Here are key leaders in the Georgia General Assembly;
House Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge:
Elected the 73rd speaker of the House by his legislative colleagues in 2010, Ralston has served in the House since 2003, representing a rural district in Northwest Georgia. He also served in the state Senate during the 1990s before losing a bid for Georgia attorney general in 1998.
Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan (R):
Elected Georgia’s 12th lieutenant governor in 2018, Duncan serves as president of the Georgia Senate, presiding over floor sessions and making committee assignments. The former professional baseball player and business owner served in the Georgia House from 2013 until 2017, representing a district in Forsyth County.
Senate President Pro Tempore Butch Miller, R-Gainesville:
Elected to the state Senate in 2010 from a district that covers most of Hall County, Miller was chosen by his Senate colleagues in 2018 to serve as president pro tempore. In that role, he presides over the Senate when the lieutenant governor is absent and manages administrative duties for the Senate.
Rep. Calvin Smyre, D-Columbus:
The longest serving member of the House, Smyre was elected in 1974. Arguably the most influential Democrat in the General Assembly, Smyre chaired the powerful Rules Committee when Democrats controlled the House. Among his major accomplishments was legislation in 2001 getting rid of the 1950s-era Georgia flag featuring the Confederate battle flag and creating a new state flag.
Rep. Terry England, R-Auburn:
Elected to the House in 2004 representing a district in Barrow County, England has served as chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, the starting place for legislative review of the annual state budget, for the last decade.
Lawmakers to watch:
House Minority Leader James Beverly, D-Macon
Elected to the House in 2011 in a special election, Beverly was promoted to House minority leader by his Democratic colleagues in November following the loss of Rep. Bob Trammell, D-Luthersville, to a Republican challenger. Beverly previously served as chairman of the House Democratic Caucus.
Chosen by her Democratic colleagues in November to serve as the new Senate minority leader, Butler was elected back in 1998. A former chairman of the Senate Democratic Caucus, Butler succeeds longtime Senate Minority Leader Steve Henson, who opted not to run for reelection.
Sen. Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia
Tillery, elected to the Senate in 2016 representing a rural district in Southeast Georgia, was appointed chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee last April following the death of Sen. Jack Hill. He received widespread praise for demonstrating strong leadership after assuming the powerful post on short notice.
ATLANTA – Legislative leaders are promising to tackle two issues that dominated the news in Georgia and across the nation when the 2021 General Assembly session kicks off on Monday.
Weeks of protests and legal challenges sparked by President-elect Joe Biden’s razor-thin victory over President Donald Trump in Georgia and other battleground states have prompted a call for changes to voting laws in Georgia, including restrictions on mail-in voting.
Street demonstrations across America following the death of George Floyd, a Black man, after a police officer kneeled on his neck for nearly nine minutes in Minneapolis, and the shooting death of another Black man, Ahmaud Arbery, by white vigilantes in Georgia provided momentum for state lawmakers to pass a hate-crimes bill last June and pledge to follow up with more criminal-justice reforms this year.
The General Assembly also will fulfill the annual legal requirement of passing a balanced state budget, buoyed by healthier-than-expected state revenues but hampered by demands from state agencies to restore at least some of the spending cuts the legislature imposed last year.
And lawmakers will renew what has become an annual debate over whether to legalize gambling in Georgia in various forms, from online sports betting and pari-mutuel betting on horse racing to casinos.
Proposals to change Georgia’s election laws will take center stage under the Gold Dome as lawmakers from both parties grapple with changing voter patterns that saw the 2020 presidential election and both of the state’s U.S. Senate seats flip in Democrats’ favor.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is calling for tightening state voter ID laws for mail-in ballots and eliminating no-excuse absentee voting, which since 2005 has allowed Georgians to request absentee ballots for any reason, not just because they live out of state or are physically impaired.
The June 9 primaries, Nov. 3 general election and Jan. 5 Senate runoffs each saw more than one million absentee ballots cast, shattering previous mail-in voting records.
Raffensperger traced slow turnaround times that sparked suspicions over Georgia’s election integrity to the flood of absentee ballots.
“It makes no sense when we have three weeks of in-person early voting available,” Raffensperger told state lawmakers last month. “It opens the door to potential illegal voting.”
House Speaker David Ralston said another priority will be getting rid of the “jungle primary” law in Georgia, which set the stage for the huge field of 21 candidates in November’s special election for the Senate seat held by Republican Kelly Loeffler.
It opened the door for former U.S. Rep. Doug Collins, R-Gainesville, to split the GOP vote with Loeffler, forcing last week’s runoff that resulted in Loeffler’s loss to Democrat Raphael Warnock.
“I don’t know who could be in favor of a jungle primary anymore,” said Ralston, R-Blue Ridge.
