ATLANTA – A Georgia Senate committee approved a sports betting bill late Monday with little discussion.
The Senate Economic Development Committee passed the legislation 8-1 and sent it on to the Rules Committee to schedule a vote of the full Senate.
Senate Bill 57 would allow sports betting both online and in person at kiosks that could be placed inside a variety of businesses, including sports venues. Sports betting would be overseen by the Georgia Lottery Corp.
“Sports betting is deemed a lottery game,” said Sen. Billy Hickman, R-Statesboro, the bill’s chief sponsor.
For that reason, Senate Bill 57 contemplates legalizing sports betting in Georgia without the need for a constitutional amendment. It essentially would be added to the games already authorized since Georgia voters approved the creation of a lottery in 1992.
The legislation’s backers are relying on a recent legal opinion from former Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Harold Melton that a constitutional change isn’t necessary to legalize sports betting. As a result, the bill would require only a simple majority in the state House and Senate to pass. Constitutional amendments are a steeper climb, requiring two-thirds majorities.
Not everyone in the General Assembly agrees with Melton’s analysis. A second measure now before the state Senate calls for a constitutional amendment to allow sports betting. If it gets through the legislature, it would go to Georgia voters in a statewide referendum next year.
The proposed constitutional amendment in the Senate would limit sports betting to online wagering only.
Competing bills introduced in the Georgia House of Representatives also offer lawmakers the option of whether to require a constitutional amendment.
Under Hickman’s bill, 20% of the adjusted gross income derived from sports betting would go to the Georgia Lottery Corp. to benefit education. At a hearing on the measure last week, Hickman said sports betting potentially could generate $300 million to $400 million annually for the state.
Citing an economic impact study released last year, Hickman said sports betting could inject $1 billion annually into Georgia’s economy and create more than 8,500 jobs.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Moving up Georgia’s presidential primaries to put the Peach State fourth in the primary calendar would reap huge economic benefits, according to a new study.
Early Democratic and Republican presidential primaries next year could generate nearly $220 million in economic impact and create more than 2,200 jobs, Emory University finance professor Thomas More Smith concluded in a study released last week.
The report accounted only for the effects of campaign spending by candidates, national and regional committees representing political parties, and political action committees. It did not include spending by media organizations that would flood Georgia to cover early primaries.
Smith also based his findings on a scenario that would include 11 Republican candidates but only one Democrat: President Joe Biden. An open election in 2028, when presumably neither party would have an incumbent running, would yield even greater economic impact, the study concludes.
Smith also predicted the economic effects of early primaries wouldn’t be limited to metro Atlanta.
“The most recent elections [2020 general election, 2021 U.S. Senate runoffs, and 2022 general election and runoff] proved the importance of exurban counties, smaller rural counties, and other metro areas (such as Columbus, Savannah, Augusta, Macon, Albany, Valdosta, Athens, Rome, and more),” the report states.
“In 2024 and beyond, candidates will have to secure votes across the state to run a competitive race. As such, the economic impact of the early primary will spread across the state.”
The prospects of early primaries in Georgia next year, however, are dubious at best. The Democratic National Committee voted last month to approve an early presidential primary calendar for 2024 that includes Georgia.
Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, also supports the idea of early presidential primaries. But Raffensperger said this month he wouldn’t want to change the primary calendar until 2028.
With Republicans not on board with moving up the GOP primary next year, it likely won’t happen because of the cost of holding presidential primaries on different dates.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
Department of Human Services Commissioner Candice Broce speaks to a Senate committee about proposed changes that would help streamline Georgia’s child custody proceedings.
ATLANTA – The state legislature is considering bills to address the problems Georgia’s foster care system faces, including the practice of housing children in hotels or state offices when placements cannot be found.
“With the full weight of the governor’s and lieutenant governor’s leadership behind these efforts, we have a real opportunity to make lasting positive change for Georgia’s children,” Department of Human Services (DHS) Commissioner Candice Broce told the Senate Committee on Children and Families this week.
A package of four Senate bills would streamline or expedite the process of making legal decisions about the transfer of children to state custody and adoption proceedings.
For example, one bill would allow doctors to testify without being present in person to ensure expert testimony can be provided within the quick timeframe needed for child custody proceedings.
