by Ty Tagami | Mar 25, 2026 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Georgia state employees would enjoy more consistent cost of living increases under the state Senate’s version of the budget for next year.
The Senate Appropriations Committee on Wednesday approved its amendments to the Fiscal Year 2027 budget that starts in July, adding $100 million to the state employee retirement system.
That was among the biggest changes from the state House’s version of the $38.5 billion budget.
“I believe this is one of the best line items that you see,” said Sen. Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia, the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Democrats agreed with that and other parts of the Senate budget, contributing their votes for unanimous passage of House Bill 974.
“I think it’s a breakthrough decision and one of the most important things in the budget,” Sen. Nan Orrock, D-Atlanta, said of the pension funding.
Gov. Brian Kemp capped expenditures at $38.5 billion, so the Senate had to cut elsewhere to pay for the pension increase. Among their targets was online education at public colleges and universities, where they extracted $125 million from the higher education funding formula.
Online programs should cost less to operate, Tillery said, so the Senate budget funds them at a slightly lower ratio than in-person classes. Each 1.1 hour of online class time would earn the equivalent of an hour in person.
Another big change by the Senate also affects education.
The Senate overhauled the funding method for a signature initiative of both chambers this legislative session: teaching the state’s youngest students how to read.
The Senate agreed with the House’s plan to pay for about 1,300 literacy coaches in schools with kindergarten through third grade classrooms.
But the Senate opted to pay for the program with a grant of $70 million.
The House had wanted to pay for it by building it into the K-12 education funding formula that guides the recurring annual budgeting for schools. Tillery said the House budget had allocated less than half the necessary money because it assumed it would take more than a year to hire all the coaches.
The Senate also found $11 million by deleting the House plan to hire more staffers to confirm food stamp enrollees are eligible. Georgia has one of the highest “error” rates in the country. That can mean loss of federal funding, so lawmakers hope to get it down.
Tillery said the Senate would accept an offer from Equifax to do the work for free.
The budget must now get a vote on the Senate floor, before heading back to the House for consideration of the amendments.
by Ty Tagami | Mar 24, 2026 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — A state-funded college scholarship based on financial need rather than academic merit took another step toward becoming a reality in Georgia on Tuesday when a Senate committee approved the bipartisan measure.
House Bill 1413 passed the Senate Higher Education Committee unanimously after three other bills were merged with it. The idea was to give them all a better chance of passage in the hectic, waning days of this year’s legislative session, with one vote on the Senate and House floors required rather than four.
The measure would place the Georgia Student Finance Authority in control of the fund, with $325 million in seed money already allocated in the amended budget for the current fiscal year.
“I want you to know how important the DREAM scholarship is for our state. And I want you to know how excited I am for the DREAM scholarship to be implementable,” committee chairman Sen. Max Burns, R-Sylvania, said after the vote.
The measure advanced after many hearings this year and last year where experts testified about a relatively high dropout rate among students from low-income households. These students often must hold a job to get through college, which takes time away from their academic study. When their grade point average falls below the threshold for the merit-based HOPE scholarship, many quit school.
One major change was the deletion of medical school scholarships that were expected to cost $30,000 a year per student. Good idea, said Burns, but he said it was the wrong time to chisel it into law.
The new omnibus bill folds in three others.
House Bill 419 would allow opioid antagonists in certain college buildings and shield those who administer the life-saving drug from liability. House bill 1113 would clarify that part-time college students who are employees cannot participate in the state pension plan. And House Bill 962 would increase the individual cap on Georgia’s 529 college savings plan to $550,000, up from the current $235,000.
The measure can now go to the Senate floor for an up or down vote.
The House passed the measure 165-2 in early March. But due to the Senate changes, the bill would have to return there.
All this would have to happen before lawmakers gavel out for a final time this year on April 2 or in the wee hours after.
by Ty Tagami | Mar 23, 2026 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Anyone who is still groggy from, and maybe a little bit resentful about, the time change earlier this month, might find solace in the Georgia Senate’s action Monday.
The chamber gutted a bill about ambulances and replaced it with language that would effectively do away with daylight saving time.
Eliminating the semiannual back and forth shifts in the Eastern time zone would require an act of Congress. Since it might be easier to alter the rotation of the sun, the state Senate opted for moving Georgia eastward on the time map, to the zone occupied by places such as New Brunswick and Nova Scotia to the north and Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands to the south.
House Bill 154 would shift Georgia from the Eastern to the Atlantic time zone, aligning the state with parts of Canada and the Caribbean that do not wobble between standard and daylight saving time.
No act of Congress required, just permission from the U.S. Transportation secretary.
HB 154 would require that Gov. Brian Kemp seek that permission. Should Congress ever grant authority for year-round daylight saving time, the governor would be obliged to request a return to the Eastern zone.
One of his allies, Sen. Bo Hatchett, R-Cornelia, is responsible for the new language in the bill.
“Every time we change the clock, we create confusion for families, for businesses, for schools, and for anyone trying to maintain a consistent routine,” Hatchett told his fellow senators Monday. “And for what? The evidence that this system does what it was originally intended to do is weak at best. But the evidence that it disrupts people’s lives, that is overwhelming.”
Sleep, workplace productivity and safety all suffer, he said.
One source of opposition to such a shift in the past has come from parents concerned about their little ones catching a school bus in lingering darkness.
