As the 12-day sprint that caps the Georgialegislative session gets set to begin in the capitol this week, it’s a good time to take stock of how much our elected representatives have accomplished.
And for a measuring stick, there’s no better place to turn than you, readers of The Current.
In an informal survey conducted as lawmakers went back to work in Atlanta in early January, we asked you what their priorities should be.
The answers were loud and clear. Improving health care — both mental health care and rural health care — was your top concern. That was followed by salary raises for teachers, workforce housing and standards for rental properties.
What follows is a summary of how lawmakers addressed those priorities in the session’s first 28 days. The measures passed by the House and Senate will now be examined by the other chamber so differences can be reconciled, and a completed piece of legislation can be sent to Gov. Brian Kemp for his signature or veto.
The summary is neither definitive nor complete.
Although Thursday theoretically marked the last chance for bills to pass at least one chamber in the General Assembly — a mid-session ritual known as “Crossover Day” — no legislation is truly dead until the current session ends in March.
Why? Under the General Assembly’s often byzantine rules and procedures, language contained in legislation that failed to clear the House or Senate by the end of Crossover Day can be grafted into legislation that did. In other words, legislation can find new life.
Health care
Whether expanding mental health care across Georgia or health care services in rural areas of the state, there were advances and setbacks.
House lawmakers tweaked the rules under which health care companies can create or expand facilities across the state.
The measure would allow a new acute care facility to open in a rural county if it provided trauma care or served as a teaching hospital or trauma center. With the agreement of a nearby hospital, new or expanded psychiatric or substance abuse inpatient programs also would be allowed.
The House also amended Gov. Kemp’s proposed 2025 budget beginning July 1, shifting $2 million will fund a pilot program to test transportation alternatives for people having a mental health crisis.
To address the statewide shortage of mental health care professionals despite passage of the landmark “Mental Health Parity Act” in 2022, a bill passed by the House would establish a student loan repayment initiative for behavioral health practitioners.
Another House bill would extend greater legal protections to mental health care providers, as an incentive to expand their services.
Still, a measure that would require all certificated public-school personnel to receive annual training in depression and suicide awareness and prevention didn’t get out of committee.
And despite early indications that House leaders would seek to expand Medicaid to improve access to health care for the state’s high number of uninsured residents, they performed the bureaucratic equivalent of kicking the can down the road: They created a committee to study the matter.
As it stands, Georgia is set to spend $181 million less on Medicaid this year while also losing hundreds of millions of dollars more in matching federal funds.
Pay raises for teachers
Kemp before Christmas ordered $1,000 bonuses paid to state and university employees and public school teachers. The House has approved plan by the House includes $315 million to pay for the bonuses.
In his $37.5 billion FY 2025 budget announced in January, Kemp proposed $2,500 raises for teachers beginning July 1, which lawmakers will finalize and vote on this month. That would boost average teacher pay in Georgia above $65,000 annually.
The governor also wants state and university employees to get a 4% cost-of-living increase across the board, up to $70,000 in salary. The typical state employee makes $50,400.
Kemp’s budget proposals for salary increases and other aspects of represent a nearly 12% increase in funding, the largest percentage increase for any major state government function outside the state’s court system.
Workforce housing
At a meeting last month, Savannah Mayor Van Johnson said establishing legislative priorities was one thing and translating them into law another. “The proof is always in the pudding,” he said.
When it comes to workforce housing, that maxim couldn’t be more relevant.
“We want people to live in the community where they are working,” Kemp said in January, stressing the need for more workforce housing. “It cuts down on logistics. It cuts down on the need for infrastructure, and it just honestly makes for a better quality of life.”
Yet despite what officials and lawmakers from Savannah to Atlanta have described as a housing crisis, two bills aimed at tackling rising housing costs and encouraging the construction of more affordable housing failed even to get a committee hearing in the first 28 days of the session.
Both measures — SB 256 and SB 257 — were authored by Sen. Derek Mallow (D-Savannah).
Standards for rental property
A bill that would require landlords to ensure that residential rental property is “fit for human habitation” and would cap security deposits at two months’ rent passed the House unanimously last year. But the measure is bottled up in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The legislation also would require a landlord to wait three days to obtain an eviction notice after informing a tenant they had to leave the property due to a late rental payment.
The three-day pause, the bill’s advocates say, would improve the chances that the landlord would get paid without having to go to court and avoid a record that “follows the tenant for decades and makes it impossible to rent that next home.”
The Tide brings information and observations from The Current staff.
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