by Ty Tagami | Apr 8, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – The surge of measles infections in West Texas connected with the death of two children is prompting Georgia health officials to stress the importance of vaccination against the highly contagious disease.
“It’s a really very unique and very, very large outbreak,” State Epidemiologist Dr. Cherie Drenzek said Tuesday. “I think that we can expect that this Texas outbreak will likely go on for months more as well.”
Two children have died during the outbreak in a largely unvaccinated religious community, Drenzek said at a briefing for the Georgia Board of Public Health, adding that a U.S. adult has died of measles as well.
The infections have resulted in nearly two dozen calls to the Georgia Department of Public Health from concerned medical providers about potential measles infections here, but so far Georgia officials have identified only three cases.
The infections were all in one family and resulted from international travel, with no connection to Texas.
But the Texas infections appear to be spreading to nearby states, with New Mexico recently reporting 56 cases and Kansas reporting 24.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Friday that there have been 607 documented measles cases in the country so far this year, up from 285 in all of 2024. This year, 12% of the infected have been hospitalized.
Children and adults under 20 have been the most affected age group, with a fifth of those hospitalized being under age 5.
The CDC reports that 97% were either unvaccinated or their vaccination status was unknown.
Measles was declared eliminated in the Unted States in 2020, meaning there was no spread within the country and new cases developed only after travel abroad.
But infections started climbing during the COVID-19 pandemic, with 49 cases in 2021 and 121 in 2022. Infections fell to 59 in 2023 but then started rising sharply last year.
“Every single one is a public health emergency,” Drenzek said.
She said the measles vaccine is the most effective prevention and urged Georgians to ensure they’ve been vaccinated unless they contracted the disease as children and that children get the vaccine in preschool.
Drenzek also urged medical providers to continue calling the state hotline with suspicious cases, at 866-PUB-HLTH.
by Ty Tagami | Apr 5, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Georgia legislators clocked out unusually early Friday night, leaving behind stacks of unfinished bills, many of them torn into pieces for the ceremonial throwing of confetti that marks the final moments of a legislative session.
Among the abandoned bills were several that had seemed to be a priority for Republican lawmakers. They had devoted many hours of hearings to them, to the consternation of Democrats, who called the measures “hateful” and a waste of time.
Left on the table were a bill to withhold puberty blockers from teens and a ban on coverage of transgender-related care for employees on the state health plan. A measure to financially punish colleges and schools that promote diversity, equity and inclusion also foundered. So did a “Red Tape Rollback” touted as Georgia’s answer to Elon Musk’s DOGE. An overhaul of election law also failed to pass.
Before they left, lawmakers did pass a measure banning medical care for prisoners changing their gender. They also gave a Senate committee that has been investigating Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis permission to pursue former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams. And they gave that committee subpoena powers, with Democrats labeling the effort “authoritarianism.”
“This is a dangerous bill,” Rep. Sam Park, D-Lawrenceville, the minority whip in the House of Representatives, said before the House passed Senate Bill 255 Wednesday. The Senate sent it to Gov. Brian Kemp on Friday.
The flurry of partisan legislation had Democrats fuming as Republicans ignored many of their bills, including measures about guns after the mass shooting at Apalachee High School in Barrow County last fall.
The General Assembly did pass a comprehensive school safety bill with bipartisan support, but some Democrats complained it did nothing to curb the availability of firearms.
For the second year in a row, legislation that sought an income tax credit for Georgians who buy trigger locks or gun safes failed to pass. Other priorities for Democrats, from expanding Medicaid to tax breaks on clothing and school supplies, went nowhere.
“Instead of coming to the table and working across the aisle with us to address real issues Georgians are facing, they have introduced the politics of hate,” Rep. Carolyn Hugley, D-Columbus, the House minority leader, said last month amid the fusillade of bills that she said were trickling down from President Donald Trump. “Because you know what? Hate wins elections.”
