Georgia lawmakers have revived debate on a measure to let undocumented students pay in-state tuition for Georgia public colleges and universities that stalled in the General Assembly last year.
A bill sponsored by state Rep. Kasey Carpenter, R-Dalton, would extend the lower-cost tuition rates to thousands of undocumented Georgians protected from deportation under the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).
It would cover DACA recipients who have lived continuously in Georgia since 2013 and are younger than 30, or about 9,000 potential students who would be newly eligible for in-state tuition, Carpenter said Friday at a Georgia House Higher Education Committee hearing.
State law currently bars many non-citizen residents like DACA recipients from qualifying for in-state college tuition, which tends to be much lower than what students arriving from outside Georgia pay.
Carpenter estimated it costs Georgia college students from $11,000 a year to pay for classes as opposed to $5,000 a year for in-state tuition. There were more than 20,000 DACA recipients in Georgia as of September 2020, according to the nonprofit Migration Policy Institute.
The bill would not allow in-state tuition to attend Georgia’s research schools including the University of Georgia, Georgia Tech, Georgia State University and Augusta University.
Extending the lower rate to DACA recipients would bolster Georgia’s workforce with better-educated and higher-skilled workers who consider the state their home, Carpenter said.
“This is about taking care of the children that have been here the whole time,” Carpenter said. “These are Georgians who by no fault of their own were brought here, and this is a solution.”
The committee did not vote on the bill at Friday’s hearing. Carpenter brought the bill again this legislative session after the same committee shelved it last March.
Extending in-state tuition would benefit Georgia DACA recipients like Christian Olvera, a 29-year-old Dalton resident whose family migrated from Mexico. He said his tuition to attend classes at Dalton State College is three times more than what in-state students pay.
“We’re not looking for any handouts or anything less-of-cost than the standard rate,” Olvera told committee members. “We have ticked all of the boxes to be American citizens, yet we are not considered as such on paper.”
Some speakers worried the bill would “open the floodgates” for a flow of illegal immigrants into Georgia, arguing its passage would attract more undocumented persons and take college spots away from U.S. citizen students from other states.
“Somebody has to stand up and say, ‘This is the line,’ ” said D.A. King, founder of the immigration-focused group Dustin Inman Society. “We are going to give our best treatment to American citizens and people who obey the law to join the American family.”
State Sen. Chuck Martin, R-Alpharetta, who chairs the committee considering Carpenter’s bill, did not indicate whether he would call the measure for a vote but said he is “tired” of DACA recipients “being weaponized by both political parties.”
“This should not be a partisan thing,” Martin said. “We should find a way to do things that are good for individuals, that are good for the state taxpayer, that are good for the university and technical college system.”
Gov. Brian Kemp announced four mass COVID-19 vaccination sites are set to open in Georgia on Feb. 18, 2021. (Photo by Beau Evans)
Georgia officials have launched a new website to pre-register for COVID-19 vaccine appointments and are poised to open four mass vaccination sites in different parts of the state, Gov. Brian Kemp announced Thursday.
The governor’s update came as more than 1.6 million vaccines have been given to eligible Georgians so far, including roughly 500,000 second doses, according to state Department of Public Health data.
The new website, myvaccinegeorgia.com, allows Georgians to pre-register for a vaccine appointment even if they do not yet qualify under the governor’s eligibility criteria. They will be notified once they qualify and scheduled for an appointment.
Kemp said on Thursday he is not yet ready to expand who is eligible in Georgia for the vaccine beyond health-care workers, nursing home residents and staff, first responders and people age 65 and older – but that he may do so in the next couple of weeks.
The four mass vaccination sites in metro Atlanta, Clarkesville, Macon and Albany will open Monday and initially administer around 22,000 vaccines per week between them, Kemp said. Those sites can gear up quickly to handle more doses once the federal government allocates more weekly shipments, he added.
“These four sites will serve as the first step in a vaccination effort that we hope will dramatically ramp up in the coming months,” Kemp said at a news conference at the state Capitol.
