by Dave Williams | Mar 27, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Georgia Senate budget writers advanced a $37.7 billion fiscal 2026 spending plan that invests heavily in prisons and education.
The budget, which now heads to the full Senate, includes $170 million in new spending to hire more correctional officers, give the current staff a pay raise and upgrade prison system technology to crack down on the smuggling of contraband to inmates, including cellphones. That’s less than the $250 million in the House version of the budget but above the $125 million Gov. Brian Kemp requested when he unveiled his spending recommendations in January.
The emphasis on improving conditions inside Georgia prisons follows a federal audit last fall that criticized the system for failing to protect inmates from violence.
Like both the governor’s version of the budget and the House version, the Senate Appropriations Committee agreed to fully fund the state’s per-pupil funding formula for elementary and secondary schools.
The committee also voted to fully fund Georgia’s new private-school vouchers program at $140 million, returning to Kemp’s original recommendation and disagreeing with the House, which had cut the program to $40 million.
“This will allow 21,000 students and their families to have options to pick other schools when the school they’re attending falls in the bottom quartile of schools in the state,” Sen. Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia, the committee’s chairman, said Thursday.
The committee also rejected $28 million the House added to the budget for services to economically disadvantaged students.
The budget panel also decided to delay spending $7 million for infrastructure improvements associated with the staging of the Super Bowl at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta in 2028 and college basketball’s Final Four in 2031.
The Senate version of the spending plan would pay cash for a series of building projects rather than borrow the money. The state has a large enough budget surplus to take that pay-as-you-go route.
However, Tillery warned his committee colleagues that the “sugar high” of federal spending that followed the COVID pandemic is over and that an uncertain national economic outlook means the state must be careful not to overspend.
“All the federal COVID spending did was delay the inevitable for five to six years,” he said.
The 2026 budget will take effect July 1.
by Dave Williams | Mar 27, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Georgia’s unemployment rate held steady last month at 3.6%, a half-percentage point below the national rate.
A positive sign for the state’s economy was a gain of 7,200 jobs over the month and an increase of 28,500 over the year.
“Georgia continues to drive business growth and opportunity,” said Louis DeBroux, the state’s interim commissioner of labor. “Our unemployment rate … (is) a reflection of Georgia’s resilient workforce and the intentional, focused efforts by Gov. Brian Kemp and the General Assembly, in participation with the business community, to expand access to high-quality jobs.”
The job sectors posting the most over-the-month gains in February were health care and social assistance, which gained 1,700 jobs, followed by administrative and support services with a gain of 1,300 jobs.
The sectors with by far the most losses last month was transportation and warehousing, which lost 2,600 jobs.
Georgia’s labor force decreased in February by 11,681 to just below 5.4 million.
The number of employed Georgians fell during the month by 10,772 to almost 5.2 million. On the plus side, the ranks of the unemployed also declined by 909 to 192,148.
Initial unemployment claims were down by 14,030 in February to 20,464.
by Ty Tagami | Mar 26, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
Parents of children who are questioning their gender would still have access in Georgia to medicine that prevents the onset of puberty under a new version of state legislation that had sought to ban all access.
The version of Senate Bill 30 that passed the Georgia Senate in early March would have threatened the medical licenses of doctors and hospitals administering puberty blockers.
Sen. Ben Watson, R-Savannah, the bill’s chief sponsor, said the prohibition was needed because of long-term repercussions, such as bone density loss. He pointed to some European countries that have banned access.
But a fellow Republican in the House of Representatives said Wednesday that the Senate’s bill went too far, and she reined it in with what she called a compromise. Rep. Sharon Cooper, R-Marietta, chairs the House Public and Community Health Committee, where the bill was sent by House leadership. Her amendment preserves access to puberty blockers but makes them harder to obtain.
The committee hearing featured medical specialists who testified for and against a ban, with one pediatric endocrinologist saying that delaying puberty is harmful and another dismissing the consequences of puberty blockers.
“Physiologically these bodies are male, and they are female,” said Dr. Quentin Van Meter, who testified to the committee via Watson’s phone. “There’s nothing that we can do that can change that at any cellular level and so puberty blockers are inappropriate for the use in these kids before the age of consent,” he said.
Delaying puberty reduces bone density and can cause problems with “mental capabilities,” he said without elaborating.
Dr. Shirley Hao said she was speaking for the Georgia Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, and that the organization opposes banning puberty blockers.
“Treatment of gender dysphoria and gender affirming care is supported by nearly every major medical and mental health organization in the United States,” she said, “including the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Endocrine Society, just to name a few.”
Hao said studies have shown that bone density can be addressed by the later use of hormone therapy and by increased vitamin D intake, calcium supplementation and physical activity.
Several who spoke at the hearing noted a disconnect between Georgia Republicans’ goal of safeguarding parental rights and how Watson and other proponents of SB 30 want to deny those rights when it comes to puberty blockers.
Cooper appeared to agree with the critique.
