President Joe Biden, joined by Vice President Kamala Harris (back), spoke on the recent spa shootings and COVID-19 federal aid at Emory University in Atlanta on March 19, 2021. (White House video)
President Joe Biden swung through Atlanta Friday in his first trip to Georgia since winning the 2020 election to show support for the Asian American community after this week’s mass shootings at local spas and to tout the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 federal relief package.
Joined by Vice President Kamala Harris, Biden canceled a planned evening rally in light of the shootings at three spas that killed eight people including six Asian women. Biden and Harris instead met with local Asian-American leaders and visited the Atlanta-based federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The slayings, admitted to by a lone white gunman, sparked nationwide calls for solidarity with the Asian American and Pacific Islander community. Speaking at Emory University, Biden called on Congress to pass federal legislation against hate crimes targeting Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.
“Hate can have no safe harbor in America,” Biden said. “It must stop, and it’s on all of us, all of us together, to make it stop.”
The president and vice president met with Asian-American state lawmakers from metro Atlanta including Reps. Marvin Lim, Bee Nguyen and Sam Park, and state Sens. Michelle Au and Sheikh Rahman. They were also slated to meet with Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and 2018 Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams.
Biden, the first Democratic presidential candidate to carry Georgia in nearly three decades, also stopped by the CDC’s headquarters near Emory to help boost morale among public-health officials who have battled COVID-19 for longer than a year now.
“We owe you a gigantic debt of gratitude,” Biden said. “And we will for a long, long, long time.”
Additionally, the president touted his signing last week of the new COVID-19 relief package that includes billions of dollars to fund COVID-19 testing and vaccine production, emergency rental assistance, extended higher unemployment benefits and $1,400 stimulus checks for most Americans.
He highlighted Georgia’s $8.3 billion share of state and local aid funds in the package plus another $4 billion to help the state’s K-12 schools reopen safely. That’s on top of a $1,600 tax credit for more than 1 million low-income Georgia families, a $27 bump in supplemental nutrition benefits per person and a roughly $1,000 earned-income tax credit for adults.
Biden also hailed Georgia as the deciding battleground state that handed Democrats control of both chambers in Congress with U.S. Sens. Jon Ossoff’s and Raphael Warnock’s recent runoff wins, which cleared the way for last week’s passage of the latest round of COVID-19 relief.
The president urged opposition to GOP-brought state legislation in the General Assembly aimed at bringing broad changes to Georgia’s absentee and early voting systems, which Republicans have framed as necessary to bolster election integrity. Democrats call the proposals attempts at voter suppression.
“We’re in a fight again,” Biden said. “It’s a fight we need because if anyone ever doubted that voting matters, Georgia just proved it did. … If anyone ever wondered whether voting can change a country, Georgia just proved it can.”
Biden also stressed Georgia under the new relief package is now eligible for $2 billion in federal payments to fully expand Medicaid coverage for low-income residents, though Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and the state’s GOP-controlled legislature have opposed that expansion due to costs.
Kemp, who did not meet with the president, lobbed criticism ahead of the visit over the aid package’s formula for apportioning funds to states based on their unemployment rates instead of population sizes, as was the case for earlier pandemic relief packages divvied out since last March.
The governor has also sought to tamp down criticism over the pace of Georgia’s COVID-19 vaccine program, which has lagged behind many other states since rolling out in mid-December but is poised for a major boost with the addition of the Johnson & Johnson-brand vaccine to weekly shipments.
Kemp’s office highlighted more than 3 million vaccines have been administered as of late Friday, of which roughly one-third have gone to Georgians ages 65 and older who are among the state’s most vulnerable populations.
“Georgia continues to make significant strides in protecting our most vulnerable citizens in the fight against COVID-19, with 72% of our seniors receiving at least one dose,” Kemp said in a statement Friday.
“This targeted, data-driven approach to prevent hospitalization and death at the hands of the virus, coupled with increases in supply from the federal government, has allowed the state to move quickly in expanding vaccination criteria.”
