ATLANTA – Gov. Brian Kemp called on Georgia lawmakers Thursday to pass a private school vouchers bill, a perennial issue before the legislature that has failed to make it through the General Assembly.
“I believe we have run out of ‘next years,’ ” Kemp said during his annual State of the State address to a joint session of the Georgia House and Senate. “I firmly believe we can take an all-of-the-above approach to education, whether it’s public, private, homeschooling, charter or otherwise.
“It is time for all parties to get around a table and agree on the best path forward to provide our kids the best educational opportunities we can – because that’s what we were elected to do.”
The Senate passed legislation last year to provide Georgia students in low-performing schools with $6,000 scholarships to pay for private school or certain other educational costs. But the bill died in the House when a coalition of Democrats and rural Republicans joined forces to block it.
Democrats have long opposed vouchers as taking tax dollars away from public schools. Rural Republicans expressed concerns that vouchers wouldn’t help their constituents because of the scarcity of private schools in rural communities.
Kemp spent much of his 34-minute speech pitching more than $2 billion in new spending proposals aimed at taking advantage of an unprecedented budget surplus. He already had outlined most of those plans at previous news conferences and at Wednesday’s Eggs and Issues breakfast sponsored by the Georgia Chamber of Commerce.
The list includes accelerating the state income tax cut that took effect this month, pay raises for state employees and public school teachers, $104 million to enhance school safety, and an increase of $205 million in mental health spending.
The governor, a potential candidate for the U.S. Senate after his term expires in 2026, also devoted a good part of Thursday’s address to paint a picture of government in Georgia as different from its dysfunctional federal counterpart.
“Congress has become synonymous with runaway spending, bloated budgets, job-killing regulations, gridlock and partisanship, and elected representatives in both parties who are more interested in getting famous on cable news than delivering results for the American people,” he said.
“I promised to put hardworking Georgians first, fund our priorities like education, public safety, and health care, but also keep government efficient, responsible, and accountable.”
After Kemp’s remarks, legislative Democrats vowed to continue their fight against vouchers and took the governor to task for not supporting a full expansion of Georgia’s Medicaid program. While there have been conversations under the Gold Dome about fully expanding Medicaid after years of resistance by Kemp and his Republican predecessors, the governor made no mention of the issue Thursday.
“He is using his political power to block Medicaid expansion and defund public schools,” said Rep. Billy Mitchell, D-Stone Mountain, chairman the House Democratic Caucus.
As Kemp was completing his address, the Governor’s Office of Planning and Budget released a $37.5 billion mid-year budget request and a $36.1 billion spending proposal for fiscal 2025. The legislature’s budget writing committees will meet for three days next week to review the two budgets.
ATLANTA – Georgia voters can expect further “tweaks” to state elections laws this year, House Speaker Jon Burns said Wednesday.
House Republican leaders will push to eliminate QR codes from the paper ballots voting machines spit out to voters after they cast their ballots and consider strengthening the powers of the State Election Board, potentially at the expense of the secretary of state, said Burns, R-Newington.
The General Assembly passed legislation in 2019 providing for a paper backup to electronic ballots, a move aimed at giving Georgians more confidence their votes are being recorded accurately. But some voters have complained that the QR codes are confusing and impose a barrier on transparency.
“We need to give voters confidence … to feel like there’s transparency when they vote,” Burns said.
The other potential change to election laws Burns talked about Wednesday would shift investigations of voter complaints of election fraud from the secretary of state’s office to the State Election Board. Burns said such a move would help make the board more independent.
The most sweeping changes in Georgia election laws occurred in 2021, following 2020 elections that saw Democrats capture both of the state’s U.S. Senate seats and Democrat Joe Biden narrowly carry the Peach State on his way to the White House.
Senate Bill 202 that year required voters seeking to cast absentee ballots to show a photo ID, a provision that already applied to in-person voting. The 2021 measure also limits the number of absentee ballot drop boxes and prohibits non-poll workers from handing out food and drinks within 150 feet of voters standing in line.
