ATLANTA – The Georgia House overwhelmingly passed a $40.5 billion mid-year state budget Thursday containing hundreds of millions of dollars in new spending aimed largely at helping victims of Hurricane Helene recover from the devastating storm.
The mid-year budget, which now moves to the state Senate, sailed through the House 166-3.
House lawmakers added $197 million to the $615 million Gov. Brian Kemp requested in relief for residents, business owners, farmers, and timber producers who suffered losses when Helene struck South Georgia and the eastern half of the state last September.
“This will just address initial needs,” House Appropriations Committee Chairman Matt Hatchet, R-Dublin, said of the $250 million included in the mid-year budget to help timber producers affected by Helene, up from the $100 million the governor recommended. “I’m sure we’ll have additional legislation.”
Another priority of the mid-year budget is public safety. The spending plan calls for hiring more than 400 correctional officers to staff a state prison system criticized last fall in a federal audit for failing to protect inmates from widespread violence.
The mid-year budget also would boost funding for body cameras and tasers to help those correctional officers maintain order.
House Minority Leader Carolyn Hugley, D-Columbus, questioned whether two modular prison units the state Department of Corrections plans to construct will provide enough security. The state plans to move inmates into those units temporarily to make room for projects fixing crumbling infrastructure in existing prisons.
“They are very sturdy,” Hatchett responded. “The concrete reinforcement and insulation of doors and locks are the same ones we use (in the existing prisons).”
The mid-year budget also includes $501.7 million to increase surface water supplies in Coastal Georgia to supply the huge Hyundai electric-vehicle manufacturing plant now under construction west of Savannah. A new water intake on the Savannah River is expected to produce 20 million gallons a day by 2030.
Another $250 million would go toward low-interest loans to help finance water and wastewater projects across the state.
The Georgia Department of Transportation would receive more than $500 million for improvements along the state’s interstate corridors.
The House supported Kemp’s request for an additional $50 million for school-security grants, with each school in Georgia getting more than $68,000 to spend as local school district officials see fit.
Another $22 million would go to accommodate the increasing numbers of foster children needing shelter. Hatchett said the state’s ultimate goal is eliminating the “hoteling” of foster kids in Georgia.
Financially struggling hospitals, many of which pitched in to help victims of Hurricane Helene, would get $35 million in one-time funds to help shore up their bottom lines.
Overall, the mid-year budget would increase state spending by $4.4 billion above the fiscal 2025 budget the General Assembly passed last spring. Of that amount, $2.7 billion would come from the state’s massive $16 billion surplus.
House Speaker Jon Burns said the House was determined to pass a mid-year budget as early as possible in this year’s session in order to make the funding available for disaster relief and other vital needs. The mid-year budget, which covers state spending through June 30, was the first bill to reach the House floor this year.
“We’re upholding our commitment here in the House,” said Burns, R-Newington. “We hope our friends across the hall (the Senate) will get the budget out and get it out timely.”
ATLANTA – Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is asking the nation’s new attorney general to withdraw a federal lawsuit challenging election reform legislation the General Assembly passed in 2021.
The Biden administration sued to block provisions of Senate Bill 202, which Georgia lawmakers adopted in the wake of lawsuits President Donald Trump filed at the end of his first term challenging the results of Georgia’s 2020 presidential election. Various courts rejected the Republican suits, ruling that Democrat Joe Biden was the legitimate winner of the Peach State’s 16 electoral votes that year.
Senate Bill 202 required voters seeking to cast absentee ballots to show a photo ID, a provision that already applied to in-person voting. The 2021 legislation also limited the number of absentee ballot drop boxes and prohibited non-poll workers from handing out food and drinks within 150 feet of voters standing in line.
Democrats who opposed the bill called for economic boycotts of Georgia, which led to the relocation of Major League Baseball’s All-Star game in 2021 from Truist Park to Colorado. The game will be held at the Atlanta Braves’ ballpark this summer.
“The (Justice Department) should never be leveraged for political purposes,” Raffensperger said this week. “I hope Attorney General Bondi will join us in ending this frivolous lawsuit against the state of Georgia, and release documents exposing the coordination between the Biden (administration) and the liberal left.”
Raffensperger also cited a 2022 University of Georgia poll that found 99% of voters reported no issues casting their ballots, and a follow-up poll in 2024 that reflected a similarly high satisfaction rate, with 98% of voters experiencing no problems voting.
ATLANTA – A Georgia Senate committee advanced legislation Wednesday that would expose school districts and other governing bodies to lawsuits if they violate a state law that requires cooperation with federal officials and police on immigration enforcement.
The Republican-led Senate Public Safety Committee voted 5-3 to pass Senate Bill 21, which would waive sovereign immunity for violators. Sovereign immunity shields governments against lawsuits.
The legislation targets what has come to be known as “sanctuary city” policies — local rules against collaborating with federal immigration authorities.
The measure requires sheriffs to comply with federal immigration detainer requests, and a representative of the Georgia Sheriffs’ Association said his group was neutral on that.
Mack Parnell with the Georgia Faith & Freedom Coalition expressed support for the whole bill, but other advocates were opposed.
Megan Gordon, policy director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, warned that SB 21 could expose teachers to lawsuits if they follow federal court precedent that she said prohibits the collection and reporting of students’ immigration status.
Stephanie Tanner with the Georgia School Boards Association said she was unaware of any of the state’s 180 school districts having a policy that violates the state law on immigration. She said members were concerned about whether a mere accusation would be enough to open the door to lawsuits.
