ATLANTA – The Georgia Senate gave final passage Monday to legislation aimed at eliminating “free speech zones” on the campuses of public colleges and universities by granting free-speech rights at all locations.
The Republican-controlled Senate passed House Bill 1 33-18 mostly along party lines. The House approved the bill, introduced on behalf of Gov. Brian Kemp, early last month.
The bill prohibits college officials from limiting what students may say as well as where they may say it, said Sen. Bruce Thompson, R-White, who carried the legislation in the Senate. He cited a series of lawsuits that have been brought against public universities in Georgia by student organizations whose events were relegated to out-of-the-way free-speech zones.
“Students continue to go to school under policies that are counter to the First Amendment,” he said. “What this seeks to do is give colleges the opportunity to make sure they’re not getting sued.”
But Sen. Elena Parent, D-Atlanta, said Georgia Republicans were sending a mixed message by backing a bill defending free-speech rights on college campuses while censoring honest discussions of racism in high school history classes. The General Assembly also is considering a bill prohibiting the teaching of certain “divisive concepts” in the schools.
“The majority party is eager to censor left-wing views or speech while trying to bolster right-wing speech,” Parent said.
Thompson denied that House Bill 1 has a political bias.
“It’s not for the right or the left,” he said. “It’s for all of our students.”
The bill now goes to Kemp’s desk for his signature.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Gov. Brian Kemp signed legislation Monday aimed at pulling Georgia off the bottom among state rankings for access to mental-health services.
“Today has been a long time coming,” Kemp said during a signing ceremony inside the Georgia Capitol. “This ultimate outcome is exactly what we hoped for.”
House Bill 1013, which the General Assembly passed unanimously, stems from the recommendations of a commission of legal and mental health experts created in 2019.
The legislation, House Speaker David Ralston’s top priority for this year’s session, includes a parity provision requiring insurance companies to cover mental illness the same as physical illness. The parity requirement also applies to Georgia’s Medicaid and PeachCare for Kids programs, and to the State Health Benefit Plan.
The bill also requires care management organizations (CMOs) participating in Georgia Medicaid to dedicate at least 85% of their revenues to patient care. And it establishes a service-cancelable loan program to address a workforce shortage by offering loan forgiveness to several types of mental-health specialists as well as primary-care physicians.
Failure was not an option,” said Ralston, R-Blue Ridge. “The status quo had to go.”
Ralston said the legislation is backed by $183 million in the fiscal 2023 state budget dedicated to helping the Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and Development Disabilities implement the bill’s provisions.
“Georgia is making a transformational commitment to improving health care,” the speaker said.
“House Bill 1013 is one of the rare moments I will remember for a lifetime,” added Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, who helped steer the bill through the Senate as its presiding officer. “The cumulative good this bill will do is immeasurable.”
The Behavioral Health Reform and Innovation Commission will continue its work after the mental health reform bill takes effect. The measure authorizes the panel to continue meeting and developing suggestions for future legislation through June 30, 2025.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – The Georgia Senate overwhelmingly passed income tax cut legislation Friday with significant differences from a bill the state House adopted last month.
The Senate bill, which passed 51-4, calls for gradually reducing Georgia’s income tax rate from the current 5.75% to 4.99%. However, that lower rate would only apply to taxable income up to $20,000 in 2024, the first year the law would take effect.
The lower rate would apply to the first $35,000 of taxable income in 2025 and to the first $55,000 of taxable income in 2026.
The House bill would set the tax rate at a flat 5.25% for the vast majority of taxpayers effective in 2024.
The Senate bill also includes a trigger requiring state tax revenues to grow by at least 3% each year for the tax reductions to continue.
Democratic lawmakers blasted the House bill last month, citing figures showing 28% of Georgia taxpayers would not see a change in their tax bills, while 10% actually would pay more in taxes.
On the other hand, the Senate bill contains a state-level Earned Income Tax Credit, a benefit for low-income families legislative Democrats and some Republicans have supported.
“We don’t want to have a flat tax increase on those who are low income,” Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Hufstetler, R-Rome, said Friday.
The progressive Georgia Budget and Policy Institute released a statement earlier this week calling the Senate tax cut less regressive and more supportive of Georgia families than the House version.
