The state Capitol building in Atlanta at night after lawmakers adjourned the legislative session shortly after midnight on April 1, 2021. (Photo by Beau Evans)
Gov. Brian Kemp has signed into law several bills on taxes, time change and teacher retention that the General Assembly passed in the 2021 legislative session.
Among the more high-profile measures Kemp signed at a ceremony in Savannah Wednesday is an income-tax credit to recruit and retain teachers for high-need subjects in underserved Georgia public schools.
Sponsored by Rep. Dave Belton, R-Buckhead, the measure allows teachers in 100 rural or low-performing schools picked annually by the state to apply for a $3,000 credit on their income taxes for up to five years if they teach certain subjects that students struggle to learn.
The teacher credit figured as a priority for Kemp in this year’s session. He has also pushed for state budgets to include teacher pay raises and legislation to cut down the number of year-end standardized tests that students must take.
Kemp also signed a bill aimed at putting Georgia on daylight saving time permanently if Congress takes action permitting states to make that change. The measure was passed over separate legislation that proposed establishing standard time year-round.
Also signed into law were bills to levy a $5 per-night excise tax on short-term stays in vacation rentals and hotels booked by online vendors and allow district attorneys to access previously confidential records on offenders seeking parole after serving prison time for a violent felony or sexual abuse of a minor.
The 2021 session wrapped up a few minutes after midnight April 1 amid heated debate over Republican-led legislation on voting procedures and criminal justice issues.
Kemp signed a controversial bill changing Georgia mail-in and early voting laws shortly after state lawmakers passed it on a party-line vote late last month.
The election changes have since become a national lightning rod with Republicans calling them needed for voting integrity and Democrats condemning them as voter suppression.
Federal officials have approved Georgia’s plan to extend Medicaid coverage for low-income new mothers in the state, Gov. Brian Kemp’s office announced Wednesday.
The plan will lengthen the period for income-eligible mothers to receive Medicaid benefits from the current two months up to six months post-partum. Coverage is available for mothers with incomes up to 220% of the federal poverty level.
The extension follows passage last year by the General Assembly for state officials to request a waiver from the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which has now granted approval.
Legislation allowing the state’s waiver request came from Rep. Sharon Cooper, R-Marietta, and passed unanimously last June amid the coronavirus-interrupted legislative session. Kemp then signed the bill.
“We recognize that maternal deaths are a serious public health concern, and the approval of the Georgia Postpartum Extension waiver underscores Georgia’s commitment to continually enhance the level of care for new mothers in the Peach State,” Kemp said in a statement Wednesday.
Cooper’s bill also extended Medicaid coverage to lactation specialists for mothers having trouble feeding their babies.
Extending coverage for low-income mothers with newborns stemmed from a House study committee on maternal mortality in 2019 that looked at 101 cases of pregnancy-related deaths in Georgia and found 60% could have been prevented with better health care.
“We view this as a significant steppingstone in helping to ensure that post-partum women throughout Georgia can continue receiving the best care possible,” state Department of Community Health Commissioner Frank Berry said in a statement.
State lawmakers this year also passed separate legislation brought by Cooper to create an easier path for low-income Georgia children to automatically start collecting Medicaid benefits if they are already eligible for food stamps.
Pending approval from the federal government, the automatic enrollment would allow an estimated 60,000 Medicaid-eligible children who receive food stamps to also join the joint state-federal health program, according to the nonprofit advocacy group Georgians for a Healthy Future.
Recently enacted law changes for Georgia elections have become a lightening rod for national debate on voter integrity following the 2020 election cycle. (Photo by Beau Evans)
Georgians’ support or disapproval of the state’s controversial new voting law largely broke along political party lines in a survey the University of Georgia released Wednesday.
Republican voters in the survey supported while Democratic voters opposed the more high-profile measures in the recently enacted elections bill, which has become a lightning rod for national debate on election integrity and voter access following the 2020 election cycle.
Democratic leaders in Georgia and across the country have framed Georgia’s new voting law as an attempt at voter suppression targeting minority voters who helped the state’s 2020 presidential election and both U.S. Senate seats go to Democrats.
Republican leaders mostly have argued the voting measures were needed to boost confidence in the state’s election system amid former President Donald Trump’s fraud claims, which state election officials and federal courts rejected.
The survey, conducted by UGA’s School of Public and International Affairs, asked questions to 887 Georgians split about evenly among Republican and Democratic voters over a three-week period after the bill’s enactment late last month. It had a 95% confidence level.
