A bill to limit how local governments in Georgia can impose what energy sources their businesses, houses and other buildings can use faced debate in a state House committee on Monday.
Sponsored by state Rep. Bruce Williamson, R-Monroe, the bill would block city and county governments from prohibiting service connections to local houses and businesses “based upon the type or source of energy or fuel to be delivered.”
It is identical to a separate bill introduced Monday in the General Assembly’s other chamber by state Sen. John Kennedy, R-Macon.
Monday’s debate in a House Energy, Utilities and Telecommunications subcommittee set up a battle between city, county and state leaders over what building-code rules local officials can pursue to reduce harmful future climate change caused by fossil fuels like oil and natural gas.
Supporters say the bill’s legal protections would block local city and county governments from demanding what energy sources local communities can use for their homes and businesses, particularly benefitting farmers who are now struggling to adapt in a changing fuel-consumption market.
“We do not support the government’s picking winners and losers,” said Alex Bradford, the state affairs coordinator with the Georgia Farm Bureau. “This legislation would give some continuity of fairness across the state in ensuring the availability of affordable and reliable energy for our farmers and agriculture.”
Opponents argue the bill would strip local governments like Atlanta, Athens and Savannah of their ability to honor pledges they’ve made recently on curbing carbon emissions to offset the anticipated destructive future impacts of global warming.
“This bill … seems to anticipate Georgia turning into California,” said Jenette Gayer, director of the nonprofit Environment Georgia.
“I’d urge the committee … to let our communities move forward with crafting a new and exciting energy future in our own very unique Georgia way that many of us probably can’t even imagine today.”
Representatives from several local governments also joined Monday’s committee hearing to voice their opposition to potential attempts by state lawmakers to interfere in the affairs of local authorities.
“This measure begins with a dirty word, especially for a place like Savannah: ‘Prohibition,’” said Nick Palumbo, a Savannah alderman. “Let’s keep the market open to allow cities … the option to choose.”
Williamson, the bill’s sponsor, said it would “put the brakes” on local governments from blocking energy sources to free up consumer choice for fuel consumption and possibly lower prices for fuels like natural gas.
“This measure would give Georgians a resilient path for low energy pricing,” Williamson said. “It gives Georgia consumers freedom of choice … as energy sources are kept low by the competitive forces at work.”
State Rep. Chuck Martin, R-Alpharetta, who chairs the subcommittee, said the bill will likely get a vote later this week before potentially moving to the full committee and the House floor.
A state Senate committee debated a measure Monday to limit terms for Georgia House and Senate members to 12 years total, as well as doubling the term for state senators from two to four years.
A constitutional amendment proposed by Sen. Greg Dolezal, R-Cumming, would set term limits for state House members at six two-year terms and for senators at three four-year terms. The limits would kick in starting after the 2024 elections.
Currently, both House and Senate lawmakers in Georgia have unlimited recourse to seeking two-year terms. Dolezal’s resolution would also limit Georgia’s lieutenant governor to two four-year terms instead of the current unlimited tenure.
“Term limits are something that have bipartisan support in every state of the union,” Dolezal told members of the Senate Government Oversight Committee Monday.
“The only thing that people seem to agree on is that we should come down here, accomplish our work [and] have it be a season of our life as opposed to perhaps the entire book of our life.”
No votes were taken on the constitutional-amendment on Monday. If it clears committee, both chambers in the General Assembly would have to pass it by a two-thirds vote. It would then be placed on the ballot for Georgia voters to decide.
The resolution met with pushback Monday from freshman state Sen. Nikki Merritt, D-Grayson, who argued term-limited state lawmakers might be more swayed by lobbyists during their final years in office without the incentive of seeking reelection.
“To me, they’d just be more indebted to lobbyists,” Merritt said. “I just don’t feel like they would be as motivated toward the end of their terms to serve their constituents as effectively.”
Dolezal said his resolution aims to oust career politicians from the state Capitol and curb the “influences with an outsized advantage” when wealthy groups and lobbyists back long-tenured state lawmakers who gain political influence over the years.
This story originally attributed a quote incorrectly to Sen. Sonya Halpern. It has been revised to correctly attribute the quote to Sen. Nikki Merritt.
A bill pushing back the deadline when Georgia voters can request absentee ballots before elections has cleared a state House committee, marking the first of many voting-focused bills to face legislative debate after the 2020 election cycle.