Groups currently eligible for COVID-19 vaccines in Georgia include all residents ages 55 and older, health-care workers, nursing home residents and staff, first responders, judges, courtroom staff and people with physical, mental and behavioral health conditions.
State officials have opened nine mass vaccination sites in Atlanta, Macon, Albany, Savannah, Columbus, Waycross and Bartow, Washington and Habersham counties.
More than 841,000 people had tested positive for COVID-19 in Georgia as of Tuesday afternoon, with more than 201,000 more reported positive antigen tests indicating likely positive results. The virus has killed 16,905 Georgians.
Thousands gathered outside the State Capitol to protest police brutality and racial injustice as lawmakers met for the 2020 legislative session on June 19, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
Legislation to crack down on rioting protesters in Georgia that drew scorn from criminal justice advocates has been revived in the General Assembly after stalling earlier this month.
A wide-ranging measure on permitting, criminal penalties and civil liability for violent protesters and tolerant city governments was brought by Sen. Randy Robertson, R-Cataula, and faced debate March 2 in the Senate Judiciary Committee but didn’t get a vote.
Robertson’s proposals then were tacked into a different bill sponsored by Rep. Dave Belton, R-Buckhead, that originally just dealt with educational courses for driver’s licenses. The overhauled bill with Robertson’s proposals cleared the Senate Public Safety Committee by a 5-3 vote on Thursday.
Robertson, who is a retired major with the Muscogee County Sheriff’s Office, said his measure came in response to riots seen at times during protests last summer against police brutality and racial injustice, as well as the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump.
“We are discussing only unlawful assemblies,” Robertson said at Thursday’s hearing. “We are in no way trying to limit or prevent any group from having a peaceful assembly or peaceful protest.”
Robertson’s measure, called the “Safe Communities Act of 2021,” would make it a felony with fines and prison time to commit violent acts in gatherings of seven people or more, block a highway or road and deface public structures like monuments or cemeteries.
It would also hold city and county governments liable in civil court for interfering in a police agency’s protest enforcement, require permits for protests and rallies, block local officials from reducing police budgets by 30% or more in a year.
Another proposal not included in the measure’s current version would have provided protections for volunteer groups like “neighborhood watches” to assist police in protest enforcement.
Opponents from several groups focused on civil liberties, free speech, criminal defense and county finances have condemned the measure on grounds it could defy free-speech constitutional rights, leave local governments open to costly lawsuits and give legal cover to vigilante and militia groups to intervene in protests.
“[Robertson’s measure] incentivizes counties and communities to crack down on protests or prevent them from occurring in the first place at all, and attempts to punish municipalities for meaningful reining-in of police when it really needs to happen, said Christopher Bruce, political director for the American Civil Liberties Union’s Georgia chapter. “We know that this tramples on our First Amendment rights.”
The bill now heads to the full Senate for a vote and would still need to pass the House of Representatives before going to the governor’s desk.
Thursday also saw the Public Safety Committee pass controversial legislation that would block city and county governments from reducing budgets for most local police agencies in Georgia by more than 5% during any five-year period.
That bill, sponsored by Rep. Houston Gaines, R-Athens, also heads to the Senate for a floor vote.
State lawmakers passed a tax credit increase Thursday for foster parents in Georgia to incentivize more adoptions, advancing a key plank in Gov. Brian Kemp’s legislative priorities this year.
The tax-credit bill, sponsored by Rep. Bert Reeves, R-Marietta, would boost the annual tax credit for new foster parents from $2,000 to $6,000 annually for the first five years after adoption, then drop back to $2,000 per year. The credit would end when the foster child turns 18.
Sen. Bo Hatchett, who carried Reeves’ bill in the Senate and is one of the governor’s floor leaders, said the credit increase aims to encourage more adoptions in Georgia.
“This bill saves the state money, and at the same time this bill offers much-needed support to those families who open their hearts and their homes to children,” Hatchett, R-Cornelia, said from the Senate floor on Thursday.