The party-line trend held true for Georgia Republican and Democratic voters when asked if they thought the new voting measures would strengthen the state’s election system or harm it, as well as whether the intent was to bolster election integrity or make it harder to vote for certain groups to cast ballots.
The vast majority of surveyed Republicans responded that the measures will help improve election integrity and voter access. Most Democrats responded in the opposite.
Similarly, a wide majority of Republicans responded that they lacked confidence in their 2020 votes being fairly counted and that President Joe Biden won Georgia’s presidential election due to fraud. Democratic respondents dismissed fraud claims and doubt in Biden’s win.
Among the most testy proposals in the bill was a requirement for mail-in voters to provide a driver’s license or other official form of identification when casting absentee ballots. Roughly 93% of Republicans supported that measure, while 61% of Democrats opposed it.
Republicans overwhelmingly favored shortening Georgia’s runoff period from nine weeks to four, requiring absentee drop boxes to be placed in county election offices and voting precincts, moving back the deadline to request absentee ballots from four days before an election to 11 days, and barring election officials from sending voters unsolicited absentee ballot applications.
Democrats mostly opposed those measures in the survey. Independent voters were generally divided half in favor, half opposed.
Republicans also overwhelmingly supported a new prohibition against allowing voters to cast provisional ballots at precincts that they have not been officially assigned. Democrats mostly opposed that measure.
In contrast, both partisan and independent voters largely supported new rules for counties to keep polls open for two mandatory Saturdays and two optional Sundays during the three-week early voting period.
Fewer Republicans supported measures allowing state election officials to temporarily take over poor-performing county election boards and a ban on non-poll workers from handing out food and drinks within 150 feet of voters waiting in line outside precincts.
Those measures attracted nearly 50% of support from Republicans, with the bulk of Democrats opposing.
The U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary held arguments for and against Georgia’s new election laws on April 20, 2021. (Official Senate video)
Georgia’s controversial new voting laws took center stage Tuesday at a U.S. Senate hearing where majority Democrats blasted changes in state voting rules as a revival of the Jim Crow era of segregation.
The hearing, entitled “Jim Crow 2021: The Latest Assault on the Right to Vote,” featured several Georgia leaders including Democratic U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, 2018 Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams and Georgia House Speaker Pro Tempore Jan Jones, R-Milton, who helped draft the Georgia law changes.
Leading members of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, which held Tuesday’s hearing, took turns echoing stances on Georgia’s election law from Democrats who frame the changes as acts of voter suppression and Republicans who argue the legislation was needed to bolster election integrity.
The Georgia bill, which Gov. Brian Kemp signed last month after party-line approval in the General Assembly, requires tighter absentee voter identification, empowers state officials to take over poor-performing county election boards, expands early-voting weekend hours and bans non-poll workers from handing out food and drinks within 150 feet of voters waiting in line outside precincts.
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who chairs the committee, said Georgia’s bill is among hundreds Republican lawmakers in several states have brought since the 2020 elections as part of a “wave of voter suppression laws” aimed at curbing minority voter participation.
“It seems Republican lawmakers in Georgia have concluded that the solution to their election problems is to make it harder to vote,” Durbin said. “That is fundamentally un-American. … It is democracy in reverse.”
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the committee’s ranking Republican, scoffed at Democrats’ attempts to paint Georgia’s new voting laws as racist, stressing the need to shore up election rules amid distrust among conservative voters following former President Donald Trump’s fraud claims.
“Baseless claims of voter suppression are just as corrosive to our democracy as baseless claims of voter fraud,” Grassley said. “We should all be committed to making elections accessible and secure to maintain the confidence of voters in elections.”
The law changes in Georgia have become a lightning rod for national lawmakers to push for passing federal legislation that would broaden access to mail-in and early voting and revive oversight provisions in the 1965 Voting Rights Act that were pushed by the late Congressman John Lewis of Atlanta.
Warnock, who won election to the Senate in January, said federal legislation is needed to tamp down “a full-fledged assault on voting rights” spurred by the new Georgia law.
“We’ve got to act,” Warnock said at Tuesday’s hearing. “History is watching us, our children are counting on us and we must pass federal voting rights legislation no matter what.”
Abrams, who founded the voting-rights advocacy group Fair Fight and will likely challenge Kemp in a 2022 rematch for governor, also called for federal election legislation to stave off the impacts of law changes such as those seen recently in Georgia.
“When the fundamental right to vote is left to the political ambitions and prejudices of state actors … federal intercession stands as the appropriate remedy,” Abrams said. “Simply put, [federal voting-rights legislation] is essential to the advancement of democracy.”