“I think a lot of us are just having some trouble about that sort of dictatorial writ,” she said, before outlining how her amendments would alter SB 30 by allowing continued access to puberty blockers but making them “really hard to get.”
Parents would have to get two behavioral health specialists — either two psychiatrists, or a psychiatrist and a psychologist — to determine that their child has gender dysphoria. Then they would have to see a board-certified pediatric endocrinologist.
These sorts of specialists are rare, Cooper noted.
“A parent is going to have to really want and understand and believe their child has this dysphoria because a lot of them are probably going to have to drive 100 or 150 miles to get to that kind of doctor,” she said.
Cooper’s amendment didn’t placate Democrats. All eight Democrats present voted against the bill, after their caucus vice chair, Rep. Spencer Frye from Athens, railed against SB 30 as a “disgusting” waste of time.
But the committee passed the bill with the support of eight Republicans.
The House Rules Committee will now decide whether to put it to a vote of the full House. If it were to pass there, the Senate would have to agree to Wednesday’s amendments for it to become law.
by Ty Tagami | Mar 26, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Legislation seeking to give Georgians more leverage to invoke religion when disagreeing with government requirements is primed for final passage after clearing a committee Wednesday.
Senate Bill 36 passed the House Judiciary Committee 9-6 after amendments washed away prior changes, restoring the bill to the version that the Senate approved in early March.
The main sponsor, Sen. Ed Setzler, R-Acworth, said the measure shields people against state intrusion into their religious beliefs and practices. Critics, including the lone Republican on the committee who voted with all Democrats against passage, said SB 36 would allow people to use religion to discriminate against others, for instance by allowing landlords, adoption agencies, restaurants and other businesses to refuse service to gay people.
During a lengthy hearing last week, 29 people spoke for and against the measure. At least one religious figure opposed SB 36 but most speakers who represented a church favored the bill, saying their faith needs legal protection.
“People of faith are being censored, facing demands to violate their conscience,” said Bishop Garland Hunt, executive pastor at The Father’s House, a non-denominational church.
Opponents noted that most states that have adopted a religious freedom law also have a counter-balancing non-discrimination law that prohibits using religious beliefs to refuse service to LGBTQ+ people.
Setzler resisted attempts to add such language to SB 36. An amendment proposed by Rep. Deborah Silcox, R-Sandy Springs, last week sought to balance religious rights “against discrimination on any ground prohibited by federal, state or local law.”
Although Georgia lacks a statewide non-discrimination law, 18 communities have such local ordinances, and Silcox wanted to give those local laws legal weight against religious rights.
Republicans voted down her amendment.
After the committee passed the bill Wednesday, Jeff Graham, executive director of Georgia Equality, said the committee’s vote against the Silcox amendment showed that “the true intent of this legislation is weaponizing religion.”
SB 36 now goes to the House Rules Committee ahead of a possible final vote by the full House.
by Dave Williams | Mar 26, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – A hearing in the General Assembly Wednesday on a proposed near-total ban on abortion in Georgia pitted preachers against physicians.
House Bill 441 calls for extending the state’s current law prohibiting abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected – typically after about six weeks of pregnancy – to ban abortions at every stage of an embryo’s development from fertilization to birth.
“Tens of thousands of babies made in the image of God continue to be murdered in our state every year,” state Rep. Emory Dunahoo, R-Gillsville, the bill’s chief sponsor, told members of the House Judiciary Committee (Non-Civil) Committee. “This bill simply ensures that those same laws protecting the lives of people after birth equally protect the lives of people before birth.”
Dunahoo’s bill provides exceptions for spontaneous miscarriages, situations where a woman is pressured to undergo an abortion, and cases where doctors are trying to save the life of a mother. But it does not allow exceptions for victims of rape or incest.
Democrats on the committee argued such a strict ban on abortions would discourage doctors already afraid to perform the procedures since lawmakers adopted the “heartbeat” bill from performing even those abortions Dunahoo’s bill would allow.
“Doctors don’t know how to interpret these laws,” said Rep. Dar’shun Kendrick, D-Lithonia.
“This bill is putting every traumatized woman in a position to worry if they’re going to be prosecuted for a miscarriage,” added Rep. Shea Roberts, D-Atlanta.
Several ob-gyns warned that the legislation would nullify a bill also before the General Assembly this year aimed at protecting in vitro fertilization in Georgia.
“This bill, if you vote for it, I cannot work,” said Dr. Karenne Fru, who owns a fertility clinic in Sandy Springs. “I cannot go to jail because I want people to become parents.”
But Christian ministers and right-to-life advocates said abortion goes against the teachings of the Bible, no matter at what stage it occurs.
“An elective abortion takes the life of an innocent human being, whether it occurs two days after fertilization, six weeks, or 40 weeks,” said Dr. Coleman Boyd, a family medicine doctor and anti-abortion activist from Mississippi.
The committee took no action on the bill. The measures faces long odds in the General Assembly since it was introduced just two weeks before last month’s Crossover Day and did not make it through the House before that annual deadline for bills to clear at least one legislative chamber to remain alive for the year.