“What we’re trying to do here is … get the law in sync with the time pressures that we have in these very important situations,” said Sen. Bill Cowsert, R-Athens.
Though the bills would not solve all of the foster-care problems in Georgia, they are aimed at making procedural changes as soon as possible, Ines Owens, policy and communications director for Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, told Capitol Beat this week. It’s likely the state will set up a task force or commission to examine the problem in more depth once the legislative session ends.
Georgia’s hoteling problem has drawn national attention, with U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., announcing Friday that he and Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., are launching a bipartisan inquiry under the auspices of the U.S. Senate’s Human Rights Subcommittee, which Ossoff chairs.
Ossoff released a letter he and Blackburn sent to DHS requesting further information about departmental policies, the number of children living in hotels or office buildings, and staff vacancy rates.
While Ossoff’s focus is on Georgia, hoteling is a national problem, with many otherstates also using the practice for foster care children when placements cannot be found.
“We have received the letter, and we look forward to sharing our efforts to protect Georgia’s children,” said the Division of Family and Children Services (DFCS), the division of DHS that oversees foster care, in a statement issued in response to Ossoff’s letter.
Georgia’s hoteling problem is complicated by health-care failures and other stresses, experts have testified during legislative hearings this year.
Children who are not receiving adequate behavioral health services are very difficult to find placements for, Dr. Michelle Zeanah, a Statesboro pediatrician, told lawmakers in January.
“Who wants to sign up to take care of a child who fights and spits and hits all day every day?” Zeanah asked lawmakers. “It makes it very hard for the difficult children to be placed and get services.”
Such children often fail to get needed behavioral health services because of problems with Georgia’s foster-care insurer, Amerigroup, Zeanah and others said.
Georgia pays Amerigroup, which is owned by the large for-profit insurer Elevance (formerly Anthem), a monthly rate for each child insured by the company, whether or not children receive health-care services.
DFCS officials contend that Amerigroup routinely denies needed care for children in foster care. The problem has gotten so bad that DFCS has established its own in-house legal team to address the insurer’s denials.
“Every day, my office will review all medical treatment denials, and we will file appeals if we determine that such treatment is medically necessary for the child or the youth,” Brian Pettersson, the lawyer who leads the new team, told lawmakers in January.
By the end of last year, the DFCS legal team had filed, and won, 26 appeals against denials of placements for children in state custody in psychiatric residential treatment facilities. An additional 10 such appeals were pending as of December, according to a DFCS memo obtained by Capitol Beat News Service. DFCS plans to expand the program this year, according to the memo.
Other problems facing the agency are a lack of foster-care placements for children who need them and a shortage of caseworkers.
DFCS has an overall turnover rate of 30.3%, according to a fiscal 2022 workforce report published by the state’s Department of Administrative Services.
Starting pay for a DFCS caseworker is low, and the job comes with many stresses, from having to work after hours and transport children in personal vehicles to wrangling with the legal and health-care systems.
“This is why our staff quit: We are here to protect children from their caregivers who may be maltreating them,” Audrey Brannen, a complex care coordinator at DFCS, told lawmakers at the January hearing. “We cannot do that when so many of our resources, both staff and financial, are trying to plug the holes in our health-care system.”
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Legislative supporters of legalizing sports betting in Georgia are trying something different this year.
To avoid amending the pesky state Constitution, which requires a two-thirds vote of the Georgia House and Senate, lawmakers in both chambers are pushing bills that would allow online sports betting by statute. Adding sports betting to Georgia law without a constitutional change would need only a simple majority vote in the House and Senate.
But skeptics are warning that doing an end run around the Georgia Constitution runs the risk of lawsuits tying up the state in court and needlessly delaying sports betting from taking effect.
Lawmakers backing the statute route are armed with a new legal opinion from former Georgia Chief Justice Harold Melton asserting that a constitutional amendment is unnecessary. In a 10-page memorandum requested by the Metro Atlanta Chamber – a key supporter of bringing sports betting to Georgia – Melton contends that sports betting can be classified as a form of lottery, already legal in Georgia under the 1992 constitutional amendment that created the Georgia Lottery.
Melton cites a Georgia Court of Appeals ruling that declared three ingredients – prize, chance, and consideration – are legally required to constitute a lottery.
“Bettors pay a fee (the consideration) to enter the betting scheme with the hope of winning money (the prize),” he wrote.