Republicans testifying before the committee batted back claims Georgia’s election laws would disenfranchise voters. They also condemned some companies that have denounced the new laws including Major League Baseball, which pulled the All-Star Game from Atlanta earlier this month.
Jones highlighted changes lawmakers passed that limit outside funding in elections, add more weekend days to early voting and replace signature matching for mail-in ballots.
“It’s easy to write alarming words and give misleading sound bites that would lead people away from the facts,” Jones said. “And it’s just plain wrong.”
Not present at Tuesday’s hearing was Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who has largely supported the new law changes despite facing attacks from Trump’s allies for not overturning last year’s elections results. Raffensperger slammed the Senate committee for not inviting him to testify.
“While I don’t love every part of this bill, it is no return to Jim Crow by any stretch of the imagination,” Raffensperger said in remarks he planned to read before the committee. “The comparison is insulting, morally wrong and factually incorrect.”
U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock (left) and Gov. Brian Kemp (right) are eying reelection in 2022. (Photos by Beau Evans)
Controversial changes to Georgia’s voting laws are quickly taking center stage in the upcoming 2022 elections as Democratic U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican Gov. Brian Kemp look to defend their seats.
Warnock, the senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church who won a historic runoff in January, said Sunday the country is “at an inflection point” with GOP lawmakers in many states including Georgia pushing bills that Democrats have labeled voter suppression.
Meanwhile, Republicans including Kemp have loudly backed Georgia’s recently passed bill overhauling mail-in and early voting as a move to bolster election integrity after the 2020 cycle saw Democrats win the state’s presidential election and both U.S. Senate seats.
The Georgia bill, which Kemp signed last month following party-line approval in the General Assembly, requires tighter absentee voter identification, empowers state officials to take over poor-performing county election boards, expands early-voting weekend hours and bans non-poll workers from handing out food and drinks within 150 feet of voters waiting in line outside precincts.
Warnock, who is seeking election to a full six-year term after defeating Republican then-Sen. Kelly Loeffler, pushed for passing national legislation in Congress called the “For the People Act” allowing voter registration on Election Day, minimum early-voting periods and no-excuse absentee voting.
That legislation would reverse changes Georgia Republicans made to the state’s voting system that prompted Major League Baseball (MLB) to move this year’s All-Star Game from Atlanta to Denver earlier this month.
“Let’s be very clear: They’re trying to restrict voting,” Warnock said in an online talk held Sunday by the Union Theological Seminary. “Some people don’t want some people to vote.
“You will see me very much engaged on this issue in the next several weeks because nothing less than our democracy is at stake.”
Republicans have slammed the proposed national voting-rights legislation as federal overreach into states’ authority to set election rules that would give Democratic incumbents and candidates an advantage in future elections.
They have also scorched MLB’s decision to ditch Atlanta for the All-Star game, arguing misinformation from Democrats about Georgia’s election bill sparked the move, which will damage local businesses relying on the game’s economic boost.
“The last thing we need is to be playing politics with people’s paychecks during a global pandemic,” Kemp said in recent Twitter comments about the All-Star Game. “Unfortunately, minority-owned businesses will be among the hardest hit by MLB’s decision to pull the game out of Atlanta.”
Kemp, who is seeking a second term in 2022, has given dozens of interviews on the All-Star issue and voting bill in recent weeks as he aims to shore up rifts in the state Republican Party due to election-fraud claims from former President Donald Trump, who narrowly lost Georgia.
Kemp’s refusal to intervene more in certifying the 2020 presidential election results drew official censures from several local GOP branches over the weekend including in Lowndes, DeKalb, Appling and Jasper counties.
Warnock and Kemp both face tough reelection campaigns in 2022, which is already assembling an early field of candidates.
Two Republican challengers have lined up so far against Warnock including Latham Saddler, an Atlanta banking executive and U.S. Navy SEAL veteran, and Kelvin King, an Atlanta small-business owner in construction and U.S. Air Force veteran.
U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter of Savannah is also considering a run against Warnock. Carter told Athens-based radio station WGAU last week he is doing “due diligence” before making deciding whether to campaign.
Kemp has drawn two primary challengers ahead of a likely rematch against 2020 Democratic opponent Stacey Abrams. Former Democratic state lawmaker Vernon Jones, who is among Trump’s most vocal allies in Georgia, and Appling County educator Kandiss Taylor have launched campaigns for governor.
