by Dave Williams | Mar 10, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Georgia House budget writers approved Gov. Brian Kemp’s $37.7 billion fiscal 2026 budget Monday, a spending plan that emphasizes the needs of the state prison system.
The budget, which takes effect July 1, builds on the mid-year budget the General Assembly adopted last week, which added $345 million in new spending on prisons. The fiscal ’26 spending plan antes up another $250 million for a prison system that was blasted in a federal audit last fall for failing to protect inmates from widespread violence.
“It (is) a historic infusion of cash, highlighting the sense of urgency,” House Appropriations Committee Chairman Matt Hatchett, R-Dublin, told committee members before Monday’s vote.
The $250 million increase for prisons includes $125 million Kemp recommended to the legislature in January and $125 million added by the House. The money would go to hire more correctional officers to lower the ratio of inmates to staff, give those officers a pay raise, and provide temporary space for inmates inside new modular units to make way for repairs and renovations at existing prisons.
Education is another main driver in the fiscal ’26 budget, with the House adding $98 million to the governor’s spending recommendations. Of that total, $60 million would go toward student support services, including $20 million in grants to hire mental-health counselors for Georgia middle schools and $28 million to support students from low-income families.
Another $25 million would go toward school safety initiatives, which already received a major boost in the $40.5 billion mid-year budget. The House also earmarked $10 million to hire more literacy coaches.
Other big-ticket items include $32 million in increased reimbursement fees for health-care providers serving Medicaid patients and $8.3 million to bolster the state’s graduate medical education program.
The full House is expected to take up the budget later this week.
by Ty Tagami | Mar 7, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
Marijuana has been a major topic in the Georgia Senate this legislative session, with three bills passing the chamber just ahead of the deadline Thursday to keep them in play this year.
Two of the measures, Senate Bill 33 and Senate Bill 254, seek to restrict what’s legally available at convenience stores and smoke shops.
The third, Senate Bill 220, would expand and modify access to medical marijuana.
That measure by Sen. Matt Brass, R-Newnan, would increase the allowed legal concentration of cannabidiol in dispensed medical cannabis tenfold, to 50%, while reducing the amount of medical cannabis one can legally possess by the same factor, to two ounces.
The net result is a higher concentration of cannabidiol per dose with the same total limit on possession. Cannabidiol is the non-psychoactive ingredient associated with the relief of pain and other symptoms of disease.
Brass, chairman of the powerful Senate Rules Committee, said he had concerns about the health effects of vaping, which is a popular way of consuming the substance, but he said he was balancing that against patients’ need for immediate relief.
“They may need this medicine to work a little bit faster than one hour or two hours,” he said.
SB 220 would also add cancer and Lupus to conditions for which medical cannabis can be prescribed, and it would strike the current requirement that other allowable conditions, such as multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease, be severe or end stage. And it would allow pharmacies to dispense medical cannabis to parents and the designated caregivers for adults.
All of this was too much for some of Brass’s fellow Republicans.
Sen. Ed Setzler, R-Acworth, said long-term marijuana use has a “massive” impact on health and brain function.
“The density of marijuana we’re talking about here is about getting people stoned,” he said.
Sen. Randy Robertson, R-Cataula, the Senate majority whip, called medical marijuana a “gateway drug.”
SB 220 still passed 39-17, with help from Democrats.
Another measure, SB 33, faced minimal resistance. The bill by Sen. Kay Kirkpatrick, R-Marietta, would add certain “intoxicating cannabinoids” to current regulation of the sale of Delta-9.
That substance is legally available at convenience stores and smoke shops when the THC concentration is below 0.3%.
SB 33 would add Delta-8, Delta-10 and Delta 11 to that cap as well as to the mandate for random state inspections of consumable hemp products.
Kirkpatrick, an orthopedic hand surgeon, said her bill would increase consumer safety. She said there are producers in China and elsewhere who may be polluting their product with industrial solvents, heavy metals and other contaminants.
“It’s a consumer protection bill that is not intended to impact processors that are already testing and labeling their products appropriately,” Kirkpatrick said.
The measure passed 50-6.
A third measure, Senate Bill 254, brought chaos to the Senate floor after a major amendment.
The bill originally intended to limit the amount of THC (the ingredient that causes a high) in consumable hemp products, such as gummies, tinctures and drinks.
But an amendment on the Senate floor introduced a ban on the sale of all beverages containing THC.
The measure passed 42-14, with Democrats and Republicans on both sides.
All three bills are now awaiting action by the state House of Representatives, which has until April 4 to act on them during this legislative session.
by Ty Tagami | Mar 7, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Georgia Republicans managed to push three school safety measures through the GOP-led Senate just before the Crossover Day deadline to keep bills alive in this year’s legislative session.
The only controversial measure was Senate Bill 61, which would let prosecutors try teens as adults for threatening violence at school. That would create criminal records that would dog the students into adulthood, unlike sealed records in juvenile court.
Two other measures received broad bipartisan support.
Senate Bill 179, which passed the Senate with just one ‘no’ vote, would impose a 10-day deadline for the sharing of disciplinary records when students in seventh grade on up transfer schools. It would establish a misdemeanor offense for parents who fail to disclose felony convictions against their children and give police seven days to tell schools when a student has been charged with a felony.
