ATLANTA – Casinos are back on the table in the General Assembly.
The state Senate Economic Development and Tourism Committee approved a proposed constitutional amendment late Thursday calling for Georgia voters to decide whether to legalize not only sports betting but casino gambling. Other gambling legislation before the General Assembly this year is limited to sports betting.
Casinos would produce much more economic impact than sports betting, Sen. Carden Summers, R-Cordele, chief sponsor of Senate Resolution 538, told committee members Thursday.
Georgians are already gambling in casinos, with more than 80,000 traveling to out-of-state casinos each year, Summers said. The rub is that the jobs and tax revenue those casinos generate don’t come back to Georgia.
Summers pointed to the funding the Georgia Lottery has generated for HOPE Scholarship and pre-kindergarten students as an example of what legalized gambling already has done for the Peach State.
“The lottery’s been wonderful for our children,” he said.
Under Senate Resolution 538, 50% of the tax revenue produced by sports betting and casinos would go toward transportation improvements. Another 20% would be dedicated to pre-kindergarten and child-care programs.
The other 30% would be divided equally among mental health and gambling addiction programs, rural health care, and Georgia’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
Summers also noted that Georgia lawmakers have debated legalizing gambling for years, but none of the many bills on the issue has made it through the General Assembly.
“Let’s put this issue to bed,” he urged members of the committee. “I trust the people of Georgia to make this decision.”
Local political and business leaders from Columbus and Henry and Liberty counties spoke in support of the bill, citing the potential economic impact of casinos. Senate Resolution 538 calls for the construction of five casinos around the state.
But Mike Griffin, public affairs representative for the Georgia Baptist Mission Board, said talking about the economic benefits of legalized gambling ignores the social costs. He said casinos would be accompanied by a rise in addictive gambling, sex trafficking, and suicide.
“We can’t let money be the reason we do everything,” Griffin said. “We can’t let money be the ultimate moral standard.”
The resolution now moves to the Senate Rules Committee to schedule a floor vote.
ATLANTA – Legislation that criminalizes the use of “deepfakes” generated by artificial intelligence to impersonate candidates in political campaign ads cleared the Georgia House of Representatives Thursday.
House Bill 986, which passed 148-22, creates the crime of fraudulent election interference. Anyone who knowingly perpetrates a political deepfake within 90 days of an election would face two to five years in prison and a fine of up to $50,000.
“We want to protect good political free speech,” Rep. Brad Thomas, R-Holly Springs, the bill’s chief sponsor, said on the House floor before Thursday’s vote. “But fraud is not protected speech.”
The legislation applies to “materially deceptive” video or audio deepfakes but carves out exceptions including satire, parody, artistic expression and journalism. It also allows deepfakes to be used in campaign ads as long as they acknowledge the candidate is being impersonated and the events depicted may not have occurred.
Nonetheless, the bill drew objections that it would violate free speech rights. Rep. Charlice Byrd, R-Woodstock, compared it to the Patriot Act Congress passed in 2001 following the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C.
“This bill is an affront to our First Amendment rights,” Byrd said. “In the process of providing security, you abolish liberty.”
But the measure’s supporters said deliberately spreading false information during a political campaign is not protected by the U.S. Constitution.
“How can we have election integrity without knowing what the candidates are truly saying?” said Rep. Todd Jones, R-South Forsyth, chairman of the House Technology and Infrastructure Innovation Committee, which approved the bill last week. “Don’t we want truth in advertising?”
ATLANTA – The state Senate passed a $37.5 billion midyear budget Thursday that increases spending by $5 billion, including $2 billion from an unprecedented $16 billion surplus.
The legislation, which sailed through the Senate 54-1, represents a 9.4% increase over the fiscal 2024 budget the General Assembly passed last spring.
The Senate agreed with 95% of the spending recommendations Gov. Brian Kemp made when he presented the midyear budget last month, including $1,000 one-time pay supplements for public school teachers and state and University System of Georgia employees.
More than 58% of the funding goes to education and more than 22% to health care, Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Blake Tillery told his Senate colleagues before Thursday’s vote.
Despite the massive budget reserves, the governor and legislature remain committed to a conservative approach to spending, said Tillery, R-Vidalia.
“We can’t invest in every good idea that approaches our desks,” he said. “We have not started new positions. We’ve also tried not to start new programs.”
However, the surplus will allow the state to fund capital projects from cash this year rather than the usual practice of borrowing the money. Tillery said that approach will save Georgia taxpayers.
“We’re using our savings to avoid the record-high inflation we see in the bond market,” Tillery said.
