by Dave Williams | Mar 25, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Legislation giving Georgia cities, counties and school districts until April 30 to decide whether to opt out of offering a property tax break voters approved last fall cleared the state Senate Tuesday.
Georgians passed a constitutional amendment last November prohibiting local governments and school districts from raising residential property assessments in a given year by more than the annual rate of inflation, even if a home’s market value has gone up more.
Supporters argued the constitutional change would offer homeowners more certainty in their property tax liability year to year. But the legislation prompted concerns among local government and school district officials anxious to protect a key revenue source funding their operations.
Last year’s measure gave those local governments the ability to opt out of the measure if they filed an opt-out resolution with the Georgia secretary of state’s office by March 1 and held at least three public hearings. This year’s House Bill 92, which the Senate passed 52-2 on Tuesday, extends that deadline to the end of next month.
The House passed the bill last month with just one “no” vote. But it went through a series of changes when it got to the Senate.
Offering a carrot to entice school districts to offer property owners the tax break rather than opt out, the Senate version of the bill exempts funds spent on school construction from taxation in districts that agree to provide the tax relief. It also limits the tax exemption to primary residential properties of no more than five acres.
Local governments and school systems that choose to opt out of the tax exemption this year would be given an opportunity to opt back in annually through 2029.
House Bill 92 moves back to the House next to weigh in on the changes made by the Senate.
by Ty Tagami | Mar 24, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Legislation designed to avert another school shooting like the one that left four dead at Apalachee High School last fall got a hearing in a Senate subcommittee Monday, where many expressed concerns about a database that would be built to track children deemed to be suspicious.
House Bill 268 passed the Georgia House of Representatives with wide bipartisan support earlier this month. The priority for House Speaker Jon Burns, a Republican from Newington, comes to the Senate as the House encounters several school safety bills that were passed by the Senate.
The bills share some things in common, such as heightened criminality for students who make threats of bodily harm.
But HB 268 is unique in its breadth. The 65-page measure would make it a felony to threaten someone with death at a school. It would add behavioral health coordinators to school staff. And it would require school systems to create threat assessment teams, calling for better information sharing among school administrators, law enforcement and mental health counselors when a student could pose a threat to themselves or others.
The measure also would require the timely transfer of pertinent information when students transfer between schools. The 14-year-old student at Apalachee High who was arrested for the murders, Colt Gray, had just transferred from another school. It would also establish a statewide information-sharing database to track students whose behavior has raised suspicion.
It’s this last part, a multimillion-dollar behavioral threat assessment management system, to be called the School and Student Safety Database or S3 Database, that has generated the most concern.
“Big Brother surveillance of our children,” is how Sen. Shawn Still, R-Johns Creek, characterized the messages he has been getting from constituents about the bill.
Still and Sen. Bill Cowsert, R-Athens, asked most of the questions during Monday’s meeting of the subcommittee, which heard from more than a dozen speakers over more than two hours, but took no action on SB 268.
Teacher advocates praised the measure, welcoming the support that additional counselors could provide.
Others were critical of the S3 database, worrying that it would archive dumb things kids do, creating a record that could haunt them into adulthood. They feared the data would be hacked.
It “criminalizes student speech,” said Rhonda Thomas of Truth in Education, a Christian advocacy group focused on parental rights. “It’s guilty before proven innocent.”
Mazie Lynn Causey, from the Georgia Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, was concerned about enhanced penalties for threats made on campus, an idea that she said was more punitive in a measure now in the House, Senate Bill 61.
Terroristic threats can be predicated on reckless conduct, she said.
“And of course children are going to act impulsively,” she said. “They can’t really help it. Their brains are not fully developed.”
Officials from the Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency (GEMHSA) minimized the impact the S3 database would have on children if they didn’t intend to do harm.
It’s meant to be preventative, they said, leading school and police personnel to intervene before a student acts.
It would be built with top security protocols to make hacking unlikely, they said. Only select personnel — school administrators, mental health specialists and police — would have access to the information. The system would likely cost more than $10 million a year, with GEMHSA recommending that data be maintained until former students reach age 25.
by Dave Williams | Mar 24, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – A state Senate committee advanced legislation Monday following up on a bill the General Assembly passed last year aimed at illegal squatters.
The 2024 measure, which cleared the Georgia House and Senate unanimously, created the offense of unlawful squatting when someone enters upon the land or premises of the owner without the owner or rightful occupant’s knowledge or consent.
Last year’s bill has made a difference, state Rep. Devan Seabaugh, R-Marietta, chief sponsor of the 2024 legislation, told members of the Senate Public Safety Committee.
But Sen. John Albers, R-Roswell, the committee’s chairman, said illegal squatting remains a significant problem in Georgia.
“There actually are entire websites dedicated to people who want to be squatters … how to navigate the system for the longest possible time before they are evicted,” Albers said last week during an initial hearing on this year’s bill. “We do not want that.”
Seabaugh said this year’s bill, which he also is sponsoring, closes loopholes the 2024 legislation left in the eviction process.
“House Bill 61 … provides real enforcement tools, deters fraud, and restores control to property owners and law enforcement,” he told Albers’ committee Monday. “Most importantly, it balances firm action against unlawful squatting with fairness and due process for all.”
This year’s bill put Georgia’s magistrate courts in charge of adjudicating eviction cases, limits the liability law enforcement agencies face for enforcing evictions, imposes restitution on criminal squatters based on the market value of the property they are occupying, and makes forging documents related to squatting a felony punishable by one to five years in prison.
Much of Monday’s discussion focused on tenants who are evicted from extended stay motels.