Georgia is currently receiving shipments of 198,000 vaccine doses per week, up from 120,000 doses the state had been getting in recent weeks. While officials have made a dent in vaccinating people, Kemp stressed demand for shots still lags far behind the state’s current and foreseeable supply.
The supply limits have kept Kemp from adding Georgia school teachers and other staff to the list of vaccine-eligible people, despite loud cries from many teachers particularly in metro Atlanta who have pressed the governor to move them up the line.
On Thursday, Kemp detailed results from a survey he said the state Department of Education recently conducted showing less than half of about 171,000 responding teachers and school staff would take the vaccine. The governor said the survey will influence when he opens vaccines up for teachers.
“It certainly will factor into our decision,” Kemp said. “But it also shows that demand there was not as much as people thought.”
Dr. Kathleen Toomey, the state’s public-health commissioner, said staff in some hospitals and nursing homes outside of metro Atlanta – as well as many Georgians from predominantly Black and Latino communities – are still reluctant or unwilling to take the vaccine.
“This is not a case of vaccine access,” Toomey said Thursday. “It’s a case of vaccine hesitancy.”
She added state officials are “doing everything we can” to work with local leaders, churches and other groups to boost vaccine acceptance rates in under-served areas, while eying Georgia teachers for vaccines “soon”.
In the meantime, pre-registering for vaccines now will help state officials overseeing the mass-vaccination sites more easily ramp up distribution once larger dose shipments arrive, said Georgia Homeland Security Director Chris Stallings.
“We can make a significant dent in the list of [eligible] people who need support,” Stallings said.
The four mass-vaccination sites will be open Monday to Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the following locations:
Delta Flight Museum: 1220 Woolman Place SW, Hapeville, GA 30354
Habersham County Fairgrounds: 4235 Toccoa Highway, Clarkesville, GA 30523
Macon Farmers Market: 2055 Eisenhower Parkway, Macon, GA 31206
Albany branch of the Georgia Forestry Commission: 2910 Newton Road, Albany, GA 31701
Georgia lawmakers on the state Senate Ethics Committee pray before considering election-focused bills on Feb. 18, 2021. (Photo by Beau Evans)
ATLANTA – Georgia senators sent legislation to boost identification requirements for absentee voters to the state Senate floor Thursday in a committee vote along party lines.
A bill sponsored by state Sen. Larry Walker III, R-Perry, would require voters seeking to request and cast absentee ballots to provide their driver’s license or other valid ID such as passports, employee ID cards, utility bills or bank statements.
The measure was among a slate of bills to clear the Senate Ethics Committee Thursday and head to the Senate floor for votes as early as next week.
Other bills that passed included legislation to create a new state elections supervisor, allow county officials to count absentee ballots before Election Day and tighten reporting requirements for voting results.
They are among a legislative package backed by Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, who presides over the Senate. He has called for tightening absentee voter ID requirements but opposed efforts by some Republican leaders to restrict who in Georgia can vote by mail.
Walker’s bill is among the more controversial absentee-voting changes Republican lawmakers are seeking after the 2020 election cycle caused distrust in Georgia’s election system for supporters of former President Donald Trump, who lost the general election in Georgia to President Joe Biden by 11,779 votes.
“It is an attempt to provide an easily verified way to confirm that the person requesting the ballot is indeed who they say they are and that live ballots are only issued to legal voters,” Walker said Thursday.
“There is nothing in here that makes it harder to vote or [that] obstructs voting by absentee.”
The bill would require registered Georgia voters to provide their date of birth and driver’s license number, or the number on their personal ID cards if they do not have a driver’s license, in order to request an absentee ballot.
Without a driver’s license or personal ID card, voters would have to submit photocopies of a different form of valid ID such as a passport or utility bill to their local elections board or registrar.
The bill would also make permanent an online portal to request absentee ballots that Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office set up for last year’s elections, which drew millions of mail-in ballot requests amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The stricter absentee ID rules in Walker’s bill would do away with the state’s current system of verifying signatures on mail-in ballot request forms and envelopes, eliminating a focal point for attacks by Trump and his allies who alleged absentee voter fraud and called for deeper audits of the 2020 election results.
