ATLANTA – The 2024 session of the General Assembly starting Monday is expected to feature renewed debate over issues lawmakers have wrestled with for years, including private school vouchers, legalized gambling, and tort reform.
What’s different this year is that Georgia is sitting atop a $16 billion budget surplus and another $11 billion undesignated funds. What to do with that unprecedented pile of cash likely will dominate the 40 days under the Gold Dome.
“The state has the chance to make a real difference in the lives of Georgians by investing in critical areas such as child care, education, and workforce development,” said Danny Kanso, senior fiscal analyst with the left-leaning Georgia Budget and Policy Institute. “We have the resources to make historic investments that will benefit all Georgians for generations to come.”
However, the legislature’s Republican majorities aren’t likely to abandon a long-running reputation for fiscal frugality to satisfy state agencies and interest groups with long lists of uses for tax dollars.
“The world is full of ideas for spending other people’s money,” said Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia.
On the other hand, Tillery acknowledged the toll inflation has taken on core government services.
“We’re probably going to have to spend more to do what the government needs to do,” he said.
Gov. Brian Kemp already has identified some of his spending priorities. Early last month, the Republican governor announced he will ask the General Assembly to accelerate the state income tax cut the legislature approved two years ago.
The measure, which took effect at the beginning of this month, reduces the tax rate from 5.75% to 5.49%. Kemp is proposing to lower that rate further to 5.39%, a level that barring new legislation would not kick in until next year.
Kemp also will ask lawmakers for funding to provide one-time pay supplements of $1,000 for each of about 112,000 state employees and 196,000 teachers and school support staff, and to send $45,000 to every public school in Georgia to strengthen campus security.
Meanwhile, GOP legislative leaders are expected to mount another bid in their perennial fight to get private school vouchers through the General Assembly.
Last year, the Senate passed a bill to provide Georgia students in low-performing schools $6,000 scholarships to pay for private school or certain other educational costs. But the legislation failed in the House on the final day of the 2023 session when a group of rural Republicans joined minority Democrats opposed to diverting funds from public schools in voting against it.
The rural Republicans objected to the bill because there aren’t enough private schools in rural counties to make vouchers viable in those areas.
“We keep hearing, ‘school choice, school choice, school choice,’ ” said Lisa Morgan, president of the Georgia Association of Educators. “For the vast majority of Georgians living outside the metropolitan area, that’s not an option. … It’s disingenuous to say any voucher bill would benefit those students.”
Kemp signaled last summer during a speech at a Georgia Chamber of Commerce-sponsored event that tort reform would be one of his top priorities for the 2024 General Assembly session.
One of the first things Republicans did in 2005 when the GOP took control of both legislative chambers for the first time in modern history was pass a bill setting a $350,000 cap on non-economic damages in lawsuits. But the state Supreme Court overturned the law in 2010.
“The cost of defending itself against one bogus lawsuit could be enough to put a small business out of business,” said Hunter Loggins, director of the Georgia chapter of the National Federation for Independent Business.
Legislative Democrats have long blocked major tort reform initiatives in the legislature, arguing changes to the system would strip away the rights of victims of car crashes and medical malpractice to their day in court.
Another issue lawmakers debate virtually every year but have yet to act on is legalized gambling. Of several forms of gambling that have been proposed, supporters say sports betting should be the easiest to pass because it could be done without amending Georgia’s Constitution, which requires two-thirds votes of the House and Senate.
But not everyone buys that legal argument. State Sen. Brandon Beach, R-Alpharetta, said he will introduce a constitutional amendment early in the session to legalize not only sports betting but casino gambling and pari-mutuel betting on horse racing.
If it passes, the amendment would land on the statewide ballot in November for Georgia voters to decide.
Beach said half of the state’s share of revenue from legalized gambling under his proposal would go to infrastructure spending, including highway and bridge improvements. Last month, Georgia Commissioner of Transportation Russell McMurry warned the state needs a significant boost in transportation funding during the coming decades to keep people and freight moving on highways that otherwise will becoming increasingly congested.
“They can’t spend the money on salaries or new F150 trucks,” Beach said of his legislation.
Beach said the rest of the state’s share of funding from legalized gambling would be divided between mental health care, rural health care, and chronically underfunded Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).
Legislative Republicans also are expected to renew efforts to repeal or at least streamline the state’s Certificate of Need (CON) law governing hospital construction. After years of failure on the CON front, GOP leaders have signaled a willingness to talk about expanding Medicaid coverage in Georgia – a longstanding priority for Democrats – in exchange for CON reform.
Under a Medicaid expansion model adopted in heavily Republican Arkansas, individuals with incomes up to 138% of the federal poverty line are eligible for coverage. Georgia Pathways, the limited Medicaid expansion that took effect in Georgia last summer, sets the income limit at 100% of the poverty line.
“If we’re going to have conversations about significant CON changes, we need to have conversations about how we’re going to get people access to health care,” said Anna Adams, executive vice president of external affairs at the Georgia Hospital Association. “There’s going to be conversations about both.”
Former U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler (Photo by Beau Evans)
ATLANTA – Democrats and Republicans in Georgia are assembling all the tools they can muster to sway voters in what promises to be a hotly contested election year.
