by Dave Williams | Mar 13, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Both sides of the controversial tort reform issue got their say at the Georgia Capitol Thursday, not on either the state House or Senate floors but in the hallways under the Gold Dome.
A group of business owners held a news conference Thursday morning to endorse legislation Gov. Brian Kemp has singled out as his top priority for the 2025 General Assembly session.
The comprehensive bill, which the Republican-controlled Senate passed last month mostly along party lines, is intended to reduce “runaway” jury awards in civil lawsuits that business owners complain are threatening to put them out of business.
“Our industry is under attack … by frivolous lawsuits,” said Haley Bower-Frank, chief marketing officer for Flowery Branch-based Clipper Petroleum, which operates convenience stores across North Georgia. “The current situation is absolutely crushing small businesses.”
Later Thursday, victims of human trafficking and lawyers who represent victims and their families in lawsuits against businesses where trafficking takes place, held a news conference of their own to criticize Senate Bill 68. Their opposition focused mainly on a provision in the bill that establishes “premises liability” guidelines for when plaintiffs can sue business owners for negligence due to injuries suffered from criminal acts committed by a third party outside of the defendant’s control.
“This bill will give total immunity to bad actors … no matter how many safety measures they fail to take,” said Natanya Brooks, a trial lawyer with an office in Peachtree Corners. “This bill is not good for Georgians. It will cost lives.”
Survivors of human trafficking aimed most of their complaints at hotels they said are aware that human trafficking is going on inside their premises but fail to act.
At the earlier news conference, a hotel executive defended the industry’s practices when it comes to preventing human trafficking.
“Safety and security of our properties is always at the forefront,” said Frank Phair, vice president of hotel operations for Legacy Ventures Hospitality, which operates several hotels in metro Atlanta.
The bill’s opponents also criticized a provision in Senate Bill 68 that would require liability in a civil suit to be determined before the jury considers damages if either the plaintiff or defendant requests such “bifurcation” of trials. They said such bifurcation would force victims already traumatized by trafficking to testify multiple times in court.
After years of failing to push significant tort reform through the General Assembly, Republicans have built strong momentum this year, thanks in large part to Kemp’s pledge to call a special session of the legislature if lawmakers don’t act on the issue. Tort reform also is being heavily lobbied, with two business groups launching statewide ad campaigns in favor of the bill this week.
“Small businesses are the backbone of Georgia’s economy, but many local businesses are struggling under the weight of excessive litigation costs,” said Hunter Loggins, director of the state chapter of the National Federation of Independent Business. “Senate Bill 68 would help Main Street businesses focus on growth, job creation, and serving their communities instead of wasting time and money fighting unfair lawsuits.”
Meanwhile, an Atlanta personal injury law firm headed by former Democratic state Rep. Ronnie Mabra posted a billboard along the Downtown Connector in Atlanta urging a “no” vote on the bill.
The Senate bill now sits in the House Rules Committee, which formed a special subcommittee that has heard hours of testimony from both sides. It’s expected to reach the House floor for a vote next week..
Opponents said Thursday they plan to propose an amendment to the legislation to carve out human trafficking from the premises liability provision.
by Dave Williams | Mar 13, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Georgia’s unemployment rate held steady in January at 3.6%, despite declines in jobs, the size of the state’s labor force, and the number of employed.
The jobless rate in the Peach State in February was four-tenths of a point lower than the national unemployment rate.
“Georgia’s economy is built for the future, but to maintain our competitive edge, we must remain committed to making Georgia the top choice for businesses and talent,” said Louis DeBroux, interim commissioner of the state Department of Labor. “By continuing to invest in our people, expand opportunities, and drive innovation, we are ensuring Georgia remains the national leader in economic opportunity for all.”
Jobs were down by 28,200 in January, although some job sectors posted over-the-month gains. The durable goods manufacturing sector led the way by adding 1,800 jobs, while state government gained 1,400 jobs.
The transportation and warehousing sector lost the most jobs in January – 11,200 – while the accommodation and food services sector saw a loss 6,100 jobs, and the administrative and support services sector declined by 4,000 jobs.
Georgia’s labor force fell to 5.4 million, and the number of employed declined to 5.2 million.
However, fewer Georgians were unemployed in January as well. The state’s jobless ranks fell by 3,441 to 193,062.
Initial unemployment claims were up 3,448 to 34,494.
by Dave Williams | Mar 11, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – The Georgia House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed Gov. Brian Kemp’s $37.7 billion fiscal 2026 state budget Tuesday, a spending plan that prioritizes prisons and education.