Sen. Kim Jackson, D-Stone Mountain, who voted against the bill, said those tenants should be treated differently under the law from illegal squatters.
“We need to make a distinction between a squatter and a person who paid their rent and paid their rent, then missed a day,” she said. “To charge them with criminal trespass and to set them and their kids out, I think, is an injustice.”
“A lot of these extended stays are voluntarily allowing families to live there for years,” Lindsay Siegel, an Atlanta lawyer who represents tenants in housing rights cases, said during last week’s hearing. “It would create a humanitarian crisis to essentially say these families get no notice before they’re put out on the curb.”
After agreeing to a couple of amendments, the committee approved the bill with just two “no” votes. It heads next to the Senate Rules Committee to decide whether to bring it to the Senate floor.
by Ty Tagami | Mar 21, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – President Donald Trump has nominated another Georgian to join his administration, selecting state Sen. Brandon Beach, R-Alpharetta, for U.S. Treasurer.
The role is a senior leadership position within the U.S. Treasury Department, led by Secretary Scott Bessent. The Treasurer oversees the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and the United States Mint.
Beach has been a steadfast Trump supporter, questioning the outcome of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia and the conduct of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in her criminal case against Trump and his allies.
Beach chairs the Senate Economic Development and Tourism Committee, and he works as executive director of True North 400, previously known as the North Fulton Community Improvement District.
He is a former president of the North Fulton Chamber of Commerce and served as a board member of the Georgia Chamber of Commerce.
Beach’s background makes him uniquely qualified for the Treasury post, said Georgia Chamber President and CEO Chris Clark, who called Beach an expert on monetary and economic policy.
“Senator Beach will bring his strong business mindset to the Treasury Department, ensuring it remains an efficient government agency,” Clark said.
Beach was among a group of Republican state lawmakers who called for a special session of the General Assembly to consider changes to Georgia’s voter ID laws after Joe Biden’s presidential win in 2020.
He also backed a Senate GOP push to investigate Willis and her conduct of the investigation into Trump and his supporters amid allegations that Willis had improper involvement with the special prosecutor on the case.
Trump has often turned to Georgia for leaders. Former U.S. Rep. Doug Collins was recently sworn in as Secretary of Veterans Affairs and former U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler was sworn in to lead the Small Business Administration.
In Trump’s first term, he picked former Gov. Sonny Perdue, now chancellor of the University System of Georgia, to lead the U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. Rep. Tom Price to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.
by Dave Williams | Mar 21, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – By the time the 2025 General Assembly session gavels to a close early next month, Georgia lawmakers are expected to have taken the first steps to come to grips with the growth of artificial intelligence technology.
A state Senate committee approved a House bill Friday that would require the Georgia Technology Authority (GTA) and local governments across the state to develop plans for using AI and – importantly – to publish those plans online for the public to see.
“Transparency is everything,” Rep. Brad Thomas, R-Holly Springs, chief sponsor of House Bill 147, told members of the Senate Science and Technology Committee. “If we can’t operate a transparent government, that’s where the breakdown of democracy starts.”
Georgia lawmakers have been working for the last couple of years on how to regulate AI. Crafting plans to accomplish that goal was at the heart of the report a Senate study committee released ahead of this year’s session.
“We need to do this,” said Sen. John Albers, R-Roswell, who chaired the study committee. “If we’re going to stay the No.-place to do business, we have to be the No.-1 place for artificial intelligence.”
Besides developing plans for regulating AI, the legislature also is looking to criminalize the use of AI to generate obscene material depicting children. Two bills with that goal in mind – House Bill 171 and Senate Bill 9 – have passed their respective legislative chambers and await action on the other side of the Capitol.
Another measure that touches on artificial intelligence is the Georgia Consumer Privacy Protection Act, which the Senate passed early this month with just two “no” votes.
“Our personal information is everywhere,” said Albers, chief sponsor of Senate Bill 111. “In fact, it gets a little scary. … We want to make sure data that’s personal is protected as much as possible.”
Albers’ bill is aimed at businesses that “target market” by selling customers’ personal data. The legislation would prohibit selling such personal information without the customer’s permission, limit the collection of personal information to what is necessary, and give customers the ability to delete their personal information.
The measure also gives Georgia’s attorney general the ability to enforce the law against violators.
While a representative of the Atlanta-based Technology Association of Georgia supported the bill during a House committee hearing last Wednesday, a spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia said forcing consumers to appeal to the attorney general’s office for enforcement would be cumbersome.
“Tech companies and other companies need to do something to protect (consumers’) rights and data,” said Christopher Bruce, the organization’s policy and advocacy director. “(But) this bill is flawed.”
House Bill 147, meanwhile, has drawn concern from representatives of local governments that would have to put together plans for how they use AI.
“For small counties that don’t use AI or have any plans to, is it practical for them to put together a report?” asked Todd Edwards, director of governmental affairs for the Association County Commissioners of Georgia. “That might not be the best use of their time and capital.”
To address that issue, changes to Thomas’ bill made by the Senate Science and Technology Committee would give local governments until the end of 2027 to set out in writing what AI systems they’re using. The GTA would have to publish online how state agencies are using AI by the end of this year.
“This is a transformational enough technology that the public needs to know what’s going on,” said Sen. Ed Setzler, R-Acworth, the Senate committee’s chairman.
Lawmakers working to establish policies for managing the use of AI acknowledge that the technology is constantly changing. Even though Albers’ Senate study committee completed its work last year, he has introduced a resolution calling for a new study committee to examine what needs to be done to keep pace with those changes.
The panel would have until Dec. 1 to issue findings and recommendations.