Hatchett’s bill passed unanimously in the Senate after also passing unanimously in the House earlier this month, and now heads to Kemp’s desk for his signature.
The number of Georgia children in foster care has declined over the past three years but remains high, according to state Division of Family and Children Services data. The state currently has about 11,200 children in foster care, down from 15,000 in March 2018.
Kemp has made foster care a legislative priority for his administration along with cracking down on human trafficking and gang activities.
Along with Hatchett’s measure, Kemp has backed other bills currently moving through the legislature, including one that would lower the minimum age adults are allowed to adopt children from 25 to 21.
A third bill would add more training for juvenile court officers, expand rules for parents under court-ordered alternatives care and require officials to report on a range of child-abuse treatment including abandonment, neglect, emotional abuse and exposure to chronic alcohol or drug use.
Those measures follow Kemp’s signing of a bill last year that prohibits foster parents from engaging in improper sexual behavior with children in their care, closing a loophole in current state law.
State lawmakers passed an income-tax cut for Georgians on Thursday that aims to give taxpayers relief amid the COVID-19 pandemic, though critics warn it could cost the state millions of dollars in emergency aid.
The tax-cut bill, sponsored by Georgia Rep. Shaw Blackmon, R-Bonaire, would let Georgians pay less income tax starting July 1 amid a rebound of the state economy during the COVID-19 pandemic, following up on a previous reduction passed in 2019 that lowered the state’s income-tax rate from 6% to 5.75%.
Republican lawmakers had planned to reduce the income-tax rate further last year to 5.5% but paused that move last March as the pandemic took hold, shuttering Georgia businesses and hammering state revenues for months through the summer.
Blackmon, who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee, framed his tax-cut proposal as a more “modest and measured” cut than what was pitched last year, allowing Georgians “to keep their hard-earned money.”
Under the bill, the state’s standard deduction for married couples who file joint returns would increase by $1,100. Single taxpayers could deduct an extra $800, while Georgians ages 65 and older could deduct another $1,300. Married couples filing separately could deduct an additional $550.
Blackmon’s bill passed by a 35-15 vote in the Senate nearly along party lines, with Democratic Sen. Jen Jordan of Atlanta voting in favor. It passed unanimously in the House and now heads to Gov. Brian Kemp’s desk for his signature.
The higher deductions could save Georgia taxpayers an estimated $140 million in taxes – roughly $100 each for married couples – that they would otherwise have to pay. Or the cuts would cost that amount in revenue for state services, depending on one’s view of government as a taxing authority.
Supporters say Georgia taxpayers deserve a break after a year of financial hardships brought by the pandemic, especially with the state’s economy ticking up as businesses reopen and workers resume their jobs.
“We’re a conservative state [and] we want to be moderate in what we do with our tax code,” said state Sen. Larry Walker III, R-Perry, who carried the bill in the Senate. “We do want to give a break to hard-working Georgians, and that’s what this bill does.”
Critics said passing a tax break now could cause the state to lose out on millions of federal dollars set to arrive in the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 aid package Congress passed last week, owing to a provision barring states from lowering taxes while using the emergency aid money.
Georgia could stand to lose nearly $200 million over the next two years by putting the income-tax cut into effect, said Danny Kanso, senior policy analyst with the nonprofit Georgia Budget and Policy Institute.
Rather than risking the loss of federal relief, Democratic state lawmakers have pushed for sending Georgia taxpayers direct payments instead of cutting taxes as well as tapping into more federal money offered in the emergency package by fully expanding Medicaid.
“If we really are very intent on getting hard-working Georgians the amount of money we’re talking about in this legislation … we can do that as a direct payment without jeopardizing the $140 million we would still get,” said Sen. Elena Parent, D-Atlanta.
Amid Democratic opposition, top state Republicans including Kemp and House Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge, have slammed the federal aid package over the penalties for states that seek to cut taxes, as well as the funding formula for Georgia’s share of the relief.