The budget, which cleared the House 171-4, is smaller than the record $40.5 billion fiscal 2025 mid-year budget lawmakers passed last week, which used $2.7 billion of the state’s $16 billion surplus. The 2026 spending plan, which takes effect July 1, does not count on surplus funding, a recognition that economic headwinds likely lie ahead.
“Things are tight,” House Appropriations Committee Chairman Matt Hatchett, R-Dublin, told his legislative colleagues before Tuesday’s vote. “The needs are great, and many worthy causes are competing for the same limited resources.”
The 2026 budget includes $250 million in new spending on Georgia prisons, the subject of a federal audit last fall that criticized the prison system for failing to protect inmates from violence. To reduce the ratio of inmates to correctional officers, the spending plan authorizes hiring more than 700 guards, while providing pay raises to the current correctional staff.
The House version of the budget added $98 million in education spending above the spending recommendations Kemp presented to the General Assembly in January. Most of that increase would go toward student safety and mental health in the wake of last September’s mass shooting at Apalachee High School in Barrow County.
“School safety and mental health go hand in hand,” Hatchett said.
The budget provides $62 million for a new program called “Student Support Services.” Of that total, $19.6 million would go to hire mental health counselors for middle schools and high schools, and $28 million would go to school districts to help low-income students.
The spending plan also includes $10.8 million to hire 116 literacy coaches. Georgia students’ poor reading scores have prompted the legislature in recent years to emphasize improving literacy.
With such a large budget surplus, Kemp and the General Assembly were able to authorize a series of building projects in the current budget to be financed with cash rather than the usual practice of borrowing the money. The fiscal ’26 budget continues that practice for $545 million in projects, but the House spending plans calls for funding an additional $321 million in building projects through bonds.
The budget now moves to the state Senate.
by Dave Williams | Mar 10, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Georgia House budget writers approved Gov. Brian Kemp’s $37.7 billion fiscal 2026 budget Monday, a spending plan that emphasizes the needs of the state prison system.
The budget, which takes effect July 1, builds on the mid-year budget the General Assembly adopted last week, which added $345 million in new spending on prisons. The fiscal ’26 spending plan antes up another $250 million for a prison system that was blasted in a federal audit last fall for failing to protect inmates from widespread violence.
“It (is) a historic infusion of cash, highlighting the sense of urgency,” House Appropriations Committee Chairman Matt Hatchett, R-Dublin, told committee members before Monday’s vote.
The $250 million increase for prisons includes $125 million Kemp recommended to the legislature in January and $125 million added by the House. The money would go to hire more correctional officers to lower the ratio of inmates to staff, give those officers a pay raise, and provide temporary space for inmates inside new modular units to make way for repairs and renovations at existing prisons.
Education is another main driver in the fiscal ’26 budget, with the House adding $98 million to the governor’s spending recommendations. Of that total, $60 million would go toward student support services, including $20 million in grants to hire mental-health counselors for Georgia middle schools and $28 million to support students from low-income families.
Another $25 million would go toward school safety initiatives, which already received a major boost in the $40.5 billion mid-year budget. The House also earmarked $10 million to hire more literacy coaches.
Other big-ticket items include $32 million in increased reimbursement fees for health-care providers serving Medicaid patients and $8.3 million to bolster the state’s graduate medical education program.
The full House is expected to take up the budget later this week.
by Dave Williams | Mar 7, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Sports betting struck out again this year in the General Assembly.
The state House of Representatives passed 75 bills Thursday in the daylong flurry of activity known as Crossover Day, the annual deadline for legislation to clear either the House or Senate to remain alive for the year. But sports betting wasn’t among them.
Also left by the wayside when lawmakers gaveled out Crossover Day shortly before 11 p.m. was a Senate bid to deny state funding to Georgia K-12 public schools, colleges and universities that promote diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), legislation in the House overhauling the process the state uses to compensate the wrongfully convicted, and a Senate bill exposing banking institutions to lawsuits if they deny services to customers because of the way they exercised their rights under the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
Legislation to ban mining adjacent to the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge and require Georgia Power to pass along the costs of power-hungry data centers to operators of those facilities rather than residential and small business customers never made it out of House committees to reach the floor of the chamber.
This year’s push for online sports betting came in the form of a proposed constitutional amendment placing the issue on the statewide ballot next year and a separate “enabling” bill containing details on how the industry would operate in Georgia. Both made it through the House Rules Committee Thursday night, but Speaker Jon Burns, R-Newington, did not put them on the floor for a vote before Crossover Day came to an end.