On other issues Wednesday, Burns said he remains committed to Georgia Pathways, the limited Medicaid expansion championed by Gov. Brian Kemp that took effect last summer. Enrollment has gotten off to a slow start, but Burns said the governor has added resources aimed at getting more eligible Georgians signed up.
“It’s moving in the right direction,” the speaker said.
Legislative Democrats, meanwhile, are continuing to push for full-blown Medicaid expansion, which they argue would cover more Georgians at less cost.
Burns said he is looking to House members to weigh in on Republican-backed private school vouchers, legislation that failed on the House floor last year. Democrats and some Republicans objected to taking money away from public schools to help pay for private school tuition.
“I think it’s a good issue,” Burns said. “It’s giving Georgia families access to educational opportunities that might not be in their communities.”
Burns also said he’s confident the state Senate will support a mental-health bill aimed at increasing the size of the mental-health workforce in Georgia and making it easier for people who cycle between the streets, emergency rooms and jails to get the help they need.
House Bill 520, a follow-up to major mental-health reform legislation lawmakers passed two years ago, died in the Senate at the end of last year’s session.
ATLANTA – Cobb County Commissioner Jerica Richardson isn’t daunted by U.S. Rep. Lucy McBath’s decision to seek reelection in the newly redrawn 6th Congressional District.
Richardson announced Tuesday that she still plans to run for the seat, which will pit her against McBath, D-Marietta, in May’s Democratic primary.
Richardson first indicated she would run for Congress before legislative Republicans drew a new congressional map during the General Assembly’s recent redistricting session. U.S. District Judge Steve Jones, who forced the special session by ruling in October that the 2021 congressional map violated the Voting Rights Act, upheld the new map late last month.
McBath, who has been representing the 7th Congressional District during the last two years, immediately responded to Jones’ ruling by declaring her intention to run in the 6th District this year. The redrawn 6th is much friendlier turf for a Democrat than the new 7th, which now extends north through heavily Republican Forsyth, Dawson, and Lumpkin counties as well as portions of Cherokee and Hall counties.
The new 6th District includes central and southern Fulton County, South Cobb, eastern Douglas County, and northern Fayette County.
“When asked previously about whether I would stay in this race if the maps forced any current members of the Democratic Congressional Caucus to join this race in the 6th, I answered honestly that my intention in entering this race was never about challenging a sitting Democrat,” Richardson said.
“I entered this race solely focused on delivering for the constituents of the 6th, many of whom are my current commission constituents. … I have decided that I’m going to keep surfacing the issues that voters care about, because our voters deserve to know we are listening.”
Richardson noted that Republicans in the General Assembly also have drawn her out of her commission district, the only county commissioner in Georgia to suffer that fate. Cobb County officials are vowing to appeal a ruling this week by Cobb Superior Court Judge Ann Harris upholding the legislature’s authority to draw county commission maps.
ATLANTA – Tort reform in Georgia is going to be a heavier lift than anticipated, requiring more than a single session of the General Assembly to accomplish, Gov. Brian Kemp said Wednesday.
“Like every major undertaking our state has tackled in the past, we will work on a Georgia-specific solution; one designed to make meaningful reforms in this area over the next several years,” Kemp told an audience of political and business leaders at the annual Eggs and Issues breakfast sponsored by the Georgia Chamber of Commerce.
“I look forward to introducing legislation this year that will reflect my priorities to stabilize the market for insurers, stabilize premiums for Georgia’s families, and level the playing field in our courtrooms so we can continue to create even more quality, good-paying jobs.”
After years of failed efforts to get significant tort reform through the General Assembly, Kemp announced last summer that he planned to make the issue a top priority for the 2024 legislative session. At a chamber-sponsored event in Athens, he complained that frivolous lawsuits against Georgia business owners are driving up insurance premiums, making it harder for companies to create jobs.
