ATLANTA – Election-year politics will play a major role in the 2022 General Assembly session starting Monday, with Republicans running in primaries this spring looking to score points with the GOP base.
The rush to the right to court conservative GOP primary voters will include bills easing restrictions on guns, cutting taxes and doubling down on changes to Georgia’s election laws Democrats have labeled as voter suppression.
“Gov. [Brian] Kemp will try to position himself to block [Republican primary opponent] David Perdue, and the [GOP} lieutenant governor candidates are both in the Senate,” said Charles Bullock, a political science professor at the University of Georgia. “If one comes forward with a proposal, the other might say, ‘I’ll see you and raise you.’ ”
But the leaders who run the two legislative chambers – Georgia House Speaker David Ralston and Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, who presides over the state Senate – are vowing not to let politics get in the way of addressing mental health and crime.
“Those two topics will be my focus for the session,” said Ralston, R-Blue Ridge. “I’m not going to be distracted by what other people do in their campaigns.”
Ralston cited alarming statistics on crime and youth suicides in his call for action on crime and mental health.
Atlanta’s homicide rate was the highest in two decades in 2020, then was exceeded by the 158 murders that occurred last year.
There were 67 youth suicides in Georgia last year through November, more than the 55 that took place in all of 2020.
Committees in both legislative chambers held hearings on crime last summer and fall, and both are expected to put forth legislation during the upcoming session.
On the Senate side, Duncan is pushing a dollar-for-dollar state tax credit for individuals and corporations who contribute to their local police department or sheriff’s office through a law enforcement foundation.
Donations would go toward raising officer salaries, hiring additional law enforcement personnel, expanding police training programs, equipment purchases and to help law enforcement agencies interested in “co-responder” program dedicated to mental health emergencies.
Last summer, Ralston called for a $50 million budget appropriation to beef up law enforcement and mental health services.
He said the House also will take up a comprehensive mental health bill that includes a provision aimed at addressing a shortage of mental health workers.
“To do what we need to do in mental health, we’re going to have to incentivize people to train in that,” Ralston said.
While tackling crime and mental health, lawmakers also will consider a proposal by Kemp to expand gun rights by allowing many Georgians to carry concealed firearms without obtaining a permit.
“Law-abiding Georgians exercising their constitutional rights only strengthens public safety,” Kemp wrote in a Twitter post.
Additional tax relief also will be on the General Assembly’s 2022 agenda. Senate President Pro Tempore Butch Miller, R-Gainesville, who is running for lieutenant governor, pre-filed a bill last month that would eliminate Georgia’s income tax.
But other Republican leaders aren’t likely to support getting rid of the tax completely, which would force deep spending cuts to make up for the lost revenue. They will likely get behind a more moderate approach to reduce the income tax rate from 5.75% – the rate lawmakers adopted in 2018 – to 5.5% or perhaps lower.
“It’s an extremely tough lift to go from something to zero,” said Kyle Wingfield, president and CEO of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation. “State revenues have grown against everyone’s expectations. … [But] I don’t know of anyone who thinks these revenues are going to keep marching up like they have been.”
Round two of Republican-backed changes to Georgia’s election laws also stacks up as a battle between far-reaching proposals aimed at appealing to GOP base voters and more moderate measures.
The General Assembly passed sweeping legislation last year that, among other things, restricts the locations of absentee ballot drop boxes. Now, Miller wants to ban them entirely, arguing they didn’t exist in state law until the onset of COVID-19 and are vulnerable to voter fraud.
Ralston is behind more moderate steps, including a bill he plans to introduce to give the Georgia Bureau of Investigation original jurisdiction to handle complaints of election law violations without having to be invited by a local government.
He cited allegations of wrongdoing during the November 2020 election from former President Donald Trump and his followers that still dog Georgia today as evidence of the need for the GBI.
