House budget writers scrap many of Kemp’s cuts
The House has shown its cards and anted up for health grants, accountability courts and other programs that Gov. Brian Kemp had marked for cuts.
In approving the midyear budget, the House made major changes in Kemp's proposal to cut $200 million in spending for this fiscal year.
A big chunk of the cuts Kemp had sought involved eliminating about 1,200 vacant state positions. But under the House plan, a number of those jobs would be restored:
- The Department of Agriculture would be able to hire more food safety inspectors.
- The GBI crime lab would add three scientists and two lab technicians to test rape kits, DNA and firearms.
- Vacant positions for public defenders would be preserved.
- Planned furloughs for staffers at the Public Service Commission would be blocked, allowing them to go on regulating the state's utilities without having to take days off without pay.
The House also reduced cuts that Kemp proposed for mental health, substance abuse treatment, autism treatment and grants to county public health departments, and the legislators eliminated reductions for local library materials.
The governor’s proposed cuts to accountability courts disappeared in the House plan. The courts, which saw enormous growth during Nathan Deal’s time in the governor’s office, are set up for drug addicts, drunken drivers, the mentally ill and veterans charged largely with low-level offenses. Defendants who go through the courts — mostly nonviolent offenders — are able to avoid prison time if they stay sober, get treatment, receive an education and find jobs.
Budget writers also lessened the blow Kemp’s spending plan could have had on small-town Georgia, a key constituency in a chamber largely run by lawmakers from outside metro Atlanta.
The House reduced cuts the governor had proposed for the Agriculture Experiment Station and Cooperative Extension Service. Budget writers also said no to Kemp’s cuts in funding to the Morehouse School of Medicine and Mercer University for preparing doctors, and to his proposed reduction to the Rural Health Systems Innovation Center at Mercer, a project lawmakers started a few years ago to help improve health care in rural Georgia.
The midyear budget now moves to the third player in this poker game, the state Senate.
Higher fines sought so drivers might text less
If it cost you more to text while driving, would you do it less?
House Bill 113 proposes a solution to distracted driving that hits offenders in the wallet. It would double the fines set two years ago when the General Assembly approved the Hands-Free Georgia Act.
Experts credit the law with reducing traffic fatalities in the state by 2.2% in 2018, but plenty of drivers still divide their attention between the road and their smartphones.
HB 113 would raise the maximum fine for a first offense of distracted driving from $50 to $100. The top fine for a second offense would double to $200, and a third offense to $300. Those fines would double for offenses within school or highway construction zones.
Some, however, say the current fines are already too high.
"The bill we passed a couple of years ago was overkill," said state Rep. Alan Powell, R-Hartwell. "Now we're coming back with another one that's overkill."
Powell plans to introduce an amendment setting the fines at $25 to $100 for each offense, at a judge’s discretion.
Would that work for seat belts, too?
Legislation popped up in a Senate committee this week to bump up fines for failure to use a seat belt.
Senate Bill 226 would increase the penalty from $15 to $75. Adult drivers who allowed children ages 8 to 17 to go unbuckled would face a fine of $125, a $100 increase. The measure would also require everyone in a vehicle to strap in.
"What we're going to do here is save lives," said Sen. Randy Robertson, R-Cataula, the bill's sponsor and a former sheriff's deputy.
For an opposing view, Sen. Tyler Harper, R-Ocilla, seems to think seat belt requirements strangle freedom.
“I would be OK if we struck the entire seat belt code from Georgia law,” Harper said. “I believe wholeheartedly in personal responsibility and liberty.”
A recent Atlanta Journal-Constitution survey appears to back up Robertson. It found that about 90% of registered voters support a requirement that everyone buckle up.
But even seat belt supporters — including Sen. Tonya Anderson, a Democrat from Lithonia and the author of Senate Bill 160, which would also require all passengers to strap in — had a problem with the higher fines. She called them "overbearing."
Tax offered as way to curb vaping
Maybe a tax on e-cigarettes and similar products would persuade teenagers not to vape.
Are you sensing a theme here?
Dozens of people spoke at a House subcommittee meeting this week to support House Bill 864, which would add a 7% tax on the sale of e-cigarettes, nicotine vaporizers and associated products, while also requiring retailers to buy an annual license to sell them.
HB 864 is one of several bills aiming to regulate vaping, which has outpaced cigarette smoking in popularity among teenagers despite links to multiple deaths in recent months. The Atlanta-based U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says a 2019 survey found that 28% of high school students reported using an e-cigarette or vape within the past 30 days. In the same survey, only 6% of high schoolers said they had smoked cigarettes over the same period.
