ATLANTA – A legislative committee Thursday rejected a proposed statewide referendum to legalize pari-mutuel betting on horse racing in Georgia amid questions on both its wording and lack of details.
Members of the House Economic Development and Tourism Committee questioned the last half of the wording of the proposed ballot question at the end of the constitutional amendment.
After asking Georgia voters whether betting on horses should be legalized, the referendum went on to ask whether “to increase the minimum funding requirement for the educational shortfall reserves.”
The language referred to a provision in the constitutional amendment developed by Rep. Stacey Evans, D-Atlanta, aimed at securing some of the excess reserves that have been accumulating in the Georgia Lottery for the last decade.
In 2011, the state both increased the percentage of lottery funds dedicated to HOPE scholarships that must be set aside as reserves to cover any potential shortfalls and reduced the percentage of tuition covered by HOPE, Evans explained to the committee at a hearing earlier this week.
“We made it less likely we would need the reserves, and we increased the reserves,” she said.
As a result, more than $1.3 billion in reserves has piled up, Evans said. The state could safely plow back $730 million of that into HOPE scholarships, she said.
“This state did not approve a lottery just to have a lottery,” Evans said. “This money should not be sitting in an account.”
But on Thursday, Rep. Penny Houston, R-Nashville, said adding language on educational shortfall reserves to a referendum on horse racing would be misleading.
“It sounds like a trick question to me,” she said.
Other committee members asked why such issues as where racetracks would be located and what steps would be taken to protect racehorses from abuse weren’t included in the constitutional amendment.
Rep. Ron Stephens, R-Savannah, the committee’s chairman and the resolution’s chief sponsor, said those details would be addressed in a longer “enabling” bill that would be introduced next year if the constitutional amendment passes.
Under this year’s legislation, 10% of a state tax on the proceeds from horse racing would go toward health care, while 50% would go toward a new “Opportunity Fund” supporting college scholarships for Georgians with family incomes of less than $58,000 a year. The other 40% would go into the state’s general fund budget.
Stephens said the economic benefits of legalizing horse racing in Georgia would spread far beyond the racetracks themselves to let farmers in South Georgia who suffered crop losses from Hurricane Michael in 2018 get into the businesses of horse breeding and hay farming.
“It’s an opportunity to create a brand new industry in parts of our state,” he said.
But Rep. Randy Nix, R-LaGrange, who opposes legalized gambling, was skeptical.
“This pie-in-the-sky … will not take care of South Georgia,” he said.
The defeat of the horse racing measures leaves some other avenues for legalized gambling still alive in the General Assembly.
But a bill aimed at legalizing sports betting without changing the constitution has yet to reach the House floor.
A subcommittee of the House Regulated Industries Committee approved a constitutional amendment Wednesday encompassing casinos, horse racing and sports betting. But it has yet to be taken up by the full committee.
Time is growing short for action on legalized gambling. Crossover Day in the General Assembly – the deadline for bills to clear either legislative chamber to remain alive for further consideration – will fall on Monday.
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.”
