ATLANTA – The Georgia House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed legislation Friday tightening monitoring requirements for ash generated by coal-burning power plants.
But the 161-2 vote came despite concerns some House Democrats expressed over the way the state regulates coal ash ponds.
House Bill 647, which now moves to the state Senate, would require groundwater monitoring at ash ponds that have been closed to continue for 50 years after the closure is completed. A bill the House passed last year that didn’t make it through the Senate would have limited the monitoring to 30 years.
Coal ash contains contaminants including mercury, cadmium and arsenic that can pollute groundwater and drinking water. Long-term exposure has been linked to a variety of cancers.
Atlanta-based Georgia Power has been working since 2015 on a multi-year plan to close all 29 of its coal ash ponds at 11 power plants across Georgia to meet both state and federal regulations for handling coal ash. While the utility plans to excavate and remove the ash from 19 of those ponds, the other 10 are to be closed in place.
For the most part, minority Democrats voted for the bill Friday in the Republican-controlled House. But several complained that Georgia Power is not being required to liners for the 10 ponds that are being closed in place to prevent contamination of drinking water supplies serving communities near the plants.
The utility is being sued by residents of Juliette who claim coal ash stored in an unlined pond at nearby Plant Scherer has contaminated groundwater around the site.
Contamination from coal ash also has turned up on property offsite from Georgia Power’s Plant McDonough in Cobb County.
Rep. Debbie Buckner, D-Junction City, said the state’s disposal requirements for coal ash are less stringent than for disposal of household garbage, which must be stored in lined landfills.
“An estimated 92 million tons [of coal ash] are being stored in Georgia in unlined ponds,” she said. “These toxic substances can seep into groundwater or flow into streams and cause disastrous contamination.”
“Lengthening the monitoring period acknowledges there is a problem with capping storage [ponds] rather than removing and excavating the material,” added Rep. Karla Drenner, D-Avondale Estates.
But Rep. Timothy Barr, R-Lawrenceville, who chairs the House subcommittee that reviewed the bill this week, said both the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Georgia Environmental Protection Division classify coal ash as a “non-toxic” waste.
“Emotionally, we don’t do what we feel is right but look to the science,” he said. “The EPA and EPD are the experts.”
The Georgia Senate shelved a bill Friday aimed at helping the state Department of Labor dole out long-delayed unemployment benefits during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The bill, sponsored by Sen. Marty Harbin, R-Tyrone, would create the position of chief labor officer in the state agency responsible for speeding up distribution of unemployment benefits.
Harbin scrapped his bill without a vote Friday after pushback from opponents worried an appointed labor chief might usurp power from the state’s labor commissioner, which is an elected position.
Harbin pledged to work on helping ease Georgia’s steep backlog of processing unemployment claims by “seeing if we could get that done without going through the process” of installing a new labor official.
Under the bill, the chief labor officer would have been appointed by the governor, pending approval from a Senate committee. The law creating the new position would be repealed in January 2023.
The labor chief also would have had to produce reports on the progress of fulfilling unemployment claims, as well provide Georgians with access to unemployment information.
Harbin said his bill aimed to give state labor employees a boost after months of trying to work through piles of unemployment claims during the pandemic.
“When you’ve got people who are calling you for months, that’s not good government,” Harbin said after withdrawing his bill.
Opponents warned installing a governor-appointed labor chief could allow partisan leaders to strip powers away from an elected official as well as open the door for workarounds to create administrators to handle other elected jobs in the executive and legislative branches.
“We have ways of changing how the Department of Labor is run, and we do that every four years in November with an election,” said Sen. Randy Robertson, R-Cataula. “I feel that this is a dangerous precedent.”
The labor department has paid out more than $19 billion in state and federal unemployment benefits to nearly 4.5 million Georgians since last March, more than during the last nine years combined prior to the pandemic.