Raffensperger, whose office repeatedly rejected Trump’s fraud claims, has backed increasing the absentee ID requirements during this legislative session, as have other top state Republicans including Gov. Brian Kemp, Duncan, House Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge, and the Georgia Senate Republican Caucus.
Democrats, meanwhile, are opposing Walker’s measure and others on absentee voting that they view as attempts at voter suppression meant to curb Democratic momentum after the party seized the presidency and both of Georgia’s U.S. Senate seats in the 2020 elections.
Several Democrats on the Republican-controlled committee argued Thursday the bill could disenfranchise voters who do not have driver’s licenses, and possibly raise the chances for identity theft with more people sending out sensitive personal information and documents in the mail.
“I think you’re trying to cure a problem in your mind,” said Sen. Ed Harbison, D-Columbus, the Senate’s longest-serving member. “But the truth is, it opens the privacy door.”
Walker dismissed those concerns, acknowledging some voters are “going to have to make an effort” to verify their identities without a driver’s license, but that the benefits of tightening absentee voter ID verification would outweigh the privacy risks.
“I’m not saying identity theft can’t happen,” Walker said. “I think the value of this is way higher than any potential risk of it happening.”
Other Republicans on the committee pointed out Georgians already have to show their ID’s to vote in person, as well as for many other activities such as boarding an airplane or interacting with police officers during traffic stops.
“We are a nation of laws,” said Senate Majority Whip Steve Gooch, R-Dahlonega. “We’re used to having identification cards on us.
“I just can’t understand anybody opposing requiring some kind of identification to present to an elections office to prove who you say you are.”
Senate Minority Leader Gloria Butler, D-Stone Mountain, countered that sending personal information in the mail is different from flashing an ID to a police officer or clerk at a liquor store — and should face tighter protections against identity theft.
“There’s a huge difference in mailing something in, filing it away and keeping it, than it is me just having it and showing it and the person looking at it and leaving,” Butler said. “So I think we need to stop confusing that [since] it’s not a correct statement.”
The bill passed by a 7-4 vote and now heads to the Senate floor.
A separate measure to end no-excuse absentee voting in Georgia is expected to come up for consideration in the committee early next week after clearing a subcommittee on Wednesday.
That bill, sponsored by state Sen. Jeff Mullis, R-Chickamauga, would only allow registered Georgia voters who are age 75 and older, physically disabled, out-of-state or facing other limited circumstances to vote by mail.
State law since 2005 has let any Georgian registered to vote who wants to cast an absentee ballot do so without having to provide a reason for seeking the mail-in route.
The committee on Thursday also passed a bill by Senate President Pro Tempore Butch Miller, R-Gainesville, that would create a new state elections supervisor tasked with training local election workers and punishing low-performing county officials. It passed by a party-line vote.
Also passing along party lines were two bills by state Sen. Bill Cowsert, R-Athens, that would shorten the time limit for local registrars to enter voting data into the state’s voter-history system and boost reporting requirements for the state’s election-results website, including the number of absentee and provisional ballots issued, cast and rejected.
A bill brought by Sen. Jen Jordan, D-Atlanta, was the only measure to pass unanimously on Thursday. It would let counties begin processing absentee ballots on the Monday before Election Day, helping ease pressure on local elections officials to count mail-in ballots.
Other Republican-sponsored bills still awaiting consideration are measures to ban absentee-ballot drop boxes, end automatic voter registration for Georgians who receive new or renewed driver’s licenses, prohibit anyone except state and local elections officials and candidates from sending voters applications for mail-in ballots, and allow poll watchers to monitor vote tabulations more closely.
A bill that would create review panels to study Georgia’s tax and revenue structure and draft legislation to rein in wasteful spending or tax breaks advanced in the Georgia Senate on Wednesday.