But schools could adjust start times to address local concerns as needed, he said, using a scalpel to address seasonal changes in daylight rather than forcing millions to adapt to a changing clock.
The only critic was a fellow Republican, Sen. Ed Setzler, R-Acworth, who observed that Georgia would be as much as two to three hours out of step with neighboring states at some points on the calendar.
But Sen. Nikki Merritt, D-Grayson, said children suffer even more than adults under the current order.
“I remember when I had small children and what children thrive on is a routine,” she said. “And every time the time changes back and forth, that routine gets disrupted.”
She added that if Georgia leads, other states might follow, a message echoed later by Hatchett.
The measure passed 45-5, with Setzler joined in opposition by four Democrats, including Sen. Harold Jones, II, D-Augusta, the minority leader.
This led Lt. Gov. Burt Jones to quip that it was “the most interesting coalition of nays I’ve ever seen.”
Hatchett, who is a floor leader for Kemp, said later that he was not pushing the bill for the governor. It now goes to the House for consideration of the amendment.
by Ty Tagami | Mar 23, 2026 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Cellphones will be banned in Georgia public high schools starting in the 2027-28 school year, if Gov. Brian Kemp signs House Bill 1009 into law.
The state Senate passed the measure unanimously on Monday.
“This is a great, great, win for our students and our classrooms,” said Rep. Scott Hilton, R-Peachtree Corners, the author of the bill.
He has argued that devices are a distraction that can incite disruptions, including fights.
The all-out ban on personal devices would bring Georgia in line with other states that have prohibited personal devices in schools. Those bans tend to be across all grade levels, but an earlier prohibition passed into law in Georgia was only for elementary and middle schools.
That law, established last year, will affect K-8 schools starting this summer. If HB 1009 goes into effect and extends the ban to high schools, current seventh graders will never be able to use a phone in school again after this semester.
A Democrat’s attempt to amend the bill failed on the Senate floor. Sen. RaShaun Kemp, D-Atlanta, wanted students to have access to their phones between classes.
Some have jobs, some even have children, the former high school principal said. “I do not believe that we should do a blanket policy that treats 17 year olds like 7 year olds.”
Sen. Shawn Still, R-Suwanee, who presented the bill on the Senate floor, opposed the amendment.
It would have forced teachers to regulate devices when students returned to class, he said, and they didn’t want that responsibility.
There was no debate about crisis communications, an issue that had come up in the House last month before that chamber passed the high school phone ban 145-20.
Some then had expressed concerns about parents being able to talk to, or text with, their children during a crisis, such as the 2024 mass shooting that left four dead at Apalachee High School in Barrow County.
Loved ones had used their devices to share status updates and what they thought might be final messages.
But safety experts have said phones can be a distraction in an emergency, as police and teachers try to lead students through the danger.
If a child listens to a parent’s instruction rather than to a teacher who is relaying instructions from police, the outcome can be catastrophic, Still said after Monday’s vote.
Many Georgia high schools voluntarily banned the devices from their schools ahead of the deadline after Kemp signed the K-8 restrictions into law last year. Some even included high schools in their local bans.
The positive reception among teachers, parents and even some students helped Hilton make the case to expand the statewide prohibition to high schools.
Still, who worked with Hilton on the bill since the summer, said he had heard no pushback from parents or teachers.
“I think the only people that are going to have a hard time with this are the teenagers that have to adjust to life without it,” he said, noting that most adults alive today grew up without cellphones and that adults would “have to kind of reprogram” for a tech-free existence.
by Ty Tagami | Mar 20, 2026 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — After passing a budget that puts a bounty on wild pigs, Georgia lawmakers reiterated their lethal intent by enlisting cutting-edge technology to hunt them down.
Feral hogs have been ripping through farmers’ fields, inflicting millions of dollars of damage a year. Lawmakers, it seems, would prefer them sitting on a plate as bacon.
So, last week, the state House passed a preliminary 2027 budget with $400,000 toward a feral hog eradication incentive program and another $500,000 for a state management program.
It didn’t end there.
On Friday, the state Senate sent House Bill 946 to Gov. Brian Kemp for his signature.
“All it simply does is make it where you can take a drone and locate feral hogs that destroys and damages your property,” explained Sen. Lee Anderson, R-Grovetown.
Anderson had already left the well of the Senate when Sen. Carden Summers, R-Cordele, said he had a question.
Lt. Gov. Burt Jones did not make Anderson return, so Summers exploited the rules of the Senate and raised what’s known as a “parliamentary inquiry,” a technical question for the lieutenant governor.
“What’s the difference between a hog and a hog,” Summers asked, adding an extra vowel to his second expression of the word in an attempt to mimic Anderson.
Jones had a quick response.
“Depends on if you’re below the Gnat Line or not,” he said, with a flourish of his hand. It was a reference to the geological “fall” line that spans Middle Georgia and acts like a screen door to keep gnats down there.
Before he had left the well, Anderson had implored his fellow senators to vote for HB 946, which had been sponsored by Rep. Rob Clifton, R-Evans.
“I just ask each and every one of you vote green so we can go kill some hogs this afternoon,” Anderson had said.
With those words, he had doomed the pigs. The vote was 46-0 for HB 946.
The legislation also allows people to catch hogs without a hunting or trapping license “provided that such hogs shall be killed upon capture.”