Republicans countered that popular opinion was on their side with their priorities, such as a ban on transgender athletes in female sports that the Senate sent to the governor Monday and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act signed by Kemp on Friday.
Then-Gov. Nathan Deal vetoed a religious liberty bill nine years ago, fearing the boycotts and other economic harm that might have resulted. At least three dozen states now have such a law, Sen. Steve Gooch, R-Dahlonega, noted on Friday.
“So it was time for Georgia to take that final step, and we did it, with very little opposition from the business community,” said Gooch, the Senate majority leader. “You didn’t see the protesters. You didn’t see the chambers of commerce coming down to the building in protest like we’ve seen in the past.”
Lt. Gov. Burt Jones gaveled the Senate’s session to a close a little after 9 p.m., which shocked many observers — and lawmakers. They are used to voting past midnight on the last legislative day, called Sine Die.
The House gaveled to a close an hour and a half later, formally ending the first half of the 158th biennium of Georgia’s General Assembly.
Jones told reporters that he was in no rush to hammer bills through during this year’s session.
“This is a two-year cycle,” he said after leaving the Senate floor. “That means whatever doesn’t get done this this year will be available exactly where it sits for next year.”
by Ty Tagami | Apr 4, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Georgia lawmakers approved legislation late Friday that would give innocent people who were convicted and sent to prison money for the time they spent behind bars, while also allowing defendants to recover legal costs when their prosecutor is disqualified and the case against them is dismissed.
Senate Bill 244 passed the Georgia Senate last month as a measure that only allowed defendants to recoup attorney fees and court costs when the case against them is dismissed following the disqualification of their prosecutor over improper conduct.
Then on Wednesday, the state House of Representatives added an amendment that would pay inmates $75,000 per year of incarceration when their conviction is reversed or vacated or they are pardoned. Those awaiting a death sentence would get $100,000 per year.
The bill, when it was only about attorney fees, had passed unanimously in the Senate, with Democrats backing it even though it could allow President Donald Trump and his co-defendants to recoup their legal costs in the election case brought against them by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.
Willis acknowledged romantic involvement with a prosecutor she had hired to help her with that case, and the Georgia Court of Appeals disqualified her.
When Sen. Brandon Beach, R-Alpharetta presented the amended measure on the Senate floor Friday evening, a Democrat brought up Trump’s call to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger when Trump sought 11,780 votes after he lost the 2020 election.
“If the Supreme Court dismisses it, you don’t think those 15 defendants have some kind of right to get some compensation?” responded Beach, an ardent Trump supporter whom the president recently tapped to be U.S. Treasurer.
Sen. RaShaun Kemp, D-Atlanta, said, “We should not pay Donald Trump’s legal fees for trying to break the laws of this state.”
The measure then passed 35-18, with the support of a few Democrats, sending it to Gov. Brian Kemp for his signature.
by Ty Tagami | Apr 4, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – The families of teachers killed in mass shootings and other violent acts at school would get double the money under legislation that has passed both chambers of the Georgia General Assembly.
The House of Representatives voted unanimously Friday to approve the Senate’s changes to House Bill 105 and send the bill to Gov. Brian Kemp for his signature.
The measure would double to $150,000 the compensation to loved ones when teachers and other public school employees are killed “in the line of duty.”
This would put indemnification for teachers in parity with that of police officers killed on the job.
It’s an acknowledgement of the growing risk of violence in schools after two teachers and two students were killed in a mass shooting at Apalachee High last September, with nine others injured.
The Senate amendment that needed House approval added a requirement that the State Board of Workers’ Compensation inform injured police officers when they are eligible to apply to a fund that covers the difference between full pay and workers compensation while recovering.
Workers’ comp covers only two-thirds of their pay, said Sen. Brian Strickland, R-McDonough, adding that Kemp had agreed to the amendment to HB 105, which Strickland characterized as one of the governor’s bills.
by Ty Tagami | Apr 3, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – After lengthy debate that plumbed the depths of racism in American history, Georgia’s Senate Democrats were unable to convince their Republican colleagues to drop legislation that would ban preferential treatment in public colleges and schools based on race and other factors.