“Here we are 14 months after an election and you’ve still got people who don’t accept the result,” Ralston said. “Part of the reason for that is we didn’t have an independent non-political investigation go in early.”
While additional tax relief and election law changes are examples of following up on previous acts by the General Assembly, the legislature has yet to legalize gambling in Georgia.
A years-long effort to pass legalized gambling and tie a portion of the proceeds to education came closer than ever to success last year when the state Senate passed a constitutional amendment asking voters to legalize sports betting. However, the measure failed to reach the House floor for a vote.
This year, supporters’ strategy likely will be to lump sports betting, pari-mutuel betting on horse racing and casino gambling into a single constitutional change. That way, voters could decide all three at once on the November ballot.
Still, sports betting has the most momentum of the three, said Rep. Ron Stephens, chairman of the House Economic Development and Tourism Committee, who introduced the standalone sports betting legislation last year.
“It’s something we’re doing today,” he said. “People are betting. It’s just that … no [tax] revenue is being collected.”
As a result, Stephens said he plans to back “enabling” legislation this year that would spell out how sports betting would operate in Georgia if voters approve the constitutional amendment. Enabling bills tied to horse racing and/or casinos then could follow in 2023.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
Former U.S. Sen. David Perdue is now running for governor. (Photo by Beau Evans)
ATLANTA – Republican gubernatorial candidate David Perdue is challenging a new state law that gives incumbents an advantage in fundraising.
The legislation, which the Republican-controlled General Assembly passed last March virtually along party lines, allows Georgia’s governor, lieutenant governor, the general-election nominees opposing those two statewide incumbents and the heads of the majority and minority caucuses in the legislature to create leadership committees that can raise unlimited campaign contributions.
Perdue, who is running against incumbent Gov. Brian Kemp, is barred from forming a leadership committee on his behalf unless and until he wins the GOP gubernatorial primary in May.
A federal lawsuit Perdue filed Thursday argues the U.S. Supreme Court has never upheld a law that imposes different contribution limits on candidates seeking the same office.
“This unconstitutional law was spearheaded by Brian Kemp to protect himself and silence those who seek to challenge him. It reeks of cronyism and corruption,” Perdue said.
“Only a 20-year career politician like Kemp would create an unfair advantage to line his own campaign coffers for his own self-preservation.”
The law’s supporters say it puts incumbents on an even playing field with their challengers by allowing them to reaise campaign funds during General Assembly sessions, a practice that had been prohibited under Georgia law.
The ability to conduct fundraising while the legislature is in session has become more important since the primaries were moved to May instead of July,
Perdue’s lawsuit only focuses on the govenor’s leadership committee. The suit seeks a preliminary injunction to bloc the legisltion to give Perude an opportunity to make his case.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Former U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson was remembered Thursday as a bipartisan leader in partisan times who believed in doing the right thing regardless of politics.
“I saw the real Johnny up close and personal,” former Sen. Saxby Chambliss, who served with Isakson in the Senate for a decade, said during a memorial service at Peachtree Road United Methodist Church. “The conversation always came down to, ‘We’ve got to do what’s right.’ ”
Isakson died Dec. 19 at age 76 after a six-year battle with Parkinson’s disease. The Republican from Cobb County had retired two years earlier due to Parkinson’s and other health issues.
Isakson, who founded a real estate business, spent 45 years in public service, winning seven straight elections from 1976 through 1988 and 14 of 17 elections overall.
His career included a stint in the Georgia House, where he served as minority leader. After losing the 1990 gubernatorial election to Democrat Zell Miller, he bounced back to win a seat in the state Senate.
Isakson lost in the 1996 Republican primary for U.S. Senate but came back in 1999 to win a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, succeeding former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
Five years later, Isakson was elected to the U.S. Senate, where he became the first Georgia Republican to win three terms. He also is the only Georgian to have served in both chambers of the General Assembly and Congress.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Isakson was known not only for working with Republicans and Democrats to pass legislation but as someone whose compassionate nature drew a lot of friends from both sides of the aisle.