ATLANTA – Legislation moving through the General Assembly would let Georgia start drawing down up to $1.5 billion a year needed to move growing volumes of freight smoothly through the state.
The Georgia House of Representatives unanimously passed a bill Wednesday that would earmark the state’s 4% sales tax on diesel fuel used in locomotives to help fund freight rail improvements. The tax would raise an estimated $10 million per year, said House Transportation Committee Chairman Rick Jasperse, the measure’s chief sponsor.
That being nowhere near enough money, House Bill 588 also would authorize the state to go to the private sector to help finance freight rail projects through the same sorts of public-private partnerships the State Road and Tollway Authority has been using to build toll lanes on interstate highways across metro Atlanta.
“This is an opportunity to lead,” Jasperse, R-Jasper, said during a committee hearing on the bill late last month. “It helps us take the next steps to improve our freight and logistics infrastructure.”
The bill stems from two years of work by the Georgia Freight & Logistics Commission, a panel of lawmakers, local elected officials, business leaders and logistics industry executives created by the legislature.
The commission issued a report in December that suggested Georgia won’t be able to meet its goal of doubling the percentage of freight traveling by rail from 17% to 35% without public-private partnerships.
Brad Skinner, a board member at Denver-based freight railroad operator OmniTrax and a member of the commission, said public-private partnerships have paid off for his company and its government partners.
“I’ve seen what they do to help municipalities and states keep up with demand as their populations grow,” he said. “You’re looking at billions of dollars in investment that’s going to be required to maintain [Georgia] as a growth community and enhance quality of life.”
Seth Millican, executive director of the Georgia Transportation Alliance, an affiliate of the Georgia Chamber of Commerce, said the huge increase in e-commerce brought on by the coronavirus pandemic has built support among legislative leaders for boosting investment in moving freight.
“Leadership is being responsive to things that have come out of the COVID pandemic,” he said. “Those trends toward more e-commerce were already there. But the COVID pandemic dramatically accelerated that.”
Millican said record growth at the Port of Savannah during the past year despite the pandemic has been another key contributor to momentum in the General Assembly behind improving freight rail capacity.
Increasing truck traffic into and out of the port has the Georgia Ports Authority building additional rail, notably the Mason Mega Rail Terminal, which will give the Port of Savannah enough additional capacity to ship goods to cities in the nation’s Mid-South and Midwest regions.
“In some respects, we’re a victim of our own success,” Millican said. “It’s putting pressure on the rest of the system to keep up.”
Jasperse’s bill isn’t the only freight rail measure before the General Assembly. The Senate Transportation Committee passed a similar measure sponsored by Sen. Brandon Beach, R-Alpharetta, on Wednesday.
Like Jasperse’s bill, Senate Bill 98 envisions the state entering into public-private partnerships to build freight rail projects. However, it doesn’t include the sales tax on diesel fuel.
“I would call this freight-and-logistics light,” Beach said during a hearing on the bill Feb. 23. “It doesn’t have a funding component.
A third piece of legislation, Beach’s Senate Resolution 102, would create the Georgia Commission on E-Commerce and Freight Infrastructure Funding as a follow-up to the Freight & Logistics Commission.
It essentially would add a third year to the ongoing discussion over how to pay for needed freight rail improvements. The Senate Transportation Committee approved the resolution late last month.
Georgia House Speaker David Ralston previewed his priorities for the 2021 legislative session at the state Capitol on Jan. 7, 2021. (Photo by Beau Evans)
ATLANTA – Gov. Brian Kemp’s $27.2 billion fiscal 2022 state budget cleared the Georgia House of Representatives Friday after lawmakers earmarked $58 million to boost mental health services.
The spending plan, which passed 136-31 and now heads to the Georgia Senate, originally had set aside a $22 million increase for the state Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities. The House added another $36 million for what Speaker David Ralston has made a key part of his agenda for this year’s legislative session.