With this year’s legislative session ending Friday, Republican senators were rushing their measure through. They had commandeered a bill from the House of Representatives that would have given teachers a couple more days of sick time, and they had converted it into a vehicle to financially punish educational institutions that embrace diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI.
The overhauled House Bill 127 then passed the Senate after nearly two hours of debate that started late Wednesday and ended moments after the clocked ticked to midnight.
The 33-21 vote fell along partisan — and racial — lines, sending the bill back to the House for a possible vote on final approval before lawmakers go home for the year.
HB 127 would allow the state to withhold funding from colleges and schools that have policies, procedures, training, programming, recruitment, retention or activities with preferential treatment based on race, color, sex, ethnicity, national origin, gender identity or sexual orientation. Colleges could also lose federal funding that is administered by the state, including for scholarships, loans and grants.
The bill would prohibit colleges endorsing “a particular, widely contested opinion referencing” words such as “allyship,” “cultural appropriation,” “gender ideology,” “heteronormativity,” “unconscious or implicit bias,” “intersectionality” or “racial privilege.” It also targets “Antiracism,” a noun coined by Ibram X. Kendi, author of the book “How to be an Antiracist” that was published during President Donald Trump’s first term.
“If you believe that discrimination in any form is wrong, then this legislation aligns with making sure discrimination does not happen in any form,” said Sen. Max Burns, R-Sylvania, who authored SB 120, then plucked the language from his stalled bill and pasted it into HB 127.
The debate on the Senate floor had Democrats accusing Republicans of paying homage to Trump, who issued several executive orders against DEI soon after returning to the presidency in January.
The interaction exposed raw emotions, at times breaching the customary decorum of the Senate.
After Burns, who is white, explained his bill, he stood for questions, the first coming from Sen. David Lucas, D-Macon, who is Black.
When Lucas rose to speak, Burns greeted him as “my good friend.”
Lucas responded: “You used to be my friend.”
Lucas noted that they were both old enough to have lived through segregation and the civil rights movement, saying he was “appalled” that Burns had “the unmitigated gall” to bring his measure to the Senate floor.
“I came from the ’60s, and you’re old enough to know what happened back then,” Lucas said, referring to segregated restrooms, water fountains and waiting rooms at train stations, all manifestations of the virulent racism of that time. “And now you have the nerve to come in here with this mess. You’re drinking Trump Kool-Aid.”
Other Republicans did not rise to speak for the measure. But last week, at the Senate committee meeting where Burns presented his version of the confiscated HB 127, Sen. Greg Dolezal, R-Cumming, said the move was necessary because DEI had morphed into “neo-Marxist” ideology that had “infected” the University of Georgia and Georgia Tech. It “squelches” academic freedom, he had said.
On the Senate floor Wednesday, Sen. Derek Mallow, D-Savannah, said the opposite of DEI was uniformity, inequity and exclusion, suggesting that this was the intent of HB 127. “Hitler did not want diversity,” he added. “He wanted uniformity.”
Democrats introduced amendments designed to mock what they saw as the core message of HB 127 by clarifying that evolution is scientific fact, that slavery was a major cause of the Civil War and that the Holocaust “occurred.”
Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who presides over the Senate, ruled the amendments out of order and dismissed them, causing Democrats to assert that Republicans were afraid to debate them.
An appeal ensued, and Democrats lost that motion, but they tried eight others to keep the clock ticking, saying they would fight against HB 127 until they had exhausted all maneuvers allowed by the Senate’s rules.
They took the Senate on a tour of American racism, from its founding when Black people were enslaved, through the Civil War and the marches for civil rights and up to the murder of Ahmaud Arbery five years ago, and the legislature’s resulting repeal of an antiquated citizen’s arrest law that his white killers had used as justification for apprehending and shooting him.
The Republican majority patiently voted down each motion, until calling the final vote for passage.
