by Dave Williams | Mar 27, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Legislation cracking down on the deceptive use of artificial intelligence in political campaigns cleared the Georgia House of Representatives Thursday.
As introduced in the state Senate, the bill focused on obscene AI-generated images of children. But the version of Senate Bill 9 the House passed 152-12 instead criminalizes using AI in audio or video productions in campaign ads leading up to elections that fail to include a disclaimer indicating the material is not real.
“It’s not deceptive if you put a label on it that it’s AI-generated,” said Rep. Brad Thomas, R-Holly Springs, who carried the Senate bill in the House and has been a leader in legislative efforts to put some regulatory guardrails around emerging AI technology.
Under Senate Bill 9, false AI-generated images used in political campaigns would not be considered criminal unless they are disseminated with the knowledge that they are false and are published within 90 days of a primary or general election.
The bill also doesn’t apply to forms of constitutionally protected speech such as satire or parody.
Rep. Charlice Byrd, R-Woodstock, opposed the measure as a violation of the First Amendment’s free speech rights.
“Who decides what’s deceptive?” Byrd argued. “This isn’t freedom. It’s Soviet-style control.”
But Rep. Todd Jones, R-South Forsyth, chairman of the House Committee on Technology & Infrastructure Innovation, said the bill strikes a blow for election integrity.
“The most important thing we can do for our constituents is ensure when they go into that (ballot) box … we have given them accurate information,” he said.
Rep. Long Tran, D-Dunwoody, said it’s particularly important to prevent the dissemination of false AI-generated images during the runup to elections.
“We are in an arms race in election season,” he said. “Those with the best technology can generate AI with the most realistic renderings.”
A first violation of the legislation is a misdemeanor, while the measure treats the second and subsequent violations as felonies.
The bill now moves back to the Senate to decide whether to accept the House version of the legislation.
by Dave Williams | Mar 27, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Georgia Senate budget writers advanced a $37.7 billion fiscal 2026 spending plan that invests heavily in prisons and education.
The budget, which now heads to the full Senate, includes $170 million in new spending to hire more correctional officers, give the current staff a pay raise and upgrade prison system technology to crack down on the smuggling of contraband to inmates, including cellphones. That’s less than the $250 million in the House version of the budget but above the $125 million Gov. Brian Kemp requested when he unveiled his spending recommendations in January.
The emphasis on improving conditions inside Georgia prisons follows a federal audit last fall that criticized the system for failing to protect inmates from violence.
Like both the governor’s version of the budget and the House version, the Senate Appropriations Committee agreed to fully fund the state’s per-pupil funding formula for elementary and secondary schools.
The committee also voted to fully fund Georgia’s new private-school vouchers program at $140 million, returning to Kemp’s original recommendation and disagreeing with the House, which had cut the program to $40 million.
“This will allow 21,000 students and their families to have options to pick other schools when the school they’re attending falls in the bottom quartile of schools in the state,” Sen. Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia, the committee’s chairman, said Thursday.
The committee also rejected $28 million the House added to the budget for services to economically disadvantaged students.
The budget panel also decided to delay spending $7 million for infrastructure improvements associated with the staging of the Super Bowl at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta in 2028 and college basketball’s Final Four in 2031.
The Senate version of the spending plan would pay cash for a series of building projects rather than borrow the money. The state has a large enough budget surplus to take that pay-as-you-go route.
However, Tillery warned his committee colleagues that the “sugar high” of federal spending that followed the COVID pandemic is over and that an uncertain national economic outlook means the state must be careful not to overspend.
“All the federal COVID spending did was delay the inevitable for five to six years,” he said.
The 2026 budget will take effect July 1.
by Dave Williams | Mar 27, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Georgia’s unemployment rate held steady last month at 3.6%, a half-percentage point below the national rate.
A positive sign for the state’s economy was a gain of 7,200 jobs over the month and an increase of 28,500 over the year.
“Georgia continues to drive business growth and opportunity,” said Louis DeBroux, the state’s interim commissioner of labor. “Our unemployment rate … (is) a reflection of Georgia’s resilient workforce and the intentional, focused efforts by Gov. Brian Kemp and the General Assembly, in participation with the business community, to expand access to high-quality jobs.”
The job sectors posting the most over-the-month gains in February were health care and social assistance, which gained 1,700 jobs, followed by administrative and support services with a gain of 1,300 jobs.
The sectors with by far the most losses last month was transportation and warehousing, which lost 2,600 jobs.