The legislation would also create a hotline for anonymously reporting potential violence on school property, and it would mandate annual suicide and violence prevention training for students in public middle and high schools.
Senate Bill 17, which passed unanimously, would require public and private schools to implement mobile panic alert systems and digital school maps integrated with police networks.
It’s called “Ricky and Alyssa’s Law,” after Alyssa Alhadeff, one of the students killed in the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., and assistant football coach Richard Aspinwall, who was among those killed at Apalachee High School in Barrow County last fall.
“Seconds count, minutes count,” said Sen. Jason Anavitarte, R-Dallas, the Senate’s majority caucus chair and the chief sponsor of SB 17. “Nothing will ever change what happened in Parkland or Barrow County. But I think we all agree we can make our systems better, our schools better, and make sure that our schools are as safe as they humanly possibly can be.”
Although Democrats backed the measure, they have been critical of the broader Republican reaction to the Apalachee mass shooting.
In February, Democrats opposed Senate Bill 47, which passed the Senate in a party-line vote. The measure would establish an annual 11-day sales tax break on firearms during the October hunting season. One Democrat remarked that her Republican colleagues were “tone deaf” to push such a measure through while parents in Barrow County were grieving.
Democrats would prefer gun locks, gun safes and other restrictions. Republicans noted that safes would also get a tax break under SB 47.
The measures are now sitting in the state House of Representatives. To become law, the House would have to approve the bills by the scheduled end of the legislative session on April 4.
by Dave Williams | Mar 7, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Sports betting struck out again this year in the General Assembly.
The state House of Representatives passed 75 bills Thursday in the daylong flurry of activity known as Crossover Day, the annual deadline for legislation to clear either the House or Senate to remain alive for the year. But sports betting wasn’t among them.
Also left by the wayside when lawmakers gaveled out Crossover Day shortly before 11 p.m. was a Senate bid to deny state funding to Georgia K-12 public schools, colleges and universities that promote diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), legislation in the House overhauling the process the state uses to compensate the wrongfully convicted, and a Senate bill exposing banking institutions to lawsuits if they deny services to customers because of the way they exercised their rights under the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
Legislation to ban mining adjacent to the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge and require Georgia Power to pass along the costs of power-hungry data centers to operators of those facilities rather than residential and small business customers never made it out of House committees to reach the floor of the chamber.
This year’s push for online sports betting came in the form of a proposed constitutional amendment placing the issue on the statewide ballot next year and a separate “enabling” bill containing details on how the industry would operate in Georgia. Both made it through the House Rules Committee Thursday night, but Speaker Jon Burns, R-Newington, did not put them on the floor for a vote before Crossover Day came to an end.
“I’m disappointed,” Rep. Marcus Wiedower, R-Watkinsville, chief sponsor of both measures, said after the gavel fell. “A lot of work went into this. I thought it was a good measure.”
Supporters of legalizing sports betting have tried to get a statewide referendum through the General Assembly every year since a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2018 legalized gambling on sports in states other than New Jersey and Nevada. Opponents – spearheaded by religious groups – have argued sports betting would lead to an increase in crime and problem gambling.
The Senate spent much of the winter focused on controversial topics, including guns and race. DEI policies — a hot button for President Donald Trump — were also a vehicle for Republican outrage in Georgia, where the Senate’s Republican leadership had been pushing for a ban in schools and colleges.
Senate Bill 120, which was the subject of bitter hearings and press conferences in recent weeks, would have punished public educational institutions that had implemented DEI policies by withholding state funding.
The bill’s chief sponsor, Sen. Marty Harbin, R- Tyrone, called such policies an “erosion of meritocracy.” But the measure’s critics said DEI helps Black students and other historically marginalized people integrate and succeed.
“People died, people were lynched, all kinds of things happened in this country that caused people that were descendants of slaves to not have an equal opportunity,” said Roger Bruce, a former Democratic state representative who came to the Capitol for a protest.
SB 120 was scheduled as the final bill for debate in the Senate Thursday night, but the leadership ended the legislative day just before calling it up.
Another controversial culture war bill also failed to pass the Senate, although it did get a hearing and a vote on the floor.
Senate Bill 57 would have punished banks that decide not to do business with companies due to disagreement about social issues, a custom that critics call “debanking.”
An example offered in a legislative hearing last month was Daniel Defense. The Georgia-based firearms manufacturer became a target of criticism after one of its rifles was used in the 2022 mass school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. The founder and chairman, Marty Daniel, testified that two banks dropped his company in quick succession, costing him $1 million each on lawyers and fees.
The bill triggered a heated debate on the Senate floor Thursday. Democrats were opposed and so were a critical mass of Republicans who worried about the potential impact on local banks. The bill got just 13 votes in favor, all Republicans, with a bipartisan opposition of 43 votes.
The House passed resolutions Thursday night to compensate five Georgians who spent years behind bars after being wrongfully convicted of crimes. However, the House did not take up a separate bill to remove the General Assembly from the process of compensating wrongfully convicted Georgians. Instead, claims for compensation would be heard by administrative law judges, who would make a recommendation to the chief justice of the state Supreme Court.