Melton continued that establishing the element of “chance” may be a “closer question” than the prize or consideration. Nonetheless, he concludes that chance is present in sports betting.
“Although a bettor may exercise some skill in picking a particular team or athlete as the winner, the actual determination of a winner is entirely dependent on the ultimate performance of the teams or player,” he wrote.
A bill before the state Senate goes further by calling for legalizing not only sports betting in Georgia by statute but also horse racing. It does so by allowing only “fixed-odds” betting on horses rather than pari-mutuel betting, which is specifically prohibited by the Georgia Constitution along with casino gambling.
“This bill has no pari-mutuel betting and no casinos,” said Sen. Billy Hickman, R-Statesboro, the chief sponsor of Senate Bill 57.
But former U.S. Rep. John Barrow of Athens, who is a lawyer, called attempts to justify legalizing sports betting in Georgia without a constitutional amendment “legalistic hocus-pocus.”
In an opinion piece published by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Barrow wrote that betting on sports cannot be classified as a form of “lottery” but does fit the definition of “pari-mutuel,” and thus would require a constitutional amendment.
” ‘Pari-mutuel’ is the word that has always been applied to gambling on the outcome of some other contest – a race, a fight, a game, whatever,” he wrote. “Unlike a lottery, it depends on such things as the skill or strength of the contestants, and on the skill of the gambler in evaluating the contestants. This is the very essence of sports betting.”
Beyond the legal dispute over whether sports betting can happen in Georgia without a constitutional change is the practical consideration that going the statute route would leave out casinos. Recent polling of likely Georgia voters found stronger support for bringing casino gambling to Georgia than sports betting.
A demographic breakdown of polling results also showed that while sports betting is popular among younger voters and Black men, casinos are more appealing to older voters and Black women.
“A bet’s a bet, but your grandma wants to enjoy some newfound freedom differently than your nephew,” said Dan McLagan, spokesman for All in Georgia, a casino industry group. “Let’s not throw grandma from the fun train.”
McLagan also argued that resort casinos would generate significantly more economic impact in Georgia than online sports betting, which lacks a brick-and-mortar presence and, thus, would create few jobs.
Georgia lawmakers will have plenty of options to pick from when it comes to legalizing gambling during this year’s legislative session. Thus far, two constitutional amendments have been introduced – one in the House and one in the Senate – while two more bills would bring gambling to the Peach State without a constitutional change.
ATLANTA – A state lawmaker is renewing a bipartisan push to reform Georgia’s coin-operated amusement machines (COAM) industry.
House Bill 353, sponsored by Georgia Rep. Alan Powell, would award non-cash redemption gift cards to winners that could be redeemed anywhere in the state for any legal product. Under current law, COAM winners can redeem their prizes only for merchandise sold in the store where the machine they played is located.
With taxes from the popular COAM machines already making up the Georgia Lottery Corp.’s fastest growing source of revenue for education, gift cards would generate even more tax funds for HOPE scholarships and the state’s pre-kindergarten program, Powell, R-Hartwell, told members of the House Higher Education Committee Thursday.
“You will see the proceeds explode,” he said. “It will bring in more money to the lottery.”
During an initial hearing on his bill, Powell recounted the “checkered” history of the COAM industry in Georgia, replete with retailers paying out cash to winners.
“These machines are for amusement … non-cash redemption,” he said. “They got absolutely out of control with video poker.”
After video poker was outlawed in the early 2000s, the Georgia Lottery Corp. took over regulation of the COAM business.
While the lottery has brought new technology to bear that is able to track what every COAM machine in the state does, Powell said the gift cards are needed both to boost revenue and dissuade retailers from making illegal cash payments to winners.
Powell said the lottery corporation has been experimenting with gift cards in portions of the state through a pilot project. Retailers who have participated in the project like the idea, he said.
A state Senate committee approved legislation last year that would have increased state taxes on COAM machine owners and retailers from 10% to 30%. But the bill didn’t reach the Senate floor for a vote.
Powell suggested the legislature keep the tax rate at 10% – divided evenly between machine owners and retailers – for now and only consider raising it later if awarding gift cards drives up revenue to the extent he is predicting.
After Thursday’s hearing, Powell’s bill was transferred from the Higher Education Committee to the House Regulated Industries Committee, which he chairs.
