ATLANTA – State employees and Georgia teachers would be able to take up to three weeks of paid parental leave under legislation the state House of Representatives passed overwhelmingly Tuesday.
The bill, which passed 155-2, would apply to parents following the birth of a child of their own, an adopted child or a foster-care placement.
The House passed the same bill last March, shortly before the General Assembly was forced to take a three-month break because of the coronavirus pandemic.
When lawmakers returned to the Capitol, the state Senate essentially gutted the bill and swapped in a different measure reducing legislators’ salaries in a bid to cut costs because of the pandemic. When the House refused to go along with the change, the bill died.
“This is something [former] President Trump and Ivanka Trump led on at the national level,” Rep. Houston Gaines, R-Athens, the legislation’s chief sponsor, told his House colleagues Tuesday. “This is a positive step forward for the state.”
The legislation is a priority of House Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge, who instituted a parental leave policy for House employees two years ago.
The bill’s cosponsors include House Speaker Pro Tempore Jan Jones, R-Milton, and Reps. Sharon Cooper, R-Marietta; Marcus Wiedower, R-Watkinsville; Bonnie Rich, R-Suwanee and Terry England, R-Auburn.
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 bill aimed at preventing Georgia city and county governments from making deep cuts in the budgets of their local police agencies advanced in the Georgia House of Representatives Tuesday.
Sponsored by state Rep. Houston Gaines, R-Athens, the bill would limit local governments from reducing funds for police by more than 5% over a 10-year span. It includes exemptions for smaller jurisdictions and for spending on equipment purchases.
Gaines highlighted recent failed attempts by some Athens and Atlanta elected officials to slice millions of dollars from their police budgets amid protests over police brutality and racial injustice that swept across Georgia and the country last summer.
“These efforts are underway in our state and certainly something I think we need to fight against,” Gaines said. “We all recognize that supporting law enforcement is of the utmost importance and, in my opinion, the most important role that our local governments have.”
Gaines’ bill cleared the House Governmental Affairs General Government Subcommittee on a party-line vote. It heads to the full committee for another vote before potentially moving to the House floor.
The bill comes after last summer’s protests following high-profile killings of Black men by police officers, including the deaths of George Floyd in Minnesota and Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta.
Property destruction and violence at some of those protests sparked a backlash from conservative leaders over a push by some progressive officials to curb police funding, dubbed “defund the police.” The subject took center stage as an issue for both political parties in the 2020 election cycle.
Opposition to the bill came Tuesday from the Georgia Municipal Association and the Association County Commissioners of Georgia (ACCG), which represent city and county governments. Decisions on police funding should be left to local officials, said Todd Edwards, ACCG’s deputy legislative director.
“Police power is one of our inherent or supplemental powers under the constitution,” Edwards said. “We’d like to maintain our flexibility to fund and manage police forces how our local elected officials – those accountable to the public – feel is the best use of taxpayer dollars.”
Georgia Economic Development Commissioner Pat Wilson
ATLANTA – Georgia was ranked among the nation’s 10 top exporting states last year for the first time, Gov. Brian Kemp announced Monday.
Georgia businesses exported $38.8 billion in goods in 2020, reaching 215 countries and territories and suffering the lowest rate of export contraction among the top-10 states, despite the economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic.
“Over the last year, hardworking Georgians showed their tenacity and their determination to transform obstacles into opportunities,” Gov. Brian Kemp said. “These numbers are yet another example of their strength.”
Georgia’s total trade last year reached $137.7 billion, spanning 221 countries and territories.
The state’s top five export markets were Canada, Germany, China, Mexico and Singapore. Several export markets experienced significant growth, with exports to Germany increasing nearly 50%, followed by China and Hong Kong at 45% and 41%, respectively.
Increased exports to China reflect purchases made under a trade agreement the U.S. and China signed in January 2020. The return of market access for U.S. poultry proved a huge benefit to Georgia producers.
About two-thirds of Georgia trade involves the 12 strategic markets where the state maintains representation: Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Europe, Israel, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Peru, and the United Kingdom.
“Georgia’s network of international representatives around the world provides our state’s businesses with a unique resource,” said Pat Wilson, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Economic Development. “Particularly during 2020 – when needs, supply chains, and conditions were changing rapidly – our international offices provided timely information that proved to be an incredible asset for our state’s growers, manufacturers, and business community as a whole.”
About 90% of Georgia merchandise exports are manufactured goods, and the state’s manufacturing exports have grown by more than 30% over the last 10 years.
Aerospace products, the state’s second-largest manufacturing industry, remain the state’s No.-1 export, totaling $9.98 billion in 2020. Aerospace exports to Hong Kong surged more than 140% last year, while Germany remains the top customer for these products.
ATLANTA – Gov. Brian Kemp signed a $26.5 billion mid-year budget Monday that restores $2.2 billion in spending cuts the General Assembly imposed on state agencies last June due to the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
During a brief signing ceremony, Kemp noted the early reopening of Georgia businesses forced to shut down by the virus allowed the legislature to adopt the fiscal 2021 mid-year spending plan last week with no new cuts and no furloughs or layoffs of state employees.
“Thanks to our measured reopening and strong fiscal management, Georgia weathered the storm,” he said. “This balanced budget sets our state on a clear path to recovery in the coming months.”
The governor’s original mid-year budget plan called for $1,000 bonuses to Georgia teachers and other school workers saddled with the responsibilities of delivering online instruction to students stuck at home during the pandemic.