Sen. Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia, the chief co-sponsor of the bill, said a government would expose itself to a lawsuit if it violated state law, which already carries criminal penalties for noncompliance.
“If they aren’t complying then they are running the risk of waiving sovereign immunity if you pass this bill,” Tillery said, adding that “it hits them in the pocketbook.”
ATLANTA – Georgia House budget writers approved a $40.5 billion mid-year state budget Wednesday that would take advantage of a huge surplus to fund improvements to the state’s prison system and provide disaster relief to victims of Hurricane Helene.
The fiscal 2025 mid-year budget would increase state spending by $4.4 billion over the original budget the General Assembly adopted last spring. Of that increase, $2.7 billion would come out of the surplus.
Gov. Brian Kemp made the prison system and hurricane relief major priorities of the mid-year budget he presented to the legislature last month.
The House Appropriations Committee upped the ante on both, raising the number of additional correctional officers the state plans to hire from the 330 the governor recommended to more than 400 and increasing the hurricane relief package Kemp proposed by $197 million to $811 million.
The prison package follows release of a Justice Department audit last fall that accused the Georgia prison system of violating inmates’ constitutional rights by failing to protect them from widespread violence. Beefing up the system’s staffing and upgrading deteriorating prison infrastructure will require a multi-year effort, committee Chairman Matt Hatchett, R-Dublin, told his House colleagues before Wednesday’s vote.
“This is just the beginning of a costly but essential endeavor,” he said.
To help offset the cost of the increased hiring, the House version of the mid-budget calls for reducing Kemp’s request for the design and construction of new modular prison units from four to two. That would reduce the total prison package from $372 million to $333 million.
Hatchett said the hurricane relief money would help homeowners, business owners, farmers, and timber producers across a large swath of South Georgia and the eastern half of the state struck by Helene in late September recover from the devastating hurricane.
“This storm had a much larger impact than any other disaster in our history, causing generational loss, changing the landscape of our state both literally and figuratively,” he said.
Other highlights in the mid-year budget include a $1 billion one-time income tax rebate and $1.7 billion for transportation and water projects.
The transportation funding includes $530 million to help the state Department of Transportation improve roads and highways vital to the movement of freight throughout Georgia.
The water projects the governor is recommending include $500 million to increase surface water supplies in Coastal Georgia as an alternative to dipping into environmentally fragile groundwater to supply the huge Hyundai electric-vehicle manufacturing plant now under construction west of Savannah. A new water intake on the Savannah River is expected to deliver 20 million gallons a day by 2030.
The mid-year budget, which would cover state spending through June 30, fully funds Georgia’s Quality Basic Education (QBE) formula for students in grades K-12, something the state has only been able to do in recent years after building up a $16 billion surplus.
Another $50 million would go for one-time school safety grants, which Kemp announced last month. Every public school in Georgia would get $68,000 to spend as local school officials see fit.
The mid-year budget is expected to reach the House floor for a vote on Thursday.
ATLANTA – Sex and school sports will be a priority for both chambers of Georgia’s General Assembly this year, with House Speaker Jon Burns announcing Tuesday that his caucus will have its own version of legislation banning transgender athletes from participating in girls’ and women’s sports.
Republicans in the state Senate have a head start on the issue.
A GOP-led Senate committee passed a bill last week that says student athletes in middle school through college can compete only on teams that match the sex on their birth certificates. At a news conference on Monday, Republican leaders of the Senate announced that the issue would be a top priority for them, something that was already clear from the title of their bill — Senate Bill 1.
Even so, Burns, R-Newington, said the House needed its own version.
“I’m not sure what’s in Senate Bill 1,” he said. “We’ve been focused on providing these safeguards, leveling these playing fields, working with good partners to perfect this legislation.”
The House version will be introduced by Rep. Josh Bonner, R-Fayetteville. It appears to differ significantly from the Senate’s in at least one key way: It would affect public school sports starting in kindergarten, Burns said, rather than in middle school.
Like SB 1, the House version would affect private schools that compete against public schools, he said.
In explaining the need for such legislation, Republicans have pointed to a much-publicized NCAA swim meet at Georgia Tech in 2022 when a transgender athlete dominated the women’s field. GOP lawmakers say that incident demonstrates that women and girls need to be protected from competing against men and boys — and from sharing locker rooms with them.
Democrats contend it was an isolated incident unlikely to recur and that Republicans are trying to score political points by promoting a solution in search of a nonexistent problem, particularly in K-12 schools.
Asked about that, Burns said he doesn’t disclose everything he knows, “but I know some situations where boys have competed against girls.”
Democrats introduced their own bills this week, also in the name of protecting female athletes.
But their legislation is focused on equal funding.
Senate Bill 41 and House Bill 221 target wiggle room in the current law governing gender equity in sports by proposing the deletion of the words “all reasonable efforts” from language requiring equal opportunities for girls.
The Democrats’ legislation would clarify that equity means “funds, facilities access, equipment, supplies, and other resources” and that schools would be in noncompliance if they failed to provide these.
It would allow lawsuits to enforce the provisions.
Burns said the GOP House legislation builds off a 2022 state law that authorized the Georgia High School Association to ban transgender athletes.
That law allowed athletic associations to “prohibit students whose gender is male from participating in athletic events that are designated for students whose gender is female.” The GHSA promptly did just that.
Both of the bills by Democrats would remove that language from the law.
