Rep. Carl Gilliard (D-Savannah) talks about his bill to repeal Georgia’s citizen’s arrest law at the State Capitol on June 18, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
A Savannah lawmaker called for passage Thursday of legislation aimed at eliminating the Georgia’s citizen’s arrest law as part of a push for a new round of criminal justice reform amid nationwide protesting against police brutality and racial injustice.
House Bill 1203 would remove language from state law that allows private citizens to arrest someone who commits a crime in their presence or within their “immediate knowledge.”
It would also do away with language allowing a private citizen to make an arrest “upon reasonable and probable grounds of suspicion” that someone committed a felony crime and is trying to escape.
The bill, sponsored by Democratic Rep. Carl Gilliard, is among more than a dozen bills filed since Monday when the legislative session resumed that focus on court and policing reforms.
They include measures to repeal the state’s stand-your-ground law, prohibit police officers from racial profiling and ban no-knock search warrants.
At a news conference Thursday, Gilliard said and other House lawmakers supporting the bill called the citizen’s arrest law outdated and an incentive for untrained civilians to perpetrate violence on others.
“To move Georgia forward, our focus is prevention in reference to repealing this law so that we will have an opportunity for the law to do the law,” Gilliard said.
Rep. Mary Margaret Oliver, D-Decatur, said arrests should be left to law enforcement professionals and not “amateurs … [who] sometimes flow into the role of vigilante.”
“We need to understand that citizen’s arrest is dangerous more often than not,” Oliver said.
Sen. Michael “Doc” Rhett, D-Marietta, said he plans to file a “companion bill” in the Senate on repealing the citizen’s arrest law.
In the House, a separate bill has been filed by Rep. Jeff Jones, R-Brunswick, to legalize “citizen’s detainment” provisions that would allow citizens to hold someone suspected of committing a crime under certain circumstances until law enforcement officers arrive to make an official arrest.
The recently filed bills on citizen’s arrest come amid protests that have rocked the U.S. in recent weeks following the death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man who died in Minneapolis during an arrest in which an officer kneeled on his neck for several minutes.
The citizen’s arrest proposal also comes after arrests were made in the fatal shooting of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old black man who was gunned down during a pursuit by two white men near Brunswick in late February.
The two men, Travis and Gregory McMichael, have claimed they suspected him of committing burglaries in the Satilla Shores neighborhood where they lived. Friends and Family who knew Arbery say he was out for a jog.
The McMichael men were arrested on felony murder charges in early May, months after the shooting. Since then, many Georgia leaders and lawmakers have pressed for repealing the citizen’s arrest law and passing a hate-crimes bill, which has stalled in the Senate.
Georgia House Speaker David Ralston has cast doubt in recent days on whether any criminal justice-minded legislation would muster enough support to pass this session except for the hate-crimes measure, House Bill 426.
In the Senate, Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan unveiled a different hate-crimes measure Wednesday that would impose tougher penalties than the House-passed bill but which has stirred fears the move could crater chances for any hate-crimes legislation to pass this year.
The Georgia Senate Thursday jump-started a measure aimed at exempting ride-share companies like Uber and Lyft from the state’s sales tax by charging them a flat fee for ride-hailing services that would be dedicated to public transit.
The move came after lawmakers pushed through legislation in January to start collecting online sales taxes from third-party companies like Google and Amazon that officials say could reel in around $100 million annually for the state, plus tens of millions of dollars more for local governments.
But part of that deal involved passing a separate arrangement for ride-hailing companies to exempt them from those online sales taxes. Those companies instead favor paying a fee of 50 cents per ride.
That 50-cent fee arrangement was tacked onto a bill to ease income-tax requirements for Georgia farmers hard-hit by Hurricane Michael in 2018, which cleared the Georgia House in March but sat in limbo as the General Assembly went on hiatus amid the coronavirus pandemic.
On Thursday, Senate lawmakers picked up the ride-share fee measure, House Bill 105, and sent it by a 41-3 vote back to the House for final approval.
Senate Majority Whip Steve Gooch, who led the push for the ride-share fee, said Thursday the bill’s passage would be a “reduction to the bottom line” for state sales taxes but would help boost funding for transit operations in Atlanta and elsewhere in Georgia.
“We believe this is a good way to budget for our transit in Atlanta,” said Gooch, R-Dahlonega.
The fee measure would have landed on Gov. Brian Kemp’s desk in mid-March had House lawmakers not elected to make changes clarifying that revenues from the fee would be earmarked for public transit.