Later, as the spending plan went through the General Assembly, lawmakers ordered up the same bonuses for about 57,000 state workers earning less than $80,000 per year, and the University System of Georgia extended the bonuses to income-eligible employees of the state’s public colleges and universities.
The mid-year budget also includes $20 million to extend broadband connectivity in rural Georgia, $1 million in marketing funds to help bring back a state tourism industry rocked by COVID-19 and $289,000 to help the Grady Regional Coordinating Center continue its vital mission of coordinating emergency room use during the pandemic.
The General Assembly moved quickly to complete work on the mid-year budget in order to have state spending commitments through June 30 in place in case the virus forced a temporary shutdown in the legislative session, as happened for three months last year.
With the mid-year budget delivered and signed, lawmakers will focus next on the $27.2 billion fiscal 2022 state budget, now before the Georgia House of Representatives.
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)
State lawmakers are working this year on legislation to change Georgia’s citizen’s arrest law, ban no-knock arrest warrants and lower employment barriers for residents on probation.
But five weeks into the 2021 legislative session, reforming the citizen’s arrest statute appears the most likely criminal justice reform to gain passage.
Their bills range from straight-forward changes such as more training for officers in de-escalation techniques and a ban on using choke holds during arrests, to more complicated overhauls including a citizen-led review board for officer-involved shootings and outlawing private prisons.
Democrats are aiming to build on momentum after state lawmakers passed a bill last summer to boost penalties for hate crimes in Georgia. That bill was nearly tripped up as Republicans sought specific protections for police officers against hate crimes that ended up passing in separate legislation.
With chances slim the bulk of this year’s bills can move in the Republican-controlled state legislature, House Minority Leader James Beverly, D-Macon, said Democrats’ package at least keeps the focus on criminal-justice issues after last summer’s protests over police violence and racial injustice.
“We need to look at criminal justice as a whole and not just one or two things,” Beverly said. “It seems to me that there’s an appetite in Georgia to ask, ‘Are we really doing the right thing?’”
Revisions to the state’s citizen’s arrest law look most likely to gain passage in the General Assembly, Beverly said. The measure stems from the shooting death last year of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man killed near Brunswick in a confrontation with two white men who tried to detain him while he was jogging.
Proposals for changing the citizen’s arrest law have drawn “potential bipartisan support” so far, Beverly said. Whether Democrats back a bill soon to be sponsored by state Rep. Bert Reeves, R-Marietta, will depend on what degree Georgia citizens could still detain criminal suspects in certain situations.
Reeves, who is one of Gov. Brian Kemp’s floor leaders in the House, declined to comment on his upcoming bill but said details would be announced Feb. 16.
Democrats are also pushing Kemp and Republican lawmakers to join them in backing legislation to ban no-knock warrants, a controversial police tactic that was involved in the death of Breonna Taylor, a Black woman from Louisville, Ky., who was killed in an apartment raid last year.
Passing a ban on no-knock warrants would mark a win for criminal-justice reform advocates, Beverly said. It would also help bolster relations between both parties in the General Assembly as tensions rise over Republican efforts to overhaul Georgia’s absentee voting system that Democrats oppose.
“If you want to do something where you can really get buy-in from my caucus, it would be the no-knock warrant [ban],” Beverly said. “We have members on both sides who agree that those two issues [no-knock warrants and citizen’s arrests] are bad.”
But scrapping no-knock warrants may be a step too far for public safety-minded Republicans concerned about changing laws based on passionate reaction to high-profile deaths like those of Arbery, Taylor and George Floyd in Minnesota last year.
State Sen. Randy Robertson, R-Cataula, a retired major with the Muscogee County Sheriff’s Office, said he was not involved in any no-knock warrants while serving four years on a multi-agency drug task force. Lawmakers should instead continue evaluating the tactic in the recently created Senate Study Committee on Law Enforcement Reform, he said.
“Jumping to conclusions is the worst thing that anybody can do when they feel a crime is committed,” Robertson said Friday. “We are either choosing to ignore logic … or we’re just doing things to say we’re doing them.”
Rather than outlawing certain individual actions, state lawmakers should place more focus on measures to improve de-escalation and other training standards for Georgia police officers that would include routine mental and physical health evaluations, Robertson said.
He noted officers currently receive just 20 hours of touch-up training each year after graduating from the police academy, falling short of the safeguards local agencies need to keep close tabs on officers before crisis situations like improper use-of-force ever happen.
“De-escalation is not a class: It is a thread that runs through every aspect of training,” Robertson said. “Every agency should have a fit-for-duty policy that covers mental and physical fitness.”
Robertson is among several Republican lawmakers to introduce criminal justice-focused legislation this year, though none is as expansive as Democrats’ legislative package. His measure would bar licensing boards from denying business licenses to Georgians on parole or probation for most felony convictions.
Robertson’s bill and another by state Sen. Brian Strickland, R-McDonough, aimed at tightening rules to end or shorten probation terms mark legislation that could help cut down Georgia’s status as the state with the highest rate of residents on probation, said Lisa McGahan, policy director for the nonprofit Georgia Justice Project.
“We have too many people serving under community supervision,” McGahan said. “You can’t access economic opportunity with that handicap.”
Other Republican-sponsored bills McGahan singled out include a measure by state Rep. Mandi Ballinger, R-Canton, to raise the age for youth offenders to be tried in adult court from 17 to 18, as well as two bills protecting human-trafficking victims that passed the state Senate on Thursday.