“In Georgia, we have prioritized providing tax relief to our citizens, and [the COVID-19 aid package] appears to prohibit that relief,” Ralston said in a March 10 letter to President Joe Biden. “I pray that you will prevail upon Congress to have this flaw in the legislation corrected before signing it into law.”
Biden signed the aid package last Friday with the tax-cut penalty intact.
State lawmakers are considering several large bills to change Georgia’s absentee and early voting system in the 2021 legislative session. (Photo by Beau Evans)
A new wide-ranging measure from Republican state lawmakers with changes to Georgia’s election system abruptly appeared Wednesday just before a scheduled committee hearing, sparking backlash from Democrats and voting-rights advocates about transparency.
The measure, sponsored by state Sen. Max Burns, R-Sylvania, passed out of the Senate last week as a two-page bill focused on restricting how many applications for mail-in ballots outside groups could send to Georgia voters ahead of elections.
But it arrived in the House Special Committee on Election Integrity Wednesday as a sweeping 93-page amended bill encompassing dozens of proposals contained in several other Republican-backed bills.
Democrats on the committee cried foul over the speed and sparse advance notice of the bill, as did some voting-rights advocates who spoke up to denounce what they view as closed-door crafting of legislation that would bring major changes to how, when and where Georgians can vote.
“I’m just trying to understand the process here of how we’re doing things,” said Rep. Rhonda Burnough, D-Riverdale. “Are we just taking bills piece-by-piece and just putting them in when we want to? … Something’s not right.”
Burns’ newly transformed bill contains proposals from several other omnibus measures in the current legislative session, including proposals allowing state elections officials to take control of poor-performing county election boards, requiring absentee-ballot drop boxes to be located inside early-voting polling places and blocking mail-in ballot applications from being processed within 11 days of an election.
The bill also contains a contentious proposal allowing an unlimited number of challenges to voter qualifications ahead of elections, potentially freeing up the sort of large-scale moves to formally dispute voter registrations seen before Georgia’s U.S. Senate runoffs in January.
“Right now, in this piece of legislation, we’re legitimizing falsehoods that continue to disenfranchise African Americans and people of color across this state,” said James Woodall, president of the NAACP’s Georgia chapter.
“This process has not been efficient. It does not improve voter confidence and, in fact, will lead to greater consequences for [Georgia voters].”
One of the other omnibus election measures absorbed by Burns’ bill comes from Rep. Barry Fleming, R-Harlem, who chairs the House committee that held Wednesday’s hearing. His 66-page measure has faced two days of hearings in the Senate Ethics Committee this week and is expected to undergo more changes to be reviewed publicly on Thursday.
Speaking at Wednesday’s hearing, Fleming stressed no votes would be taken on Burns’ bill and that more testimony would be taken on Thursday.
Rep. Chuck Martin, R-Alpharetta, who chairs the House Higher Education Committee, argued in favor of the short notice for the bill, saying it aimed to serve as an introductory hearing to the proposals without any official action being taken.
“At some point, one has to put a bill out and have hearings,” Martin said.
Also included in Burns’ bill are proposals from another omnibus election measure from Senate Majority Leader Mike Dugan, R-Carrollton, that is expected to scrap a controversial repeal of no-excuse absentee voting in Georgia but may soon incorporate proposals from other bills as it continues moving through the legislature.
Both Dugan’s and Fleming’s omnibus measures also propose requiring Georgians to provide a driver’s license or state ID card number in order to request an absentee ballot, a change supporters say would eliminate Georgia’s process for verifying voter signatures on mail-in ballot envelopes that former President Donald Trump and his allies bashed in the Nov. 3 general election.
That proposed change and many others still alive in the session have drawn a sharp outcry from opponents who argue they aim to hinder access to Georgia voters of color and to halt Democratic momentum following wins in the 2020 presidential election and recent Senate runoffs.