“I’m disappointed,” Rep. Marcus Wiedower, R-Watkinsville, chief sponsor of both measures, said after the gavel fell. “A lot of work went into this. I thought it was a good measure.”
Supporters of legalizing sports betting have tried to get a statewide referendum through the General Assembly every year since a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2018 legalized gambling on sports in states other than New Jersey and Nevada. Opponents – spearheaded by religious groups – have argued sports betting would lead to an increase in crime and problem gambling.
The Senate spent much of the winter focused on controversial topics, including guns and race. DEI policies — a hot button for President Donald Trump — were also a vehicle for Republican outrage in Georgia, where the Senate’s Republican leadership had been pushing for a ban in schools and colleges.
Senate Bill 120, which was the subject of bitter hearings and press conferences in recent weeks, would have punished public educational institutions that had implemented DEI policies by withholding state funding.
The bill’s chief sponsor, Sen. Marty Harbin, R- Tyrone, called such policies an “erosion of meritocracy.” But the measure’s critics said DEI helps Black students and other historically marginalized people integrate and succeed.
“People died, people were lynched, all kinds of things happened in this country that caused people that were descendants of slaves to not have an equal opportunity,” said Roger Bruce, a former Democratic state representative who came to the Capitol for a protest.
SB 120 was scheduled as the final bill for debate in the Senate Thursday night, but the leadership ended the legislative day just before calling it up.
Another controversial culture war bill also failed to pass the Senate, although it did get a hearing and a vote on the floor.
Senate Bill 57 would have punished banks that decide not to do business with companies due to disagreement about social issues, a custom that critics call “debanking.”
An example offered in a legislative hearing last month was Daniel Defense. The Georgia-based firearms manufacturer became a target of criticism after one of its rifles was used in the 2022 mass school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. The founder and chairman, Marty Daniel, testified that two banks dropped his company in quick succession, costing him $1 million each on lawyers and fees.
The bill triggered a heated debate on the Senate floor Thursday. Democrats were opposed and so were a critical mass of Republicans who worried about the potential impact on local banks. The bill got just 13 votes in favor, all Republicans, with a bipartisan opposition of 43 votes.
The House passed resolutions Thursday night to compensate five Georgians who spent years behind bars after being wrongfully convicted of crimes. However, the House did not take up a separate bill to remove the General Assembly from the process of compensating wrongfully convicted Georgians. Instead, claims for compensation would be heard by administrative law judges, who would make a recommendation to the chief justice of the state Supreme Court.
Sports betting wasn’t the only cause supporters have pushed for years in the General Assembly that fizzled again in 2025. Two bills that called for either placing a five-year moratorium on mining near the Okefenokee Swamp or banning mining altogether didn’t get out of the House Natural Resources & Environment Committee.
Alabama-based Twin Pines Minerals is seeking state permits to open a titanium dioxide mine along Trail Ridge on the southeastern edge of the Okefenokee. Supporters say mining would draw down water levels in the swamp, threatening the largest blackwater swamp in North America and the tourist dollars it brings to the region.
“When you lose the peat from the dried-up ground, we’re going to have terrible fires like they did in Southern California,” Rep. Darlene Taylor, R-Thomasville, the bills’ chief sponsor, said during a hearing last week.
Opponents said the mine would bring much-needed jobs and boost the local tax digest in an economically distressed part of the state.
Like sports betting and protecting the Okefenokee, the fight over the data centers bill also was left over from last year.
While the rapid growth of data centers in Georgia unquestionably represents a boost to the state’s economy, environmental and consumer advocacy groups have warned the vast amounts of electricity they consume threaten to further drive up electric rates. They cited a series of Georgia Power rate increases during the last couple of years to cover rising fuel costs and the completion of two additional nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle.
Gov. Brian Kemp vetoed a bill the General Assembly passed last year that would have temporarily suspended a state sales tax exemption aimed at attracting data centers to Georgia after business interests objected to the measure. Opponents to this year’s version of the bill in the Senate Regulated Industries Committee argued that the state Public Service Commission (PSC) should oversee data centers rather than the legislature.
The PSC voted in January to prohibit the Atlanta-based utility from passing on the costs of serving new large-load customers including data centers to residential customers. But supporters of the data center bill called the commission’s new rule worthless because it’s full of loopholes.
While the data centers bill never got out of the committee, the Regulated Industries Committee did approve a second energy measure bringing back the Georgia Consumer Utility Counsel, a watchdog agency that was disbanded in 2008 amid budget cuts brought on by the Great Recession. However, the full Senate didn’t take up the measure on Crossover Day.