Sponsored by state Rep. Barry Fleming, R-Harlem, the bill would change the deadline for voters to request absentee ballots from the last Friday before an election to the second-to-last Friday. Counties also would not be able to send voters applications for mail-in ballots during the last week of early voting.
The bill passed on a party-line vote Thursday out of the House Special Committee on Election Integrity, which Fleming chairs. It now heads to the House Rules Committee to schedule a vote of the full House.
Fleming said his bill would ease pressure on county elections officials handling early voting and Election Day preparations on top of processing absentee-ballot applications. Voters would also have peace of mind that their ballots arrived in the mail on time to be processed before the polls close.
“We all know you have to have a deadline whereby you cannot send out absentee ballots,” Fleming said. “You need to push that back to a reasonable amount of time where not only can it be processed and sent to the voter, but also time to be sent back in.”
The bill’s opponents said it had the potential to curb absentee voting in the state and potentially disenfranchise Georgians, particularly Democratic voters who gravitated to absentee ballots amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Several Democratic lawmakers on the committee argued the bill could spur longer lines at polling places and harm voters who requested absentee ballots weeks in advance but still had not received them in the mail by the second-to-last Friday deadline.
“We’re going back to the possibility of increasing lines,” said Rep. Rhonda Burnough, D-Riverdale. “If they can’t request an absentee ballot, that means that on the last week of advance voting we’ll probably have longer lines.”
Fleming’s bill is the first of more than a dozen to start facing committee votes early in the 2021 legislative session as Republican lawmakers eye changes to absentee voting and voter ID laws after Democrats gained major statewide victories during the last election cycle.
So far, bills have been filed boosting identification requirements for absentee voting, ending Georgians’ ability to vote by mail for any reason and outlawing mail-in ballot drop boxes.
Democrats are framing those bills as attempts at voter suppression, accusing Republicans of changing the rules of the game to slow Georgia Democrats’ recent elections momentum. Democrats have introduced bills allowing voters to register on Election Day and restoring voting rights for felons.
Joining Fleming as sponsors on the bill are House Speaker Pro Tempore Jan Jones, R-Milton; Rep. Buddy DeLoach, R-Townsend; Rep. Rick Williams, R-Milledgeville; House Regulated Industries Committee Chairman Alan Powell, R-Hartwell; and Ways and Means Committee Chairman Shaw Blackmon, R-Bonaire.
U.S. Sens. Raphael Warnock (right) and Jon Ossoff (left) won election to Georgia’s Senate seats on Jan. 5, 2021. They are pictured here on the campaign trail in late 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
Newly seated U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia unveiled legislation Friday to give states that skipped out on early Medicaid expansion equal federal cost-sharing coverage if they join later.
The bill, called the “States Achieve Medicaid Expansion (SAME)” Act, aims to quell concerns over possible future changes to the federal-state payment arrangement for Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which has been a stumbling block for many states opposed to full coverage expansion.
Its leader sponsors are Warnock and U.S. Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia. Georgia’s U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, who teamed with Warnock in the 2020 elections to flip both of the state’s Senate seats, is also joined on the bill.
Currently, the federal government pays 100% of the costs for the first three years for states that provide Medicaid to residents with incomes up to 138% of the federal poverty level, the definition of full coverage. Georgia is set to partially expand coverage this year but remains among about a dozen states that have declined full expansion.
Warnock, a Democrat who is Georgia’s first Black senator and remains senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, campaigned on a platform to expand Medicaid, institute a national $15-an-hour minimum wage and bolster voting rights. He called his bill a push to blanket all Americans with health-insurance coverage.
“Health care is a human right, and for too long, too many Georgians have been denied access to affordable health care through Medicaid,” he said. “I’ve long believed that expanding Medicaid in Georgia is an important step toward making affordable health care for all a reality.”
Medicaid enrollment has spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic that began last March. In Georgia, Medicaid rolls increased by 338,000 between March and December 2020, raising the total number of children, adult and family recipients to roughly 2,104,000, according to state Department of Community Health (DCH) data.
Opponents have warned covering thousands more people could bust Georgia’s budget for Medicaid, even with the extra federal spending. Currently, the federal government pays about two-thirds of the more-than $10 billion Georgia spends on Medicaid each year.
Critics also worry policy changes now could saddle Georgia with costly terms for jumping on the full-expansion train late in the ballgame, years after other states joined the Obama-era health-care program.
“I don’t know if the federal government will ever return to a period of budget austerity,” Chris Denson, policy and research director for the nonprofit Georgia Public Policy Foundation (GPPF), said last week. “But there’s always a chance that the feds will drop that matching rate.”
