Just like Congress, the Georgia legislature holds hearings as a part of passing legislation. But unlike the proceedings in Washington, the witnesses are not required to tell the truth. They are also not obligated to live in the state of Georgia or be an expert in the subject of the bill they’re discussing.
The good news is that a simple sign-up sheet lets literally anybody walk into the state Capitol, add their name to a list of speakers, and tell lawmakers what they think about a bill. In a way, it’s democracy in action.
But the bad news is that a quick Google search during a hearing may be the only way you’ll know the difference between a subject-area expert, a concerned citizen, a paid lobbyist, or a political hack.
In some cases, lobbyists or activists may even sit alongside a lawmaker to answer questions about the bill for other lawmakers, who may not be experts, or even knowledgeable, about the bill they’ve just introduced.
Is this really how the Georgia sausage gets made? Yes, it is, including on the highest-profile, most controversial bills we’ve seen this year.
When the Senate Committee on Education and Youth held its hearing on a bill to ban transgender girls from girls’ sports, the bill’s sponsor did not bring a psychologist or doctor to speak to the bill. Instead, he played a video from Prager University, which is not a university at all, but the media company of Dennis Prager, the conservative talk show host.
In the video, Selina Soule, a Connecticut student, talks about her experience competing against transgender athletes at the Connecticut Indoor Track Championships, but no examples of Georgia cases were discussed before the bill passed.
At a hearing last month of the Senate Regulated Industries and Utilities Committee, senators passed Senate Bill 393 to allow people to sue social media companies if their posts are removed or altered because of the views they express.
Adam Candeub, a Michigan State University law professor, testified to the committee, “What [social media companies] can’t do is (say), ‘we’re going to discriminate against certain kinds of viewpoints,’ for example, those who are skeptical of the public policy response to COVID.”
What he didn’t mention was that one of his clients was a white supremacist who was banned from Twitter for expressing those views.
During the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing to eliminate the permit requirement to carry a concealed weapon in Georgia, Aaron Dorr was introduced as being with “Georgia Gun Owners.” But Dorr is an Iowa resident and primarily the executive director of Iowa Gun Owners. He has also testified at multiple state legislatures across the country to loosen gun laws, including in Missouri, Wyoming, and Iowa.
The second witness was Bethany Young, with the National Association for Gun Rights, a Colorado-based gun-rights group, that Young said, “Includes thousands of gun owners across the state of Texas.” Seeing her mistake, she laughed, “Sorry, I’m from Texas now but I lived in Georgia my whole life before a few years ago.”
It’s tempting to zone out on legislation until it gets close to passage. If it’s just in a legislative subcommittee, what do you care?
The answer is that the committees are the factory floor of the legislative sausage-making machine. That’s where the ingredients go in and the recipe is complete. Once a bill gets out of committee to the House and Senate floors, where minority amendments almost always fail, the bill is already a packaged product.
That will most certainly be the case for SB 456, a bill to require women to see a doctor in person before being prescribed abortion medication. (A telehealth visit is currently permitted).
In February, the Senate Health and Human Services Committee held a hearing where state Sen. Bill Thompson, the bill’s sponsor, talked about the proposal. He also introduced Elizabeth Reed, a well known anti-abortion speaker and paralegal by training, who sat next to him.
“Mr. Chairman, I have Liz Reed next to me, who will take us through the bill.” Reed works for the Georgia Life Alliance, which says it is committed to, “Growing a pro-life culture in Georgia.”
Although several physicians signed up to speak about their professional experience with drugs in question, they were all subject to the committee’s two-minute public witness limit.
Along with being ground zero for legislation, House and Senate committees are also a staging ground for “special studies” or investigations, including the kangaroo court where Rudy Giuliani testified to a state Senate committee about Georgia’s 2020 elections.
Since witnesses in Georgia are not required to tell the truth, Giuliani held forth with tales so fantastic and far fetched that he had his law license in New York suspended in 2021.
In its decision to bar him from practicing law, the New York State appellate court repeatedly cited his false testimony to Georgia lawmakers as a reason for suspending his license.
“The seriousness of the respondent’s uncontroverted misconduct cannot be overstated,” they wrote.
It’s not to say that every, or even most, witnesses in the Capitol are liars. But it happens enough that a 2020 resolution from state Sen. Jeff Mullis, the GOP Rules Committee Chairman from Chicamauga, would have at least “most strongly” requested that witnesses before Senate committees “be truthful and honest in all testimony.”
The resolution passed the Senate on March 9 of 2020 but never made it over to the House. It was three days before the House and Senate suspended their work indefinitely because of the coronavirus — and six months before Giuliani became just one of the parade of House and Senate witnesses, of occasionally dubious credentials, allowed to say whatever they want, and hope the results take care of themselves.
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