Georgia’s labor force decreased in February by 11,681 to just below 5.4 million.
The number of employed Georgians fell during the month by 10,772 to almost 5.2 million. On the plus side, the ranks of the unemployed also declined by 909 to 192,148.
Initial unemployment claims were down by 14,030 in February to 20,464.
by Dave Williams | Mar 26, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – A hearing in the General Assembly Wednesday on a proposed near-total ban on abortion in Georgia pitted preachers against physicians.
House Bill 441 calls for extending the state’s current law prohibiting abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected – typically after about six weeks of pregnancy – to ban abortions at every stage of an embryo’s development from fertilization to birth.
“Tens of thousands of babies made in the image of God continue to be murdered in our state every year,” state Rep. Emory Dunahoo, R-Gillsville, the bill’s chief sponsor, told members of the House Judiciary Committee (Non-Civil) Committee. “This bill simply ensures that those same laws protecting the lives of people after birth equally protect the lives of people before birth.”
Dunahoo’s bill provides exceptions for spontaneous miscarriages, situations where a woman is pressured to undergo an abortion, and cases where doctors are trying to save the life of a mother. But it does not allow exceptions for victims of rape or incest.
Democrats on the committee argued such a strict ban on abortions would discourage doctors already afraid to perform the procedures since lawmakers adopted the “heartbeat” bill from performing even those abortions Dunahoo’s bill would allow.
“Doctors don’t know how to interpret these laws,” said Rep. Dar’shun Kendrick, D-Lithonia.
“This bill is putting every traumatized woman in a position to worry if they’re going to be prosecuted for a miscarriage,” added Rep. Shea Roberts, D-Atlanta.
Several ob-gyns warned that the legislation would nullify a bill also before the General Assembly this year aimed at protecting in vitro fertilization in Georgia.
“This bill, if you vote for it, I cannot work,” said Dr. Karenne Fru, who owns a fertility clinic in Sandy Springs. “I cannot go to jail because I want people to become parents.”
But Christian ministers and right-to-life advocates said abortion goes against the teachings of the Bible, no matter at what stage it occurs.
“An elective abortion takes the life of an innocent human being, whether it occurs two days after fertilization, six weeks, or 40 weeks,” said Dr. Coleman Boyd, a family medicine doctor and anti-abortion activist from Mississippi.
The committee took no action on the bill. The measures faces long odds in the General Assembly since it was introduced just two weeks before last month’s Crossover Day and did not make it through the House before that annual deadline for bills to clear at least one legislative chamber to remain alive for the year.
by Dave Williams | Mar 26, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Georgia’s two U.S. senators and two members of the U.S. House from South Georgia Wednesday reintroduced legislation to establish the Ocmulgee Mounds as the state’s first national park.
The Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources passed the bill last November, but it had to be reintroduced because a new Congress took office in January.
The area is the ancestral home of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and has been inhabited continuously by humans for more than 12,000 years.
“Ocmulgee Mounds is a living testament to our intertwined histories and a robust source of economic and cultural vitality,” said Sen. Raphael Warnock, who is sponsoring the bill along with Sen. Jon Ossoff and U.S. Reps. Austin Scott, R-Tifton, and Sanford Bishop, D-Albany. “Local leaders and everyday Georgians have been waiting for Congress to act and now is the time.”
“We made unprecedented progress last Congress toward creating Georgia’s first ever national park,” Ossoff added. “I look forward to working alongside Congressman Scott, Sen. Rev. Warnock, Congressman Bishop, the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, and local leaders to successfully establish Georgia’s first national park.”
The House version of the bill is being cosponsored by every other member of Georgia’s 14-member House delegation except Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Athens.
The bipartisan, bicameral push for the Ocmulgee Mounds National Park and Preserve Bill is earning broad support from local leaders in Middle Georgia.
“The opportunity to make the historic Ocmulgee Mounds a national park is so important to us because we have been included, we have been shown the respect of collaboration, and because of that we feel confident that the living history that will be told here is authentic and has the power to elevate Georgia forever,” said David Hill, principal chief of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation.
“Tens of millions of private dollars have been leveraged to conserve the precious cultural and ecological resources of the Ocmulgee Corridor,” added Seth Clark, mayor pro tempore of Macon and executive director of the Ocmulgee National Park and Preserve Initiative. “This bipartisan legislation allows us to continue to grow the Middle Georgia economy … and authentically preserve some of the most culturally significant sites in the country.”