That change forced the bill to return to the Senate for more voting, which was put off for three months after the 2020 legislative session was suspended due to the pandemic. Lawmakers returned this week to close out the last days of bill-wrangling.
Ride-share companies have been paying sales taxes since April 1 when the measure taxing online sellers took effect. That has helped put Georgia on track to collect as much as $15 million per month in additional tax collections amid severe economic strain caused by the pandemic.
If signed into law, the fee could drum up between $24 million and $45 million for the state in its first full year in effect, according to a fiscal note. County and city governments, which would not benefit from the fee, would lose out on between $16 million and $26 million the first year.
The Georgia Senate passed legislation Thursday that would punish convicted human traffickers who transport victims via commercial vehicles by banning them from obtaining a commercial driver’s license.
House Bill 823, by Rep. Houston Gaines, would impose a lifetime ban on driving a commercial vehicle for persons convicted of human trafficking-related offenses. The ban would only apply to people who used commercial vehicles to traffic victims.
The bill passed unanimously out of the Senate and heads back to the House for final approval since it was tweaked recently. It cleared the House by a unanimous vote in March.
Gaines, R-Athens, said in March the bill would go a long way toward reversing Georgia’s status as a state with one of the highest rates of human trafficking in the nation.
Sen. John Albers echoed that sentiment from the Senate floor Thursday, noting it makes sense to take driver’s licenses away from those who use vehicles for human trafficking.
“The punishment certainly will fit the crime,” said Albers, R-Roswell.
He previously tapped his wife, first lady Marty Kemp, to head a newly formed state commission to tackle human trafficking.
A separate measure on human trafficking, Senate Bill 435, is now winding through the state House. It passed out of the House Judiciary Non-Civil Committee on Thursday and now heads to the House floor.
The bill, sponsored by Sen. Brian Strickland, would let victims petition the court to vacate convictions for crimes committed while they were being trafficked.
Strickland, R-McDonough, said Thursday the measure would help victims overcome legal problems that linger after they are no longer being trafficked.
“The biggest hurdle they have outside of the emotional impact … is trying to get employment,” Strickland said.
Georgia students may get another pass on standardized tests next school year after year-end testing was scrapped this spring amid the coronavirus pandemic.
School officials and Gov. Brian Kemp announced Thursday they plan to seek a waiver from the federal government to allow local public schools not to administer the Georgia Milestones tests for the 2020-21 school year.
Kemp and State School Superintendent Richard Woods also aim to suspend annual teacher evaluations for the upcoming school year, according to a news release Thursday morning.
Resuming the oft-dreaded tests would both complicate classroom learning already challenged by social distancing restrictions and hurt the budgetary bottom-line for local schools, said a joint statement by Kemp and Woods.
“In anticipation of a return to in-person instruction this fall, we believe schools’ focus should be on remediation, growth and the safety of students,” reads the statement. “Every dollar spent on high-stakes testing would be a dollar taken away from the classroom.”
The move to do away with testing comes after Georgia received federal approval in late March allowing more than 2,200 public and state schools to be exempted from 18 requirements under state law.
Those exemptions included the Milestones test and other student exams, teacher performance evaluations and course curriculum for the coronavirus-impacted 2019-2020 school year.
School districts across Georgia totaling around 1.7 million students shut down in-person classroom activities in March as concerns mounted over coronavirus. They remained closed throughout the semester as students and teachers pivoted to online classes.
Local school officials were handed guidelines earlier this month on how to safely reopen classes for the upcoming school year, with plans outlining steps schools should take to prevent the highly infectious virus from entering classroom environments and to curb its spread if an outbreak occurs.
The bid by Kemp and Woods to suspend testing for a second school year in a row also comes as legislation works its way through the General Assembly to permanently scrap several standardized tests in Georgia.
Senate Bill 367, sponsored by Senate Education Committee Chairman P.K. Martin, R-Lawrenceville, would get rid of five year-end tests including exams in American literature, geometry, physical science and economics.
It passed out of the state Senate in March but is poised for changes in a House committee as the legislative session speeds toward its conclusion.
The bill has drawn support from local teachers’ associations but skepticism from some state lawmakers concerned that less testing could inspire students to slack off.
On Thursday, Kemp and Woods said their request for another federal waiver from testing is in step with their push to ease stress for teachers and students by reducing tests.
“These efforts are in line with our longstanding shared belief that assessment has a place and a purpose in education, but the current high-stakes testing regime is excessive,” their statement read.
A measure to keep certain unemployment benefits that were expanded in Georgia during the coronavirus pandemic cleared a key state House committee Wednesday.