Five vape shop owners spoke at the meeting to oppose the bill. They said it would tax vape products at a higher rate than cigarettes. Cigarettes are subject to an excise tax of 37 cents per pack in addition to state and local sales taxes.
“If you are going to have a tax, it should not be more than cigarettes,” said Tara Alexander, a vape shop owner who said vaping helped her quit a three-pack-a-day smoking habit. “You’re going to force people to go back to cigarettes because it will be cheaper.”
You have until November to buy your popcorn
It looks like the expected Republican-on-Republican throwdown between U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler and U.S. Rep. Doug Collins will occur in November, instead of May.
There had been a push to create partisan primaries for special elections starting this year, but the House Governmental Affairs Committee, by approving House Bill 757, voted this past week to put off such a change until 2021.
So, if that delay holds, Republicans and Democrats won’t select their party champions ahead of the special election to fill the final two years of retired U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson’s term.
That means a showdown between Loeffler and Collins couldn’t come before November. It also means they won’t have the ring all to themselves. Three Democrats — educator Matt Lieberman, former U.S. Attorney Ed Tarver and the Rev. Raphael Warnock — are also expected to be on the ballot, hoping a split among GOP voters will give one of them an opening.
Many more candidates could join the race under the special election format. The 2017 special election in the 6th Congressional District featured handfuls of Republicans and Democrats and even some independents, 17 in all.
Bill would treat hemp like marijuana
If it looks like marijuana, it might as well be marijuana if you don’t have the paperwork to say it isn’t.
That's the gist of House Bill 847, which this past week won the favor of the state House Agriculture Committee. The bill would make it a crime to transport hemp plants without documentation that they were produced under a farming or processing license. Failure to do so could land you in jail for a year or hit you with a fine up to $1,000 for possession of less than 1 ounce — the same penalty you'd face if you had been caught carrying that much marijuana.
The General Assembly voted last year to permit hemp farming in the state, hoping to grab a share of the $1.2 billion market for CBD products.
But several metro Atlanta cities and counties responded by halting arrests for low-level marijuana offenses because officers would need a test to determine whether a substance was illegal marijuana or legal hemp. The two products of the cannabis plant look similar, but there is one big difference: Hemp contains less than 0.3% THC, the compound that gives marijuana users a high.
Supporters of the bill, which would also bring Georgia in compliance with federal regulations, said it is needed to begin hemp farming in Georgia.
But opponents said the bill would criminalize a legal substance.
"We're treating it as if it's a criminal product," said state Rep. Scot Turner, R-Holly Springs. "We have the ability to do a test. We're choosing not to. Why aren't we just taking the steps necessary to establish the criminal behavior on a product that's actually illegal?"
STAT OF THE WEEK
6 million tons
What is it? Georgia produces more than that much coal ash each year. That makes it one of the top states in generating the waste from coal-fired power plants, which may contain arsenic, lead, mercury and other heavy metals toxic to humans.
Why is it relevant? The state's law for disposal of coal ash is less stringent than its guidelines for standard household trash, which goes into landfills with bottom liners and collection systems for contaminated liquids. Sites used for storing coal ash face no such requirements.
Georgia Power, which operates 11 coal-fired plants, has proposed leaving toxic ash from five plants in unlined pits. Residents of Juliette, north of Macon and home to Georgia Power’s Plant Scherer, have expressed concern that the ash could contaminate their well water.
Two pieces of legislation now before the state Legislature would raise the standards for coal ash disposal to the same level as household waste. One is House Bill 756, sponsored by House Minority Leader Robert Trammell, D-Luthersville. The other is Senate Bill 297, sponsored by state Sen. Jen Jordan, D-Atlanta.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"Given the choice between getting a little bit done and getting nothing done, I'm going to choose to get a little bit done." — State Rep. Todd Jones, a Republican from south Forsyth County, explaining why he voted in committee for House Bill 888, a proposed cure for one type of surprise medical billing.
SCHEDULE
Work on the state’s midyear budget will move to the Senate in the coming week.
Senators are also expected to debate legislation aiming to crack down on surprise billing of insured patients for out-of-network medical costs.
Other matters up for consideration in the chamber could include legislation that would ban discrimination over how a person wears his or her hair, as well as a measure that would reduce the number of standardized tests Georgia students take in school.
In the House, a committee will explore whether the state should hold a nonbinding resolution asking voters whether daylight saving time should end in Georgia.
LEGISLATIVE COVERAGE
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