ATLANTA – Georgians would be able to buy cocktails to- go under legislation that cleared the General Assembly Monday.
The state House of Representatives voted 120-48 to pass a bill that originated in the Georgia Senate that would let Georgians buy up to two mixed drinks in to-go cups holding a maximum of three ounces of liquor in each. Georgia already allows to-go sales of beer and wine.
Supporters in both the House and Senate, which passed the bill early this month, pitched the measure as a way to help restaurants battered by the coronavirus pandemic.
“Even when we’re fully out of this pandemic, the eating habits of Georgians have changed. Georgians will eat out differently,” Rep. Kasey Carpenter, R-Dalton, said on the House floor before Monday’s vote. “This bill will give us the flexibility to meet that change.”
The bill, which now goes to Gov. Brian Kemp’s desk, would not let customers buy only mixed drinks. They would have to buy food along with their take-out drink order.
To-go drinks would have to be in tightly sealed containers without holes for straws and be sealed so securely it would be easy to tell whether they had been opened.
They also would have to be stored in a glove box, locked trunk or behind the back seat while driving.
The Distilled Spirits Council of the United States released a statement after Monday’s vote praising final passage of the Georgia bill.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has devastated Georgia’s hospitality businesses, and it will take years for them to fully recover,” said Jay Hibbard, the group’s senior vice president of state governmental relations. “Cocktails to-go has already proven to be a vital part of their survival during COVID-19 and will only provide increased stability in the months and years to come.”
More than 30 states plus the District of Columbia allow restaurants and/or bars to sell cocktails to-go.
ATLANTA – Two tax bills left for dead in the General Assembly have been resurrected in the waning days of this year’s legislative session.
The Georgia House of Representatives late Friday overwhelmingly passed legislation that originated in the state Senate as a two-page bill.
However, as Senate Bill 6 went through the House Ways and Means Committee, two much longer bills that appeared headed for failure were attached to it, making them eligible for passage during the last two days of the session next week. The measure has now grown to 31 pages.
The original Senate Bill, introduced by Sen. John Albers, R-Roswell, calls for outside audits of up to five state tax credits each year to determine whether they’re creating enough jobs or generating enough economic development in general to make them worth their impact on the state’s revenue.
“This is a great opportunity for us to look at [tax credits] that are performing well … and others that may need to be tweaked or changed,” Albers declared back in January when his bill went through the Senate Finance Committee.
Another tax bill that has been added to Albers’ measure also originated in the Senate as a project of Sen. Chuck Hufstetler, R-Rome, the Finance Committee’s chairman.
Senate Bill 148 would create two review panels to study Georgia’s tax and revenue structure and draft legislation to rein in wasteful spending on tax breaks.
A similar review the state undertook at the beginning of the last decade led to tax reforms that eliminated Georgia’s “birthday” tax on motor vehicles, phased out the state sales tax on energy used in manufacturing and expanded an income tax exemption for married couples filing jointly.
“Georgia did something that worked really well back in 2010,” Hufstetler told his Senate colleagues last month before they passed it unanimously. “It’s time to do that again.”
But the House shot down Hufstetler’s bill overwhelmingly last week with only 20 lawmakers voting “yes” and 139 opposing it.
However, those 20 supporters included several Republican leaders, notably House Speaker Pro Tempore Jan Jones, R-Milton; Majority Leader Jon Burns, R-Newington; and Ways and Means Committee Chairman Shaw Blackmon, R-Bonaire. Their influence allowed it to be brought back on Friday attached to Albers’ bill.
The House also strongly supported a third tax bill that originated in that chamber and passed that chamber overwhelmingly but has struggled in the Senate.
House Bill 587 includes a smorgasbord of new tax credits billed by supporters as a way to help businesses across Georgia struggling through the coronavirus pandemic.
The Georgia Economic Renewal Act of 2021 would offer tax credits to manufacturers of medical devices and pharmaceuticals, the aerospace industry, boat repair companies along the coast, performing arts venues and short-line railroads.
“Our economic renewal and recovery will create jobs and spur growth in several industries in Georgia,” House Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge, declared on the House floor early this month.
The Senate has yet to bring the bill to the floor for a vote. In an opinion column published by Hufstetler’s hometown newspaper, the Rome News-Tribune, the senator cited a fiscal note on the bill indicating the proposed tax breaks combined would cost the state almost $1 billion.
“In Georgia, we collect about $14 billion in income taxes a year, but we give out about $10 billion in sales tax exemptions and tax credits,” Hufstetler wrote. “Think about how low the income tax rate in Georgia could be if we phased out most of these credits.”
That bill, too, is now attached to Senate Bill 6, which creates a conundrum for lawmakers as it heads back to the Senate.
