ATLANTA – Legislation to no longer count student discipline as a factor in a five-star rating system for schools and school districts cleared the Georgia Senate Wednesday.
The bill passed 39-12 and now moves to the state House of Representatives.
The state decided to include student discipline in the school climate rating system several years ago in an effort to improve poor behavior that was distracting from the learning process, Sen. Jeff Mullis, the bill’s chief sponsor, told his Senate colleagues Wednesday.
But it didn’t work, said Mullis, R-Chickamauga.
“Teachers are a little tired of this,” he said. “Discipline is important in order for other students to learn anything.”
The bill’s backers argued that removing discipline from the rating system would encourage teachers to actually punish misbehaving students. Many schools were failing to mete out discipline for fear a record of it would hurt their rating.
Rather than include discipline in the climate rating – which grades schools and school systems based on health, safety and attendance – Mullis’ bill would require keeping separate data on discipline.
Senators amended the bill on the floor Wednesday to require school districts to post the data on their websites to give parents considering whether to move into a neighborhood easy access to the information.
“We hope and believe discipline will happen because it’s no longer part of the grading of the school system,” Mullis said. “But it will be visible to the parents.”
The bill enjoyed bipartisan backing in the Senate. Democratic cosponsors included Sens. Ed Harbison of Columbus, Freddie Sims of Dawson and Lester Jackson of Savannah.
ATLANTA – Georgians and Georgia businesses hit in the wallet by the coronavirus pandemic would get a series of tax breaks under three bills the state House of Representatives passed Wednesday.
Lawmakers voted unanimously to raise the standard deduction Georgia taxpayers can declare on their state income taxes, then overwhelmingly approved two packages of tax credits and sales tax exemptions.
The income tax bill would let married taxpayers filing jointly add $1,100 to the state’s standard deduction, which would increase from $6,000 to $7,100. Single taxpayers would be allowed to deduct an additional $800, and married couples filing separately would get an additional deduction of $550.
More Georgians began taking the standard deduction rather than itemizing their returns after Congress passed legislation at the end of 2017 doubling the federal standard deduction.
“This will affect the most Georgians possible,” said Rep. Chuck Martin, R-Alpharetta, one of the bill’s cosponsors.
The bill would represent a total tax cut of $140 million.
The tax credit bill, which passed 157-14, would provide new state tax credits to Georgia manufacturers of medical devices and pharmaceuticals and to “high-impact” aerospace projects.
The aerospace tax credit would help Georgia take advantage of a “generational opportunity” to land contracts for a new generation of military aircraft that will be rolled out during the next three years, said Rep. Bert Reeves, R-Marietta.
“There is capacity at Lockheed-Martin,” he said. “They’re turnkey ready right now.”
Another provision in the bill would renew a tax credit the state provides for maintenance projects along short-line freight rail lines that otherwise would expire in 2023.
The sales tax exemption bill, which passed 164-6, would extend the sunset date on an exemption on sales of materials used in construction of “projects of regional significance” in Georgia.
The state has only used the exemption for nine projects since 2012, but that work has generated 8,700 jobs, said Rep. Sam Watson R-Moultrie, the bill’s chief sponsor.
The bill also includes a tax exemption on the sale of tickets by performing arts venues across the state, which have lost the vast majority of their business to the pandemic.
“Hopefully, this will help them fill in some holes,” Watson said.
A provision in the bill aimed at Coastal Georgia would remove the sunset provision on a tax exemption on sales of parts used to repair boats.
“We want the big yachts to come to our state to be retrofitted and repaired,” Watson said.
The tax credit and tax exemption measures were titled “The Georgia Economic Renewal Act of 2021” and “The Georgia Economic Recovery Act of 2021,” respectively.
“Our economic renewal and recovery will create jobs and spur growth in several industries in Georgia,” said House Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge.
ATLANTA – For the first time during the 2021 General Assembly session, legislative leaders have combined all three forms of gambling they’re considering legalizing into a single resolution.
A Georgia House subcommittee approved a constitutional amendment Wednesday that would ask voters whether to legalize casinos, sports betting and pari-mutuel betting on horse racing in the Peach State.
While efforts to legalize casinos and horse racing haven’t made it through either legislative chamber despite years of trying, backers of legalized gambling have long cited polls that show most Georgians would support legalized gambling if they ever get a chance at a statewide referendum.
“Let folks vote on it,” said Rep. Alan Powell, R-Hartwell, chairman of the House Regulated Industries Committee, which is expected to take up the new resolution later this week. “They’re the only ones who can make the decision.”
As introduced in January, the constitutional amendment was limited to casinos. A portion of the proceeds was to go toward the lottery-funded HOPE Scholarships program.
The new version of the measure not only would broaden legalized gambling to horse racing and sports betting.
Instead of going to HOPE, the state’s share of the proceeds from casinos and horseracing would be dedicated to health care, while the sports betting proceeds would go toward needs-based scholarships.
HOPE was founded as a need-based program during the early 1990s but was later converted to award scholarships based on merit.
Powell said putting most of the state’s proceeds from legalized gambling into health care would provide a much needed boost to a variety of programs that could use the help.
“We could expand Medicaid, do mental health, rural hospitals, lots of things,” he said.
House Democrats have long expressed a desire to launch a needs-based scholarship program in Georgia. Committing sports betting proceeds to that purpose would help line up support for the constitutional amendment from the Democratic Caucus.
Still, the resolution faces long odds. Constitutional amendments require two-thirds majorities in the House and Senate, a barrier supporters of legalized gambling thus far have been unable to hurdle.