Medicaid coverage is now available for Georgia adults with incomes about 35% below the federal poverty line, as well as children in households making up to 138% above the poverty line and low-income senior, blind and disabled adults.
Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, gained federal approval last October from the Trump administration for a partial Medicaid expansion, covering adults earning up to 100% of the poverty level. That would cover about 50,000 Georgians, according to state estimates.
Kemp’s plan also requires Georgia Medicaid recipients to work, attend school or volunteer at least 80 hours each month – a controversial provision critics argue strips deserving low-income Georgians and families of a safety net.
Warnock’s bill leveling Medicaid cost-sharing percentages stands a good chance to win approval in Congress, thanks to his and Democratic co-campaigner Ossoff’s wins in last month’s runoff elections.
Ossoff, who is Georgia’s first Jewish senator and currently the chamber’s youngest member, called his colleague’s bill both a moral document and good incentive for states like Georgia that have not expanded Medicaid.
“This bill would ensure Georgia gets the same funding as other states that expanded Medicaid years ago – and create even more incentive for our state government to do what should have been done a decade ago and expand Medicaid for Georgia families,” Ossoff said.
Both of Georgia’s new senators have been busy since taking office on Jan. 20. They have called for showering Georgians with more dollars for COVID-19 pandemic relief, as well as bolstering voting rights even as Republican state lawmakers move to put new restrictions on absentee voting.
Hospitals and nursing homes would have to allow in-person family visits during public-health emergencies like the COVID-19 pandemic under a bill filed in the General Assembly.
The bill, sponsored by state Rep. Ed Setzler, R-Acworth, would prohibit Georgia hospitals and nursing homes from limiting patients’ ability to visit with family members in the event treatment or hospitalization lasts more than 24 hours – including during any “declared public health emergency.”
Family members approved by the facilities would be permitted to visit with ailing loved ones in-person for at least two hours daily, according to the bill.
Setzler said his legislation aims to relieve the despair families have faced during the COVID-19 pandemic, when dying loved ones often were reduced to spending their final moments with family via an electronic touchscreen.
“Watching your mother die in a four-inch screen on an iPhone is simply unacceptable,” Setzler said. “Every corner of this state has been devastated by the reality of not being able to visit sick or dying family members in times of great need.”
Hospital and assisted-living advocates say they’re reviewing Setzler’s bill, noting the COVID-19 pandemic has prompted tragedy for family members unable to see their dying loved ones but that federal rules on visitation have handcuffed them.
“I don’t think there’s anybody who’s more sympathetic and would like to be able to reunite families than our centers,” said Tony Marshall, president and CEO of the Georgia Health Care Association. “We just want to be sure that any efforts to allow visitation are certainly done in the best interests of the safety and protection of the residents.”
Currently, Georgia allows visitation at nursing homes and long-term care facilities based on levels of COVID-19 positivity rates in a given community, under federal guidelines.
State Rep. John LaHood, R-Valdosta, who owns a local assisted-living facility, said he is still reviewing the bill but does see “some potential conflicts” with federal regulations – though he also stresses families have been devastated by the inability to see loved ones stricken with COVID-19 and should have an avenue to seek better comfort.
“The whole situation is just gut-wrenching to watch and be a part of,” LaHood said. “It feels like a no-win situation.”
Setzler pointed out his bill would allow hospitals and nursing homes to impose “reasonable safety requirements” for visitation, though specific rules are not outlined in the bill. He said the bill aims to “give the provider control” over setting safety measures for how and where loved ones could be visited.
The bill also includes liability protections aimed at shielding Georgia hospitals and nursing homes from legal consequences for allowing visitors during public-health emergencies, mirroring legal guardrails businesses gained last August amid the pandemic, which House Republicans have proposed extending until June 14, 2022.
Setzler said he expects debate over his bill to center on what level of negligence hospitals and nursing homes would need to show for those liability protections to be waived in court. Lawmakers battled last year over whether to set the bar at “gross negligence” for bringing coronavirus-related suits against businesses and hospitals – a high legal hurdle but not impossible to meet, experts said.
COVID-19 measures in the 2021 legislation session now underway come as more than 1 million Georgians have received at least their first dose of COVID-19 vaccines, an amount constrained by the short supply of vaccines currently being sent out by the federal government.
More than 763,000 people had tested positive for COVID-19 in Georgia as of Thursday afternoon, with nearly 165,000 more reported positive antigen tests indicating likely positive results. The virus has killed 13,048 Georgians.