Sports betting wasn’t the only cause supporters have pushed for years in the General Assembly that fizzled again in 2025. Two bills that called for either placing a five-year moratorium on mining near the Okefenokee Swamp or banning mining altogether didn’t get out of the House Natural Resources & Environment Committee.
Alabama-based Twin Pines Minerals is seeking state permits to open a titanium dioxide mine along Trail Ridge on the southeastern edge of the Okefenokee. Supporters say mining would draw down water levels in the swamp, threatening the largest blackwater swamp in North America and the tourist dollars it brings to the region.
“When you lose the peat from the dried-up ground, we’re going to have terrible fires like they did in Southern California,” Rep. Darlene Taylor, R-Thomasville, the bills’ chief sponsor, said during a hearing last week.
Opponents said the mine would bring much-needed jobs and boost the local tax digest in an economically distressed part of the state.
Like sports betting and protecting the Okefenokee, the fight over the data centers bill also was left over from last year.
While the rapid growth of data centers in Georgia unquestionably represents a boost to the state’s economy, environmental and consumer advocacy groups have warned the vast amounts of electricity they consume threaten to further drive up electric rates. They cited a series of Georgia Power rate increases during the last couple of years to cover rising fuel costs and the completion of two additional nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle.
Gov. Brian Kemp vetoed a bill the General Assembly passed last year that would have temporarily suspended a state sales tax exemption aimed at attracting data centers to Georgia after business interests objected to the measure. Opponents to this year’s version of the bill in the Senate Regulated Industries Committee argued that the state Public Service Commission (PSC) should oversee data centers rather than the legislature.
The PSC voted in January to prohibit the Atlanta-based utility from passing on the costs of serving new large-load customers including data centers to residential customers. But supporters of the data center bill called the commission’s new rule worthless because it’s full of loopholes.
While the data centers bill never got out of the committee, the Regulated Industries Committee did approve a second energy measure bringing back the Georgia Consumer Utility Counsel, a watchdog agency that was disbanded in 2008 amid budget cuts brought on by the Great Recession. However, the full Senate didn’t take up the measure on Crossover Day.
by Ty Tagami | Mar 6, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Legislation that would enhance criminal penalties for students who threaten their school passed the Georgia Senate Thursday.
Senate Bill 61 was pushed by Republicans and passed 33-22 in a party-line vote.
It would allow children aged 13 to 17 to be tried as adults for terroristic threatening. They could also land in superior court for attempting to commit, or for conspiracy to commit, terroristic threatening.
The legislation also would allow prosecutors to move other serious crimes into superior court, including aggravated assault with a gun or armed robbery.
SB 61 is among several measures GOP senators have offered in reaction to the mass shooting last fall at Apalachee High School in Barrow County.
The chief sponsor, Sen. Greg Dolezal, R-Cumming, called it a school safety bill.
But Sen. Emanuel Jones, D-Decatur, said he saw it as criminalizing kids.
At a committee hearing last week, critics said children’s brains are not fully developed and they sometimes do “dumb things.” If one of those things is phoning a threat to their school, it could land them in superior court, with a lifelong criminal record, they said.
Senate Majority Leader Steve Gooch, R-Dahlonega, told reporters that SB 61 was necessary to confront “heinous” crimes like the mass shooting at Apalachee High. He noted that the legislation gives prosecutors discretion about whether to try children as adults.
“We just have to give the district attorneys the tools in order to protect the citizens of Georgia,” Gooch said.
The bill now moves to the Georgia House of Representatives.
by Ty Tagami | Mar 6, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – The Georgia Senate adopted a measure Thursday that would ban drinks containing THC, the active ingredient in marijuana.
Senate Bill 254, which passed 42-14, originally intended to limit the amount of Delta-9 (a form of THC) per serving in gummies, tinctures and drinks. But an amendment on the Senate floor would ban all drinks with THC.
Sen. Bill Cowsert, R-Athens, sponsored the bill out of concern about the impairing effect of THC on driving and other activities.
“We are putting loaded guns in people’s hands in the form of a can or a gummy,” he said, “and we need to protect them.”
His bill originally limited the amount of Delta-9 to 10 milligrams per consumable, which, he noted, was roughly equivalent to four servings of alcohol.
SB 254 also limited the amount of Delta-9 in tincture and drinks, until Sen. Randy Robertson, R-Cataula, upped the ante with his amendment, saying Georgia was on a “bullet train” with marijuana consumption.
Robertson, the Senate majority whip, introduced his amendment to ban all beverages containing THC.
The amendment barely passed, 29-27, with several Republicans voting against it. The Senate chamber filled with chatter at the unexpected new trajectory for the bill. A maneuver to reconsider the motion failed, and then the Senate passed the amended bill with a large bipartisan majority.
Afterward, Senate Minority Leader Harold Jones, II, D-Augusta, said he was stunned by what had just occurred and by the impact on companies that make beverages containing THC should SB 254 become law.
“It basically destroys a whole industry,” Jones said.
The legislation now moves to the Georgia House of Representatives.