Sponsored by state Sen. Chuck Hufstetler, R-Rome, the bill proposes a joint House-Senate council tasked with assessing the revenue and tax structure this year and submitting recommendations in early 2022.
It would also separately create a joint committee that would bring legislation based on the council’s recommendations to propose revenue-structure changes during the 2022 legislative session.
Hufstetler, who chairs the state Senate Finance Committee, said his bill follows up on a wide-ranging review completed in 2010 that led to some changes for Georgia taxes including the state motor-fuels tax.
“This would do the project all over again and say, ‘What do we need to do for the next decade to remain competitive?’” Hufstetler said at a hearing Wednesday. “Obviously, if we sit still, other states will pass us.”
The committee voted unanimously to send the bill to the Senate floor.
Hufstetler is among several state lawmakers who have set their sights on taking deeper dives into how Georgia raises money to pay for schools, law enforcement, health care and other taxpayer-funded services.
Members of the committee threw their support behind the bill, citing the COVID-19 pandemic that hit state revenues hard last year.
“If we want to continue to be the number-one place to do business … I think a bill like this makes a lot of sense for us to be fiscally responsible and investigate opportunities around that,” said Sen. Bruce Thompson, R-White.
Hufstetler’s bill follows other legislation by Sen. John Albers, R-Roswell, to curb wasteful loopholes in the state’s tax structure by auditing up to five tax-credit programs each year. That bill passed out of the full Senate Feb. 1 and is awaiting consideration in the state House of Representatives.
Amid the push for more tax review, the Finance Committee shelved a bill last week by state Sen. Sheikh Rahman, D-Lawrenceville, aimed at bringing more real-time scrutiny to state tax incentives before they gain approval from the General Assembly.
Rahman’s bill would require measures that create or change tax incentives to include an economic analysis examining the proposal’s impact on state revenues, spending, overall economic activity and the public interest before they can pass the legislature.
Lawmakers have largely skirted discussions so far on whether to raise Georgia’s tax on tobacco products from the current 37 cents per pack to the national average of $1.81. Advocates argue the increase could raise an estimated $700 million in additional revenues per year.
A bill to remove student discipline from factoring into a five-star rating for schools and districts cleared a state Senate committee Wednesday.
Rather than include discipline in a climate rating that rates a school’s health, safety and attendance, the bill would require schools and school districts to maintain separate data on disciplining that would have to be provided upon request by a parent or community member.
Backers of the bill, sponsored by Sen. Jeff Mullis, R-Chickamauga, say removing discipline from the rating would encourage teachers to actually punish bad-acting students rather than shirking that responsibility, since many schools skip disciplining students to avoid poor scores that could hurt future enrollment.
“Teachers are being told by district and school administrators not to write kids up,” said DeAnna Harris, the director of government relations for the advocacy group Educators First. “While this sounds admirable, it does not improve student behavior or school climate.”
Opponents have argued scrapping the discipline score would hollow out the school-climate rating system, clouding over public reporting on problematic schools and gutting a tool intended to hold schools accountable for frequent behavioral issues among students.
Pamela Carn, a founder of the advocacy group End Mass Incarceration Georgia Network, said stripping discipline from the climate score could curb struggling schools from receiving needed resources to help improve student behavior and lead to worsening the school-to-prison pipeline.
“The fact is that the school climate rating allows for the community to see the environment that’s created in a school,” Carn said.
The bill passed the Senate Education and Youth Committee with reporting changes added by Sen. Lindsey Tippins, R-Marietta. It now heads to the Senate floor.
The education committee did not vote Wednesday on a separate bill by state Sen. Lester Jackson, D-Savannah, to raise Georgia’s mandatory age to attend school from 16 to 17. Current state law allows Georgia students to drop out of school when they turn 16.
The committee’s chairman, Sen. Chuck Payne, R-Dalton, signaled he may call for votes on the raise-the-age bill in an upcoming meeting after debate was held on the bill earlier this month.
“I think we are all concerned that this is something we need to look at to make sure we’re not letting those kids fall through the cracks,” Payne said.