The list of building projects in the midyear budget includes $450 million for a new state prison in Washington County, $178 million for a new dental school at Georgia Southern University’s Armstrong campus in Savannah, and $50 million for a new medical school at the University of Georgia in Athens.
After the Senate passed the midyear budget, the House disagreed with the Senate version of the spending plan, and the two chambers appointed members of a joint conference committee that will work out the two legislative chambers’ differences.
After the General Assembly approves the midyear budget, which covers state spending through June 30, lawmakers will begin work on Kemp’s fiscal 2025 budget proposals.
ATLANTA – Legislation that would create a state council to set standards for books that could be banned from public school libraries as obscene cleared a Georgia Senate committee late Wednesday.
“This bill is about making sure our public school libraries are not places for kids to be exposed to sexually explicit materials,” Sen. Clint Dixon, R-Buford, chairman of the Senate Education and Youth Committee and the bill’s chief sponsor, said before the vote.
Senate Bill 394 would create the Georgia Council of Library Materials Standards, whose members would be appointed by the governor, lieutenant governor, speaker of the House, House minority leader, and Senate minority leader. The council would create a grading system that would be used to decide which books fit the legal definition of “harmful to minors” or “sexually explicit” and therefore should be banned.
Schools that fail to comply with the standards the council sets forth would not be subject to criminal charges. However, they would be subject to complaints from parents that potentially could lead to lawsuits.
Spokesman for several faith-based organizations spoke out in support of the bill Wednesday.
Taylor Hawkins of FrontLine Policy Council said the measure simply requires keeping the same material out of the hands of children in the public schools that is already prohibited on the streets of Georgia.
“It’s a common-sense bill,” he said.
But several civil rights advocates and educators complained he bill could be used to target books about homosexuality.
Tracey Nance, Georgia’s 2020-21 Teacher of the Year, said about 10% of the state’s population identifies as LGBTQ.
“This bill is not what Georgians want and, more importantly, it’s not who Georgians are,” she said.
Sen. Elena Parent, D-Atlanta, who voted against the legislation, said gay Americans enjoy full legal rights now that the U.S. Supreme Court has legalized gay marriage.
“There are going to be children in schools whose parents are gay,” she said. “(This bill) is an attempt to indoctrinate values.”
But Republicans on the committee said the legislation is not an effort to marginalize any groups of Georgians.
“We’re not singling out any specific act of sexuality,” said Sen. Ed Setzler, R-Acworth. “It’s not attempting to indoctrinate students.”
The legislation now moves to the Senate Rules Committee to schedule a floor vote.
ATLANTA – Legislation putting guardrails around Georgia’s popular film tax credit cleared a state House subcommittee Tuesday.
House Bill 1180, which a House Ways and Means subcommittee approved unanimously, would require film production companies to meet at least four of 10 criteria to qualify for an additional 10% income tax credit on top of the 20% base credit the General Assembly enacted in 2008.
The film tax credit generated $8.55 billion in economic impact in fiscal 2022, according to a study released late last year. At the same time, the credit costs Georgia taxpayers about $1 billion a year in lost tax revenue, making it the most expensive tax incentive on the books in the Peach State.
As introduced earlier this month, the bill listed nine criteria to qualify for the higher tax credit, including requirements that at least half of the crew and vendors working on a film in Georgia be Georgia residents.
A 10th criterion added to the list would allow filmmakers to qualify for the tax credit if they use Georgia-based music productions in their films.
“It’s important to show our support for Georgia musicians and hopefully get them into films … on a more regular basis,” said Rep. Kasey Carpenter, R-Dalton, the bill’s chief sponsor.
Jill Helton of Pigmental Studios, which has a 117-acre film studio under development in St. Marys, said a provision in the bill capping the total amount of sales or transfers of credits within a calendar year at 2.5% of the governor’s revenue estimate for that year would make it nearly impossible for the growing number of independent filmmakers to operate in Georgia.
“Independent filmmakers will simply leave and conduct their business in other states,” she said.
But Carpenter said a change in the original version of the bill that would restore the amount a production company would have to spend on a single production to qualify for the tax credit to $500,000 would benefit smaller film productions, including independent films. The original measure had proposed doubling that threshold to $1 million.
“It’s not going to kill independent films,” Carpenter said.
Subcommittee Chairman Bruce Williamson, R-Monroe, said the impact of the proposed changes to the film tax credit wouldn’t affect film producers immediately because the legislation wouldn’t take effect until 2026.
The bill now moves to the full House Ways and Means Committee.