Hufstetler’s committee also proposed capping the state’s hugely successful film tax credit at $900 million a year. However, the Senate Rules Committee reversed course and removed the provision from the bill.
The legislation now heads back to the House. With such substantial differences, House and Senate leaders will face a tough challenge reaching agreement on the bill. The General Assembly is scheduled to adjourn for the year on Monday.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – One controversial education bill introduced into the General Assembly on behalf of Gov. Brian Kemp gained final passage in the General Assembly Friday while another cleared the Georgia Senate.
The Senate’s Republican majority passed the “Parents’ Bill of Rights” 31-22 along party lines and sent it to Kemp’s desk for his signature. The state House of Representatives – in another party-line vote – had passed the bill early last month.
The measure gives parents the right to review curriculum and other instructional material for their children’s classes during the first two weeks of every nine-week grading period.
Principals or superintendents who receive a request for information from a parent will have three business days to provide it. If the principal or superintendent is unable to share the information within that timeframe, they must provide the parent a written description of the material and a timeline for its delivery, not to exceed 30 days.
Parents who disagree with a local school’s decision on a request can appeal to the school district and, beyond that, to the state Board of Education.
Parents also will have the choice of opting their children out of sex education instruction and can prohibit photos or videos of their children unless necessary for public safety.
The second bill – the so-called “divisive concepts” legislation – also passed the Senate 32-21 Friday along party lines. Because of changes the Senate made to the measure, which originated in the House, it must return to that chamber to win final passage.
The legislation lists nine concepts Georgia teachers could not teach their students, including that the United States and Georgia are systematically racist and that no race is inherently superior or inferior to any other.
“We can teach U.S. history – the good, the bad and the ugly – without dividing along racial lines,” said Senate President Pro Tempore Butch Miller, R-Gainesville. “We must teach that America is good – not perfect – but good.”
Legislative Democrats, who have opposed both bills throughout the weeks they have moved through the General Assembly, didn’t speak out against them on Friday.
But the Democratic Party of Georgia released a statement characterizing Kemp’s education agenda as “an attack” on students and teachers in Georgia.
“Brian Kemp’s plan is to ban kids from learning a complete and accurate history of our country,” Democratic spokesman Max Flugrath said Friday. “The decisions about what our kids learn in school should be decided by teachers and parents — not by politicians like Brian Kemp.”
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Legislation supporters said would protect Georgia farmers from nuisance lawsuits cleared the Republican-controlled state Senate Friday.
Senators passed the Freedom to Farm Act 31-23 along party lines. Because the Senate made changes to the bill, which originated in the Georgia House of Representatives, it must return to the House to gain final passage.
The legislation would give neighbors bothered by bad smells, dust or noise emanating from a farm two years to file a nuisance suit. After that, any farm operating legally would be protected.
A law the General Assembly passed during the 1980s to protect existing farms from nuisances needs to be updated to protect farmers from increasing residential encroachment, Sen. Larry Walker III, R-Perry, chairman of the Senate Agriculture and Consumer Affairs Committee, told his Senate colleagues Friday.
“The state has changed,” he said. “We’ve had so much growth hardly any farmers don’t have neighbors around them.”
Senate Democrats argued the farmers who most need protecting are those who suffer when a large corporate farming operation moves in next to them. In those cases, two years isn’t long enough, said Sen. Freddie Powell Sims, D-Sasser.
“Nuisances can take many years to manifest themselves,” she said.
Sims said the 1980s law already protects existing farmers when new neighbors move in, whether they’re homeowners or other agricultural operations. On the other hand, existing farmers could only file suit under the new law if the nuisance occured within two years, she said.
But Walker said farming is such a capital-intensive undertaking that farmers must have protection from lawsuits to make their investments worthwhile.
“At some point, you’ve got to give them some certainty on their legal status to continue to operate,” he said. “Two years is a good balance.”
Besides the two-year statute of limitations, up from one year under the House version of the bill, the Senate also added a provision requiring any plaintiff filing a nuisance lawsuit to be the legal owner of the property affected by the nuisance. Another Senate change would allow local governments to bring suit for a “public nuisance” without being subject to a time limit.
This story isavailable through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