Ralston said he also expects the General Assembly to consider repealing Georgia’s citizen’s arrest law, which has been invoked by the defendants in the Arbery case, as a follow-up to last year’s hate crimes measure.
Rep. Carl Gilliard, D-Garden City, pre-filed a bill last month to do just that. He said the citizen’s arrest law dates back to the 19th century and is out of date.
“The average person can pick up a phone, dial 911 and have the professionals handle it,” Gilliard said.
Gilliard said the Arbery case and last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests will put momentum behind repealing the citizen’s arrest law.
“This has been a year where people all over the world sounded an alarm,” he said. “We’ve got to listen to the voice and the will of the people.”
Legislative budget writers enter the 2021 General Assembly session more optimistic than might have been expected in the midst of a pandemic-driven economic slowdown that has forced thousands of businesses to close and put several million Georgians on unemployment. State tax revenues have been coming in at a healthy pace in recent months.
With Democrats taking over the White House and both houses of Congress, the state can expect more federal aid than would have been likely otherwise, said Danny Kanso, tax and budget policy analyst for the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute. Congressional Republicans dug in their heels last fall against putting more COVID-19 relief toward state and local government affected by the pandemic.
“The odds of getting significant aid to state and local governments is increasing substantially,” Kanso said.
But Georgia Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Blake Tillery noted the 2021 session is starting with the state in a financial hole, since the General Assembly was forced to cut agency spending by $2.2 billion last year.
“We’re doing better than we thought we would, but I don’t think we’ll be in a position to add that $2.2 billion back,” said Tillery, R-Vidalia.
Ralston said legislative Republicans have yet to fulfill a commitment to voters to follow through with the second installment of a state income tax cut and a 2% teacher pay raise.
“People need their money,” he said. “They need to keep more of their money.”
Gov. Brian Kemp said raising teacher pay remains a priority but will be a tough sell during this session because of the economic impacts of COVID-19.
“We still want to do the pay raise,” he said. “It’s just exactly when we can get to that, I think it’s a little early to commit as to when. … If we have revenues, we’ve got to make sure that we restore funding to our schools.”
While lawmakers face no legal obligation to address the legalized gambling issue every year as they do with the budget, it has become a perennial subject of debate under the Gold Dome.
Nothing has come close to passing, however, due to the difficulty of amassing the two-thirds majorities in each legislative chamber necessary to approve a constitutional amendment. Another obstacle has been opposition from religious conservatives.
A proposal to legalize online sports betting has the best chance of passing this year for two reasons. Supporters say it will not require a constitutional change because it can be accomplished by adding it to the current state law governing the Georgia Lottery program.
Sports betting also is being backed by a coalition of Atlanta’s four pro sports teams: the Braves, Falcons, Hawks and Atlanta United.
Billy Linville, spokesman for the Georgia Professional Sports Alliance, said the industry has been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic and needs the boost sports betting would give to fan interest.
“Our professional sports teams in Georgia generate billions of dollars for our state and thousands of jobs,” he said. “[The teams] have to enhance their engagement with fans or they’ll go elsewhere.”
Backers of casinos and pari-mutuel betting on horse racing also will back pushing those measures. But since they would require a constitutional amendment putting them on the statewide ballot for Georgia voters to decide, they face longer odds.
ATLANTA – The Georgia Department of Labor started paying out unemployment benefits last week through the new federal COVID-19 relief legislation even as a group of unemployed Georgians sued the agency to speed up checks.
The labor department paid out state and federal unemployment benefits last week to almost 300,000 jobless Georgians, including nearly 167,000 who received checks through the new Continued Assistance Act Congress passed late last month.
“We were able to pay most Georgians without interruption, even with the new guidelines put forth by the new legislation,” Georgia Commissioner of Labor Mark Butler said. “We will be implementing even more changes to pay those individuals who have already exhausted benefits and will also implement some of the new programs that were passed in legislation as quickly as possible.
“Some of the elements of the new bill are going to require extensive new programming due to how complex the rules were written in the legislation.”
Meanwhile, the lawsuit, filed by a half dozen unemployed Georgians represented by several legal aid agencies, seeks a court order requiring the labor department process unemployment applications in a timely manner, make eligibility determinations, pay unemployment benefits to eligible applicants, and schedule administrative appeal hearings on eligibility determinations.
Butler has acknowledge a backlog of 40,000 to 50,000 applications, according to the plaintiffs.
First-time unemployment claims in Georgia rose last week by 12,498 to 31,458.
The labor department has paid out more than $16.8 billion in state and federal unemployment benefits to more than 4.2 million Georgians since mid-March, when the coronavirus pandemic first hit Georgia, more than the last nine years combined.