The move comes as Georgia continues grappling with the economic fallout from coronavirus, which prompted roughly 2 million people to file unemployment claims and shot the state’s jobless rate up to nearly 12% in April.
Amid the pandemic, those who qualified for unemployment benefits were granted leeway to collect payments for up to 26 weeks instead of the usual 14 weeks, and enjoyed a boost in the allowance rate that let them keep up to $300 per week in wages earned – instead of the usual $50 – on top of their benefits.
Those expanded benefits are set to expire once Gov. Brian Kemp ends the state’s public health emergency, which currently runs through June.
But language added this week to a bill originally dealing with paid sick leave proposes to let the state labor commissioner keep those expanded benefits largely in place, depending on the state’s jobless rate.
The number of weeks would increase incrementally from 14 weeks when the state’s jobless rate is 4.5% up to 26 weeks when the jobless rate is 10% or higher.
The labor commissioner would also have authority to set the weekly deductible threshold at between $50 and $300, according to the revised bill.
Senate Bill 408, as revised, would also grant the labor commissioner powers during a statewide governor-declared emergency to modify the maximum benefit amount and relax rules on claims processing, unemployment insurance tax filing deadlines and work-search reporting.
It would also allow the labor commissioner to establish a work-sharing program that lets employers avoid layoffs by reducing their employees’ work hours but giving them prorated unemployment benefits.
Without the bill’s passage, the expanded unemployment benefits would return to normal levels once the governor ends the statewide public health emergency, said Jeffrey Babcock, the labor department’s legal services manager.
“Those provisions are temporary and they will end,” Babcock said. “The purpose of this bill is to get some more permanence to that.”
Sponsored by Sen. Brian Strickland, R-McDonough, the bill cleared the House Industry and Labor Committee on Wednesday and heads to the full House for a vote.
Originally, Strickland’s bill only proposed to allow employees to continue using earned sick leave for family care beyond July 1, when that provision in state law is set to expire.
The measure drew praise from Alex Camardelle, a senior policy analyst with the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, who touted the extended benefits provisions as well as the bill’s original purpose related to sick leave.
“All good things!” Camardelle wrote on Twitter.
But some lawmakers on the committee wondered if the $300-per-week threshold might still be too low for workers struggling through the pandemic to stay financially afloat. Concerns were also expressed over handing the labor commissioner more powers that otherwise would need to originate from the governor.
“I don’t know that we should enact such a broad scope of changes to grant these authorities to the department simply because we don’t think we could operate otherwise,” said Rep. Josh Bonner, R-Fayetteville.
Legislation to curb the practice of handing patients unexpectedly high medical bills that can add up to thousands of dollars and bankrupt families in Georgia passed out of the General Assembly Wednesday.
The measure, House Bill 888, which the Georgia House of Representatives passed overwhelmingly in March, would require insurers to cover emergency services a patient receives whether or not the provider is a participant in the patient’s insurance coverage network.
That arrangement removes Georgia hospital patients from the billing equation, leaving it to medical providers and insurance companies to settle their differences in a “baseball-style” arbitration process, said Sen. Chuck Hufstetler, who sponsored an identical measure in the Senate.
“This will let the health care providers and insurers take the patient out of the middle and take care of them,” said Hufstetler, R-Rome.
The House bill, brought by Rep. Lee Hawkins, R-Gainesville, passed unanimously out of the Senate Wednesday. It now heads to Gov. Brian Kemp’s desk for his signature.
Dubbed “surprise” or “balance” billing, the extra hospital charges result from specialty procedures like anesthesiology or emergency-room surgery completed by out-of-network specialists. They can add hundreds or thousands of dollars to a patient’s final bill without their knowing in advance.
State lawmakers had tried for the past five years to tamp down surprise billing before Wednesday’s passage. Lawmakers involved in negotiations traced prior hold-ups to disagreements over how insurers and medical specialists should settle out-of-network costs, particularly if disputes arise that need formal arbitration.
Representatives of the Georgia Hospital Association (GHA) and the Medical Association of Georgia (MAG) testified Sunday during a committee hearing in support of the legislation as a good compromise.
Several lawmakers praised the bill Wednesday from the Senate floor, noting its protection provisions were a long time in coming as Georgians continued straining under big surprise hospital charges.
“This is the one piece of the health-care issue that must be dealt with,” said Sen. Zahra Karinshak, D-Duluth.
Sen. Gloria Butler, D-Stone Mountain, said she had received surprise bills for medical procedures in the past and was pleased to see the practice get an overhaul.
“No one wants to get a surprise bill,” Butler said. “You want to know what you owe.”