On the GOP side, former U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga., announced Friday the national rollout of a technology company she has founded to support conservative candidates. RallyRight LLC deployed new technology platforms across several states during the last election cycle, including Georgia.
“As a candidate in 2020, it was clear that Democrats held a significant infrastructure advantage,” Loeffler said Friday. “While the Left has spent years investing in technology to improve their fundraising and voter contact operations, I saw the need to innovate and build technology for the conservative movement.”
RallyRight’s two campaign technology platforms include DonateRight, designed to help candidates with fundraising, and FieldRight, which helps candidates reach and mobilize voters.
Since losing her Senate seat to Sen. Raphael Warnock, R-Ga., three years ago, Loeffler has been active on the candidate recruitment and voter mobilization fronts. Toward that end, she founded the organization Greater Georgia to help register conservative voters.
Not to be outdone, Georgia Democrats announced Friday a plan to recruit enough Democratic candidates to make sure no Republican goes unchallenged this year up and down the ballot.
Part of a national campaign, the program will use text messages, coaching calls and in-person organizing to identify and mobilize Democrats to run for local office, focusing on areas outside of major cities where a high percentage of Republicans typically go uncontested.
“Georgia Democrats are committed to competing up and down the ballot all across our state, without discounting or taking for granted a single county – including rural and non-metro areas,” said Tolulope Kevin Olasanoye, the Democratic Party of Georgia’s executive director.
The 2024 candidate recruitment program is targeting nearly 3,000 local races across 876 localities in almost every county, with a focus on county commission, city council, and school board races. The goal is to recruit at least 100 new Democrats to file for office.
Gabriel Sterling, chief operating officer at the Georgia secretary of state’s office, was ‘swatted’ this week. (Secretary of State video)
ATLANTA – Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is calling on the General Assembly to pass legislation increasing penalties for transmitting false alarms amid an outbreak of “swatting” incidents.
False reports of criminal activity that send police to the homes or offices of targeted victims have cropped up across the country in recent weeks. In Georgia, victims have included three Republican state senators, a Democratic state senator, GOP Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, and U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Rome.
The alarming trend struck home in Raffensperger’s office this week when Gabriel Sterling, the secretary of state’s chief operating officer, joined the list of swatting victims.
“It is deeply troubling to see a rise in swatting and other physical threats,” Raffensperger said. “We expect heightened tensions as we head into a major presidential election. (But) we expect American citizens to engage in the democratic process – not resort to cowardly acts of intimidation.”
Raffensperger introduced legislation in 2016 while serving as a member of the Georgia House of Representatives to increase the penalty for transmitting a false public alarm from one year in prison to 10. He is urging lawmakers to reconsider the measure.
State Sen. Clint Dixon, R-Buford, announced last week that he plans to introduce a bill strengthening penalties for false reporting and misuse of police forces.
The General Assembly will convene the 2024 legislative session under the Gold Dome on Monday.
ATLANTA – State Sen. Mike Dugan, R-Carrollton, is running for the U.S. House seat in Georgia’s 3rd Congressional District being vacated by Rep. Drew Ferguson.
Dugan was elected to the General Assembly in 2012. His 30th Senate District includes portions of Carroll, Douglas, Haralson and Paulding counties.
Dugan became then-Gov. Nathan Deal’s floor leader before he was elected Senate majority leader by his Senate colleagues in 2018.
But he lost a bid for Senate president pro tempore at the beginning of last year’s legislative session. Last month, he was the only Republican in the Senate to vote against the new Senate redistricting map drawn by the GOP majority, objecting to changes to his district.
“It is time to get back to a government that works for the people, and I would be honored to be the voice that represents Georgia’s 3rd Congressional District,” Dugan said in a statement.
Ferguson, R-West Point, announced last month he would be leaving Congress after four terms to spend more time with his family.
Dugan spent 20 years in the Army, serving as a ranger and master paratrooper. He retired from the military as a lieutenant colonel in 2008 and currently works as a construction contractor.
The race for the heavily Republican 3rd District seat is expected to draw a large number of GOP candidates. The qualifying period for candidates will take place in March.
Dugan is leaving the state Senate this week to devote his efforts to the congressional campaign. Gov. Brian Kemp has set a special election for Feb. 13 to fill the seat.
ATLANTA – Gov. Brian Kemp named a new executive counsel Thursday, part of a series of staffing changes in the governor’s office.
Kristyn Long will become the Kemp administration’s lawyer at the end this month, succeeding David Dove, who is leaving state government to join the prestigious Atlanta law firm Troutman Pepper as a partner. Long has been serving as the state’s chief operating officer.
“Kristyn Long has been essential to our state’s successful response to the unprecedented challenges of the past few years,” Kemp said.
Before taking on her current role, Long previously served as deputy chief operating officer and deputy executive counsel. Prior to joining the Kemp administration in 2020, she worked in private practice, focusing on civil litigation, probate litigation, and estate planning.
Filling Long’s role as chief operating officer will be Russell Crutchfield, who has been serving as chief of staff and associate vice president at the University of West Georgia since 2016. Before that, Crutchfield held several leadership position with state agencies, including the departments of Community Health, Public Health, and Labor.