During the week ending Jan. 2, the job sector accounting for the most initial unemployment claims in Georgia was manufacturing with 7,739 claims. The accommodation and food services sector, which had accounted for the most claims for months, was second last week with 6,507 claims, followed by administrative and support services with 3,622.
More than 161,000 jobs are listed online at EmployGeorgia.com for Georgians to access. The labor department offers online resources for finding a job, building a resume, and assisting with other reemployment needs.
U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) speaks at a campaign stop with Georgia First Lady Marty Kemp (center) and state Rep. Jodi Lott (right) at the Penley Art Gallery in Buckhead on Aug. 18, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
ATLANTA – Most of Georgia’s Republican members of Congress stuck with earlier pledges in the wee hours of Thursday morning and opposed certifying President-elect Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory over President Donald Trump.
But a key exception was GOP Sen. Kelly Loeffler, who changed her mind on objecting to the Electoral College results after Trump supporters stormed the Capitol Wednesday afternoon in a melee that resulted in four deaths and more than a dozen injured police officers.
“The violence, lawlessness, and siege of the halls of Congress are abhorrent and stand as a direct attack on the very institution my objection was intended to protect: the sanctity of the American democratic process,” Loeffler declared on the Senate floor Wednesday night.
“Too many Americans are frustrated at what they see as an unfair system. Nevertheless, there is no excuse for the events that took place in these chambers today, and I pray America never suffers such a dark day again.”
Loeffler’s change of heart one day after she lost a bid to retain her Senate seat by a narrow margin to Democrat Raphael Warnock prompted her to withdraw an objection she had previously planned to raise on Biden’s narrow victory over Trump in Georgia. As a result, Congress did not take up an objection raised by Rep. Jody Hice, R-Greensboro. The process requires objections from at least one House member and at least one senator to put a state’s presidential vote on the floor.
Loeffler joined Georgia’s six House Democrats and Republican Reps. Austin Scott of Tifton and Drew Ferguson of West Point in supporting the certification of Biden’s victory.
Hice was joined by Republican Reps. Rick Allen of Evans, Buddy Carter of Savannah, Andrew Clyde of Athens, Barry Loudermilk of Cassville and Marjorie Taylor Greene in opposition.
Scott had made his intentions known earlier in the week when he signed onto a letter with 11 other conservative House Republicans to Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy supporting upholding the Electoral College results.
“The elections held in at least six battleground states raise profound questions, and it is a legal, constitutional, and moral imperative that they be answered,” the letter stated. “But only the states have authority to appoint electors, in accordance with state law.
“Congress has only a narrow role in the presidential election process. Its job is to count the electors submitted by the states, not to determine which electors the states should have sent.”
Newly elected Rep. Nikema Williams, D-Atlanta, said Congress did the right thing in certifying the results of the Nov. 3 presidential election.
“Congress upheld the will of America’s voters and the sanctity of the democratic process enshrined in the Constitution,” Williams said in a statement after the final vote. “As legislators of the People’s House, it is our duty to certify the appointment of electoral votes legally cast for president and vice president of the United States, not suppress them.
“Any attempt to invalidate the selection of electors or silence the voice of voters is a slap in the face of our democracy, and simply un-American.”
ATLANTA – The Georgia Supreme Court suspended state Court of Appeals Judge Christian Coomer with pay Wednesday after the former Georgia lawmaker was charged with misconduct.
Coomer, a Republican, served in the Georgia House of Representatives for eight years until he was appointed to the state’s second highest court in 2018.
The charges stem from an investigation launched last year into allegations that Coomer defrauded an elderly client while working as a private attorney.
Jim Fihart, 78, of Cartersville, claimed he loaned $159,000 to Coomer’s holding company in March of 2018 with the promise that the money would be paid back in a year, according to published reports. However, the promissory note that was written said it was to be paid off in 30 years when Fihart would be well into his 100s.
The note listed Fihart’s property as security of the debt should it not be paid off.
Coomer has said the property discrepancy was an unintentional mistake made when writing the document. He also offered to correct the error when it was drawn to his attention.
Coomer borrowed another $130,000 later in 2018, again through his holding company. This second loan was to be paid off when Fihart would have turned 84, and was also unsecured.
Fihart alleges Coomer should have known he was impaired and unable to make reasonable decisions. Coomer argues that it wasn’t until 2019 that Fihart suggested that he was somehow impaired.
Following an investigation by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the Georgia Judicial Qualifications Commission charged Coomer late last month with 26 violations of the state Code of Judicial Conduct. Coomer has denied all of the allegations.
Under the state Supreme Court’s order, Coomer will be suspended with pay pending a final determination of the judicial commission’s proceeding against him.
