pressed for clamping down on officer use-of-force tactics, training and accountability after last summer’s nationwide protests against police brutality and racial injustice.
Gov. Brian Kemp talks about five new mass vaccine sites to open in Georgia on March 4, 2021. (Photo by Beau Evans)
Five more mass COVID-19 vaccine sites are set to open in Georgia later this month as teachers and school workers land on the eligibility list March 8, Gov. Brian Kemp said on Wednesday.
The additional vaccine sites add to four other locations that opened last month in metro Atlanta, Macon, Albany and Habersham County. The new sites will open in Savannah, Columbus, Waycross and Bartow and Washington counties.
The five new sites are scheduled to open on March 17 and administer a minimum of 20,000 doses each week with teachers, adults with behavioral and intellectual disabilities and parents of children with complex medical conditions first in line to receive shots.
“I feel like we’re starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel,” Kemp said at a news conference at the state Capitol.
Georgians can pre-register for a vaccine appointment at myvaccinegeorgia.com even if they do not yet qualify under the governor’s eligibility criteria. They will be notified once they qualify and scheduled for an appointment.
The governor traced his optimism to the more-than 2 million vaccines given so far in Georgia and a coming boost of 83,000 weekly doses from the newly approved Johnson & Johnson vaccine. That will bring Georgia’s weekly vaccine shipments to 223,000 doses starting next week.
State officials have faced criticism for Georgia’s slow vaccine distribution since the initial two-dose vaccines started rolling out in December. Kemp has pinned the slow pace to tight vaccine supplies from the federal government.
Batting down criticism on Wednesday, Kemp said more than 860,000 Georgians ages 65 and older have received at least one dose of the vaccine so far, marking about 60% of that vulnerable population.
“I believe that we have done more than most any other state to protect those that are most vulnerable to COVID-19 with the limited supply that has been given to us by the federal government,” Kemp said.
He added state officials are now set to helping local school districts work through how to divvy up vaccines to teachers and staff starting next week. State School Superintendent Richard Woods is set to meet with about a dozen district superintendents about vaccine distribution on Thursday.
The new vaccine sites and shipments come as COVID-19 positive case rates and hospitalizations continue to drop after a spike over the winter holiday season.
Roughly 823,000 people had tested positive for COVID-19 in Georgia as of Wednesday afternoon, with nearly 192,000 more reported positive antigen tests indicating likely positive results. The virus has killed 15,349 Georgians.
The new mass-vaccination sites will be open at the following locations:
Gulfstream Aerospace: 500 Gulfstream Road, Savannah, GA 31408
Columbus Civic Center: 400 4th Street, Columbus, GA 31901
LakePoint Sports Complex: 261 Stars Way, Emerson, GA 30121
Sandersville Word of Life Church: 1214 South Harris St., Sandersville, GA 31082
Waycross Mall: 2215 Memorial Drive, Waycross, GA 31501
The four mass sites already open include:
Delta Flight Museum: 1220 Woolman Place SW, Hapeville, GA 30354
Habersham County Fairgrounds: 4235 Toccoa Highway, Clarkesville, GA 30523
Macon Farmers Market: 2055 Eisenhower Parkway, Macon, GA 31206
Albany branch of the Georgia Forestry Commission: 2910 Newton Road, Albany, GA 31701
ATLANTA – Legislation to no longer count student discipline as a factor in a five-star rating system for schools and school districts cleared the Georgia Senate Wednesday.
The bill passed 39-12 and now moves to the state House of Representatives.
The state decided to include student discipline in the school climate rating system several years ago in an effort to improve poor behavior that was distracting from the learning process, Sen. Jeff Mullis, the bill’s chief sponsor, told his Senate colleagues Wednesday.
But it didn’t work, said Mullis, R-Chickamauga.
“Teachers are a little tired of this,” he said. “Discipline is important in order for other students to learn anything.”
The bill’s backers argued that removing discipline from the rating system would encourage teachers to actually punish misbehaving students. Many schools were failing to mete out discipline for fear a record of it would hurt their rating.
Rather than include discipline in the climate rating – which grades schools and school systems based on health, safety and attendance – Mullis’ bill would require keeping separate data on discipline.
Senators amended the bill on the floor Wednesday to require school districts to post the data on their websites to give parents considering whether to move into a neighborhood easy access to the information.