“I think we’ve added a huge amount of resources to this important issue,” Ralston, R-Blue Ridge, said after Friday’s vote. “It’s never as much as you hope to do, but I think this was a realistic effort, and I think it sends a strong message that we’re making mental health a priority in Georgia.”
The additional mental health funding would provide more resources for addiction treatment, suicide prevention and school mental-health specialists.
The budget, which takes effect July 1, also put a special emphasis on education, restoring 60% of the spending cuts lawmakers imposed at the height of the coronavirus pandemic last June on Georgia’s K-12 schools and the state university system.
The House also added $50 million to the $883 million bond package Kemp recommended in January for construction projects around the state. Much of that money would go toward buildings on university and technical college campuses.
Ralston dismissed criticism from House Democrats over not pulling more money from the state’s “rainy-day” reserves fund to plug budget gaps, noting state lawmakers have approved millions of dollars in emergency spending to fight COVID-19 since last summer.
“We have to be very cautious in terms of drawing down large sums out of the rainy-day fund,” he said.
But House Minority Leader James Beverly, D-Macon, and Rep. Jasmine Clark, D-Lilburn, the only Democrats who spoke from the House floor Friday, said it’s ridiculous to use federal COVID-19 relief money to plug budget gaps without spending down the reserves.
They also used the budget debate to renew Democrats’ longstanding call to expand Medicaid coverage in Georgia under the Affordable Care Act, which could be done largely with federal money.
“I absolutely cannot reconcile throwing away billions in federal funds that would help all of our constituents have access to health care, that would save our rural hospitals from closing and that would save as well as create jobs, especially when we take federal funds when it’s convenient for us,” Clark said.
“I think there’s a better way moving forward,” Beverly said. “We just need to take the time to do it.”
Both Kemp and former Gov. Nathan Deal, his immediate predecessor, have argued there’s no guarantee the federal money would continue flowing into Medicaid indefinitely. They have said any reduction in federal support would leave the state holding the bag.
Cocktails-to-go edged closer to becoming a reality in Georgia with passage in the state Senate Friday of a measure allowing restaurants to sell curbside alcoholic beverages in tightly sealed containers with takeout food.
Sponsored by Sen. Matt Brass, R-Newnan, the bill would permit Georgians ages 21 and older to buy up to two mixed drinks in to-go cups with a maximum 3 ounces of liquor in each, or about two shots-worth. Georgia already permits to-go sales of beer and wine.
The drinks would have to be kept in cups without any holes for straws and sealed so securely it would be easy to tell if the cup has been opened before the purchaser arrives home. To-go drinks would also have to be stored in a glove box, locked trunk or behind the back seat while driving.
To-go drinks could not be sold on their own: Customers would have to buy food along with a takeaway alcoholic beverage. Third-party delivery services like Uber Eats, Doordash and Grubhub also could not bring cocktails to someone’s home due to legal liability issues, Brass said.
“One thing we learned from the pandemic is our hospitality industry was hit very, very hard,” Brass said from the Senate floor. “All we’re simply trying to do here is give them one more tool here to bounce back.”
“That tool is going to be a screwdriver,” he added. “And that screwdriver is going to be to-go.”
The measure passed 36-10 and now heads to the state House of Representatives.
Supporters have hailed legalized to-go drinks as a way to help struggling restaurants prop up sales amid the COVID-19 pandemic, which has pummeled the food-service industry in Georgia over the past year.
Nearly 4,000 restaurants have closed in the state during the pandemic, with $5 billion lost in sales and around 100,000 employees left jobless, according to Karen Bremer, president of the Georgia Restaurant Association.
Opponents who have long resisted expanding alcohol sales on moral and practical grounds worry allowing motorists to take home cocktails could worsen traffic safety, spurring more drunk driving and potentially fatal car crashes.
Brass’ bill follows a separate law change passed last summer that allowed restaurants, supermarkets and liquor stores to make home deliveries of beer, wine and distilled spirits, subject to the approval of local voters.