The last major tort reform legislation the legislature passed was in 2005, a measure that set a $350,000 cap on non-economic damage awards in medical malpractice and product liability lawsuits. But the state Supreme Court declared the law unconstitutional in 2010.
Since then, legislative Democrats and their allies in the legal industry have joined forces to sink efforts to enact tort reform, arguing it would take away victims’ rights to their day in court,
The rest of Kemp’s speech Wednesday was peppered with his plans to take advantage of an unprecedented $16 billion budget surplus to increase spending in critical areas.
Ahead of Thursday’s State of the State address to a joint session of the General Assembly, Kemp announced he will ask lawmakers for $1.5 billion to help the state Department of Transportation make highway improvements that will ease the movement of commuters and freight.
Georgia Commissioner of Transportation Russell McMurry told members of the State Transportation Board last month the state will need to spend at least $81 billion on transportation improvements by 2050 to keep people and freight moving on highways that otherwise will becoming increasingly congested.
The governor said he will request $250 million for the Georgia Environmental Finance Authority to spend on local water and sewer projects, $178 million to design and construct a dental school at Georgia Southern University, $50 million for a new medical school on the campus of the University of Georgia, and an additional $50 million for the state’s Rural Workforce Housing Fund.
Kemp created the housing program last year with $37.5 million in initial funding.
ATLANTA – A Georgia Senate committee passed a sports betting bill Tuesday on just the second day of this year’s legislative session, kicking off a debate that’s likely to last all 40 days under the Gold Dome.
The Regulated Industries & Utilities Committee voted 8-3 to let Georgians bet on sports either online or at remote terminals or “kiosks.”
The state would retain 20% of the gross revenue from most sports bets and 25% from “high-profit” bets including live bets placed during games. The money would go toward various state programs to be spelled out in a separate constitutional amendment.
Senate Bill 172 was available for consideration so early in the 2024 session because it was introduced last year, the first of a two-year legislative term. The Senate tabled it last year, which left it alive to be taken up again this year.
“This has been a long process,” Sen. Bill Cowsert, R-Athens, the committee’s chairman and the bill’s chief sponsor, said Tuesday. “It’s been multiple years we’ve been dealing with these gambling issues.”
Cowsert said about three dozen states have legalized sports betting since a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2018 allowed it to expand beyond a handful of states – including Nevada – where it already was legal.
Georgia lawmakers have debated a multitude of sports betting bills since, but nothing has made it through the General Assembly.
Cowsert’s bill would establish a seven-member sports betting commission authorized to grant at least six licenses for sports betting operations. He said Atlanta’s pro sports teams, which formed a coalition several years ago to push for sports betting, could potentially set up kiosks in their home stadiums or arenas.
The legislation includes provisions aimed at protecting bettors from fraudulent sports betting operators as well as provisions to help problem gamblers avoid crippling financial losses.
The legislation is what is known in General Assembly parlance as an “enabling” bill, designed to fill in the details of an accompanying constitutional amendment.
Some lawmakers introduced legalized gambling bills last year designed not to require changing the Georgia Constitution, but whether that’s legal has been the topic of a running debate. Constitutional amendments require two-thirds votes of the state House and Senate, while other bills only need simple majorities to pass.
Any constitutional amendment that gets through the legislature then must win approval on the statewide ballot to become law.
“I don’t see anything to fear from a constitutional amendment,” Cowsert said. “It’s the right thing to do. Let the people decide when you’re making a major policy change.”
A couple of committee members questioned passing an enabling bill before its accompanying constitutional amendment has been drafted.
Sen. Carden Summers, R-Cordele, the committee’s vice chairman, said he will introduce a sports betting constitutional amendment later in the session.
“We’re not going anywhere with it without a (constitutional amendment),” Summers assured his committee colleagues.
Sen. Brandon Beach, R-Alpharetta, also is planning to introduce a constitutional amendment into the Senate that would let voters decide whether to legalize casino gambling and pari-mutuel betting on horse racing in addition to sports betting.