“We hope and believe discipline will happen because it’s no longer part of the grading of the school system,” Mullis said. “But it will be visible to the parents.”
The bill enjoyed bipartisan backing in the Senate. Democratic cosponsors included Sens. Ed Harbison of Columbus, Freddie Sims of Dawson and Lester Jackson of Savannah.
Legislation aimed at providing special-needs students with state-funded scholarships to attend private schools in Georgia that critics have called a costly voucher plan passed out of the state Senate on Wednesday.
Sponsored by Sen. Steve Gooch, R-Dahlonega, the bill – which passed 30-23 nearly along party lines – would make special-needs scholarships available for students with a wide range of conditions including autism, Down syndrome, behavioral impairments and drug or alcohol abuse.
Students would have to be enrolled in Georgia public schools for at least a year unless they were adopted children, come from military families or faced challenges with online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, Gooch said.
“We believe that during this pandemic and this national emergency, we should not punish the child or the parent, especially those with special needs who were impacted the worst during the lockdown last year,” Gooch said from the Senate floor on Wednesday.
“This is not an open voucher system for Georgia,” he said. “This is limited to special needs children.”
Opponents likened Gooch’s bill to school voucher plans that draw criticism as a drain on state funding for K-12 public schools.
Savvy high-income families could take advantage of loose requirements and oversight in Gooch’s proposal, potentially securing special-needs qualifications with a doctor’s note, said Sen. Elena Parent, D-Atlanta.
“Families with the resources, the know-how and who live in proximity to private schools will be the beneficiaries of the expanded eligibility, while rural and working-class taxpayers will be left footing the bill for a program whose ultimate cost we can’t even accurately tabulate,” Parent said.
“These voucher programs are bad for kids, bad for families, bad for schools and bad for Georgia.”
Gooch and other supporters dismissed the notion scholarships would be harvested by wealthy families that game the system, stressing the focus is on boosting educational opportunities for special-needs children in Georgia.
The bill now heads to the state House of Representatives.
ATLANTA – Georgians and Georgia businesses hit in the wallet by the coronavirus pandemic would get a series of tax breaks under three bills the state House of Representatives passed Wednesday.
Lawmakers voted unanimously to raise the standard deduction Georgia taxpayers can declare on their state income taxes, then overwhelmingly approved two packages of tax credits and sales tax exemptions.
The income tax bill would let married taxpayers filing jointly add $1,100 to the state’s standard deduction, which would increase from $6,000 to $7,100. Single taxpayers would be allowed to deduct an additional $800, and married couples filing separately would get an additional deduction of $550.
More Georgians began taking the standard deduction rather than itemizing their returns after Congress passed legislation at the end of 2017 doubling the federal standard deduction.
“This will affect the most Georgians possible,” said Rep. Chuck Martin, R-Alpharetta, one of the bill’s cosponsors.
The bill would represent a total tax cut of $140 million.
The tax credit bill, which passed 157-14, would provide new state tax credits to Georgia manufacturers of medical devices and pharmaceuticals and to “high-impact” aerospace projects.
The aerospace tax credit would help Georgia take advantage of a “generational opportunity” to land contracts for a new generation of military aircraft that will be rolled out during the next three years, said Rep. Bert Reeves, R-Marietta.
“There is capacity at Lockheed-Martin,” he said. “They’re turnkey ready right now.”
Another provision in the bill would renew a tax credit the state provides for maintenance projects along short-line freight rail lines that otherwise would expire in 2023.
The sales tax exemption bill, which passed 164-6, would extend the sunset date on an exemption on sales of materials used in construction of “projects of regional significance” in Georgia.
The state has only used the exemption for nine projects since 2012, but that work has generated 8,700 jobs, said Rep. Sam Watson R-Moultrie, the bill’s chief sponsor.
The bill also includes a tax exemption on the sale of tickets by performing arts venues across the state, which have lost the vast majority of their business to the pandemic.
“Hopefully, this will help them fill in some holes,” Watson said.
A provision in the bill aimed at Coastal Georgia would remove the sunset provision on a tax exemption on sales of parts used to repair boats.
“We want the big yachts to come to our state to be retrofitted and repaired,” Watson said.
The tax credit and tax exemption measures were titled “The Georgia Economic Renewal Act of 2021” and “The Georgia Economic Recovery Act of 2021,” respectively.
“Our economic renewal and recovery will create jobs and spur growth in several industries in Georgia,” said House Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge.