They will have to decide during the last days of this year’s General Assembly session whether to support legislation that on one hand seeks to bring additional scrutiny to Georgia’s tax credit largesse and adds an expensive set of new tax breaks on the other.
ATLANTA – A controversial bill expanding a state-funded school voucher program created in 2007 has cleared the Georgia House of Representatives by the barest of margins.
House lawmakers passed the legislation 91-71 late Friday, largely along party lines. To gain passage in the House, bills must receive the support of a minimum of 91 of the chamber’s 180 members.
The bill, which already had squeezed through the Senate by one vote more than the minimum required, would expand a state program that allows special-needs student in Georgia to receive state-funded scholarships to attend private schools.
The legislation would grow the 13-year-old program by increasing the number of conditions that would qualify a student for a scholarship. Conditions not listed in the 2007 bill include attention deficit disorder, dyslexia, cerebral palsy, cancer and drug or alcohol abuse.
The bill also would ease restrictions requiring students to have attended a public school the year before enrolling in the program.
“Public schools are doing a good job,” Rep. Will Wade, R-Dawsonville, who carried the bill in the House, said at the start of a lengthy debate on the bill. “[But] our responsibility in this state is to ensure that every child has a chance for a quality education.”
As was the case back in 2007, House Democrats attacked the bill as a back-door attempt to put Georgia on the path toward a broader voucher program that would divert tax dollars from public schools.
“We cannot disinvest in our public schools,” said Rep. David Dreyer, D-Atlanta. “That’s what this bill does, remove resources.”
Rep. Winfred Dukes, D-Albany, said the bill’s impact would be felt particularly in rural Georgia, where private schools are in short supply.
“How does this bill help people in rural Georgia?” he asked. “We don’t have these facilities for our kids to go to.”
Wade denied Democrats’ charges that the bill was aimed at legalizing a broader voucher program for all students.
“This is not a slippery slope,” he said. “This is to help those students who are currently looking for a small option that isn’t available [in public schools].”
“I know many families whose lives have been transformed by this program, and many more would be if they eligible,” added Rep. Wes Cantrell, R-Woodstock.
Not all House Republicans were convinced. Eleven ended up voting against the bill, while three Democrats voted for it.
Because of changes the House made to the bill, it must return to the Senate to gain final passage.
ATLANTA – A resolution naming a bridge over a portion of the Port of Savannah in honor of former U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., has cleared the General Assembly.
The Georgia Senate passed the resolution unanimously on Thursday, one month after the House approved it, also without opposition. It now heads to Gov. Brian Kemp for his signature.
The bridge on Georgia 307 crosses over the Mason Mega Rail Yard, a $215 million project that, when completed, will give the port enough additional capacity to ship goods to cities in the nation’s Mid-South and Midwest regions.
While Isakson was instrumental throughout his congressional career in landing federal funding for the Mason Mega Rail Yard and other port projects, his influence spread much farther.
“Johnny Isakson worked greatly in helping people in Georgia,” Sen. Jeff Mullis, R-Chickamauga, who carried the resolution in the Senate on behalf of House Speaker David Ralston, told his Senate colleagues before Friday’s vote.
“No matter who you are, no matter what side of the aisle you came from, no matter what side of the tracks you came from, Johnny Isakson was a man about the people, taking care of people, taking care of our state.”
Isakson, who hails from Cobb County, was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1999 after serving for years in the General Assembly. He moved up to the Senate in 2004, serving two terms and part of a third before retiring at the end of 2019 for health reasons.
The House resolution honoring Isakson drew bipartisan sponsorship. House Majority Leader Jon Burns, R-Newington, joined Ralston, R-Blue Ridge, as a sponsor.
Members of the Chatham County legislative delegation from both parties signed on as cosponsors.
ATLANTA – The filing of first-time unemployment claims in Georgia was nearly flat last week, the state Department of Labor reported Thursday.
Jobless Georgians filed 24,789 initial claims last week, up just 89 from the week before.
Meanwhile, state Commissioner of Labor Mark Butler reiterated a plea he made last week for claimants who have reached the end of their benefit year to file a new claim to continue receiving payments. With the coronavirus pandemic now more than a year old, some long-term unemployed Georgians are reaching that point.
“We are now seeing claimants who have received payments for more than 52 weeks who are reapplying for UI [Unemployment Insurance] benefits,” Butler said. “We will continue to issue payments while also working to transition claimants into the almost 222,000 jobs available on Employ Georgia.”
Since COVID-19 struck Georgia in March of last year, the labor department has paid out more than $19.9 billion on more than 4.5 million claims filed, more than during the last nine years combined before the pandemic.
Last week, the job sector accounting for the most first-time unemployment claims in Georgia was accommodation and food services with 6,535 claims. The administrative and support services sector was a distant second with 2,720 claims, followed closely by manufacturing with 2,706.