McConnell said he never saw so many senators and staffers from both parties on the Senate floor as the day Isakson gave his farewell speech in December 2019. The same thing happened last September when the Senate restarted the annual Johnny Isakson Barbecue Lunch in their late friend’s honor, he said.
“We all know this is a polarized time. Unity is in short supply,” McConnell said. “[But] the gigantic, diverse Johnny Isakson Fan Club has never failed to pack a room.”
Other speakers at Thursday’s service included Isakson’s two sons and daughter, a longtime friend and neighbor from East Cobb and Senate Chaplain Barry Black, who met Isakson in 2004 and became his prayer partner.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
Georgia House Speaker David Ralston (Photo by Beau Evans)
ATLANTA – If the devil is in the details when it come to legalizing gambling in Georgia, House Speaker David Ralston wants to leave the details out.
“We’ve tripped over the details of this thing for years,” Ralston, R-Blue Ridge, said Thursday during his annual pre-General Assembly session news conference. “Maybe we should just ask Georgians whether they want to allow gaming and, if so, move forward with the details.”
Proposals to legalize casino gambling, pari-mutuel betting on horse racing and/or sports betting in Georgia have come up virtually every year for the last decade. Most of the bills have called for dedicating part of the proceeds to the HOPE Scholarship and pre-kindergarten programs.
The state Senate passed a constitutional amendment last year calling for a statewide referendum to legalize sports betting, marking a high-water mark for progress on legalized gambling in the General Assembly. But it failed to gain a vote on the floor of the Georgia House of Representatives.
A coalition of Atlanta’s professional sports teams – the Braves, Falcons, Hawks and Atlanta United – will be back during the 2022 legislative session starting next week to push the sports betting measure.
But longtime supporters of legalizing gambling in Georgia have come to agree with Ralston that lumping casinos, horse racing and sports betting into a single measure is a better approach.
State Reps. Ron Stephens, R-Savannah, who introduced the sports betting legislation last year, and House Regulated Industries Committee Chairman Alan Powell, R-Hartwell, have endorsed a single constitutional amendment covering all forms of legalized gambling over passing sports betting in isolation.
Passing a constitutional amendment first would give Georgia voters a chance to weigh in on the concept of legalizing gambling. Then, if the amendment passes this November, lawmakers could come back next year and iron out the details governing how the program would work in separate “enabling” legislation.
Ralston said the issue has picked up momentum heading into this year’s session.
“There is an appetite I haven’t seen before to do something,” he said.
Ralston also announced Thursday that the House will begin the first day of the session on Monday earlier than usual – at 8:30 a.m. – to give lawmakers time to travel to Indianapolis for Monday’s night’s college football championship game between Georgia and Alabama. The House will take off Tuesday and return on Wednesday.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Former Pauling County District Attorney Dick Donovan has pleaded guilty to one count of unprofessional conduct and been sentenced to 12 months on probation, Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr announced Thursday.
Gov. Brian Kemp suspended Donovan last February after he was indicted on four felonies including bribery, violation of oath by a public officer and two counts of false swearing.
The charges stemmed from an accusation of sexual harassment filed against Donovan by a staff member at the Paulding district attorney’s office. When he denied the allegation, the woman produced audio tapes and written notes backing up her accusations.
“As independently-elected public servants, Georgia’s district attorneys must fulfill their solemn obligation to uphold the rule of law no matter the circumstance,” Carr said Thursday.
“When these same individuals abuse their power with complete disregard for their sworn duties, they harm the very justice system they are put in place to defend and protect. We will not hesitate to hold accountable public officials who violate the law and their oaths of office and hope this case sends a message that public corruption of any kind will not be tolerated here in Georgia.”
As a result of the sentence, Donovan has resigned his position and is required to surrender his license to practice law.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation handled the investigation of the charges against Donovan.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