Powell said if the constitutional amendment clears the General Assembly this session, an “enabling” bill spelling out details of how each of the three forms of legalized gambling would be administered would follow next year. The statewide referendum would take place in November 2022.
An aerial view of Plant Scherer in Juliette. (File photo)
ATLANTA – Legislation increasing groundwater monitoring requirements for closed coal ash ponds drew support in the General Assembly Tuesday from Democrats and environmental advocates.
But both groups argued it wouldn’t go far enough to protect the drinking water of Georgians who live near the ponds from toxic contamination.
“Even though this is a good bill, I still think we need the added protection of a clay base and liner … before we lose more people to illness,” Rep. Debbie Buckner, D-Junction City, said shortly before the House Natural Resources and Environment Committee approved the measure and sent it on to the full House.
Coal ash, generated by burning coal at power plants, contains contaminants including mercury, cadmium and arsenic that can pollute groundwater and drinking water. Long-term exposure has been linked to a variety of cancers.
Since 2015, Georgia Power has been working on a multi-year plan to close all 29 of its coal ash ponds at 11 power plants across Georgia to meet both state and federal regulations for handling coal ash. While the Atlanta-based utility plans to excavate and remove the ash from 19 of those ponds, the other 10 are to be closed in place.
A substitute version of House Bill 647 the committee passed Tuesday would require groundwater monitoring at those closed ash ponds to be conducted for 50 years after closure is completed, up from 30 years under the original bill.
“I have a seven-month-old grandson,” Rep. Vance Smith, R-Pine Mountain, the bill’s chief sponsor, explained when asked why he decided to increase the monitoring period.
Permits the state Environmental Protection Division issues to close ash ponds require not only groundwater monitoring but proper drainage and a cap on the pond, said Chuck Mueller, chief of the EPD’s Land Protection Branch.
But April Lipscomb, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, said a cap is not protective enough. She said some of the ash ponds Georgia Power plans to close in place are “sitting in groundwater” despite the presence of a cap.
“We’re really concerned with what is going to happen 30 years from now when these coal ash ponds really start causing problems,” Lipscomb said.
Tuesday’s hearing on Smith’s bill included testimony from residents of Juliette, where Georgia Power faces a lawsuit claiming coal ash stored in an unlined pond at nearby Plant Scherer has contaminated groundwater around the site.
Michael Pless of Juliette called the bill “a starting place” but not strong enough.
“Putting a cap in is better than doing nothing,” he said. “But it falls far short of the safest option: to remove the coal ash and cap it in a lined facility.”
Michael Petelle, a retired science teacher from Marietta, expressed similar concerns about the area surrounding Georgia Power’s Plant McDonough in Cobb County, where contamination from coal ash has turned up offsite from the property.
“Testing alone is not the only solution,” he said. “This contamination would not occur if the ash was fully contained within a lined landfill.”
Chris Manganiello, water policy director for the environmental advocacy group Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, urged members of the legislature’s Republican majority to give a hearing to a bill sponsored by Buckner that would require storing coal ash in lined landfills.
But Smith said even lined landfills are not a guarantee.
“Liners are good if they never, ever have a default or deterioration,” he said. “But one small pinhole or a crack and you lose what you’re supposed to be doing.”
ATLANTA – With legislation aimed at legalizing pari-mutuel betting on horse racing stuck in a Georgia Senate committee, a House panel aired a new version of the measure Tuesday.
Rep. Ron Stephens, R-Savannah, pitched a constitutional amendment asking voters to decide whether to legalize the sport as a way to reenergize rural Georgia’s struggling economy.
“It will create a new industry in Georgia of horse breeders and horse sales that could have over $1 billion [a year] in economic impact in our state,” Stephens told members of the House Economic Development and Tourism Committee, which he chairs.
Stephens held out Ocala, Fla., as an example, home to 37,000 racehorses, by far the largest breeding and training ground for horseracing in the nation. The industry generates an annual economic impact of $1.5 billion in Marion County, where Ocala is located, he said.
Stephens said horse breeding could become a safety net for tree farmers who lost their pecan crops to Hurricane Michael in 2018. It will take 20 years to grow new pecan trees to replace those lost to the storm, he said.
“This would allow those farmers to get into another industry,” he said.
To broaden support for the constitutional amendment in the General Assembly, the measure would dedicate 10% of the net proceeds from pari-mutuel betting on horse racing to health care. Most previous horse racing legislation has proposed putting the proceeds exclusively toward Georgia’s lottery-funded HOPE Scholarships and pre-kindergarten programs.
Stephens said the portion of the proceeds going to health care could be steered to rural communities, where some cash-strapped hospitals have been forced to close in recent years.
But Rep. Winfred Dukes, D-Albany, complained that the language in the measure isn’t specific enough.
“If it’s not specifically outlined, my concern is that the money would go everywhere,” he said.
Stephens said another part of the proceeds would be used to create “an opportunity fund” that would provide need-based scholarships and pre-k assistance to Georgia families with annual incomes below $58,000. Currently, HOPE scholarships are based on merit rather than need.
If the constitutional amendment passes the committee, it would require two-thirds majorities of the House and Senate to get it through the General Assembly and onto next year’s statewide ballot.
That promises to be a difficult hill to climb considering many lawmakers oppose legalized gambling both on moral grounds and because of its tendency to enable addictive gamblers.
“We can put a lot of lipstick on this pig,” said Rep. Randy Nix, R-LaGrange, referring to the promises of rural economic development and funding for education and health care. “But at the end of the day, we’re going to expand gambling big time in the state of Georgia.”
After several committee members objected they hadn’t had a chance to review the new proposal, Stephens agreed to limit Tuesday’s meeting to a hearing only. The panel is expected to vote on it Thursday.
