Coastal Georgia lawmakers marked a crucial deadline on the state legislature’s calendar last week, helping push through measures for further action while watching others fall along the wayside, as the current legislative session heads into its final, frenetic days.
For the region, the outcome of so-called Crossover Day — the deadline for bills to be voted out of the House or Senate and remain on a path to possibly become law — was mixed, the findings of an informal survey of Current readers suggest.
In that survey, conducted before the current session convened in January, readers rated as their highest legislative priorities the protection of the region’s environment and natural resources, upgrading and building roads and bridges, and school safety, in that order.
On environmental measures, the outcome of Crossover Day was harsh.
Two bills aimed at banning mining adjacent to the Okefenokee Swamp stalled in the House Committee on Natural Resources and Environment, led by Rep. Lynn Smith (R-Newnan).
It’s the fourth consecutive year that similar legislation has stalled in Smith’s committee, whose members include Coastal Georgia lawmakers Carl Gilliard (D-Savannah), Buddy DeLoach (R-Townsend), Jesse Petrea (R-Savannah), and Rick Townsend (R-Brunswick).
And like last year, Smith refused to explain why the measures, House Bills 561 and 562, co-sponsored by Ron Stephens (R-Savannah) and Steven Sainz (R-Brunswick) were frozen in committee and not passed on to the House floor for a vote.
The failure of the bills to pass out of committee comes at a critical moment, with the Georgia Department of Environmental Protection in the final stages of permitting a proposed mine on the edge of the swamp.
DeLoach, who represents District 167, told Jesup’s WIFO radio late last month that lawmakers were “absolutely committed” to protecting the swamp and “would stand their ground there to do so if necessary.” But, he said, property rights and constitutional issues were at play in the struggle over the legislation and also had to be protected.
The dismayed interviewer, Butch Hubbard of the “Butch & Bob Show,” wasn’t persuaded. He said he didn’t understand why elected officials in both the state House and Senate wouldn’t want to protect the Okefenokee “as much as they possibly can.”
The fate of the Okefenokee-related measures isn’t sealed. Dead bills can still be resuscitated before the session adjourns April 4 by attaching them to pending legislation.
Infrastructure, school safety, guns
As for hopes by Current readers that lawmakers in Atlanta would prioritize funding for infrastructure improvements in economically booming Coastal Georgia, there was some good news on Crossover Day.
Gov. Brian Kemp not only earmarked $501.7 million for development and construction of water infrastructure in Coastal Georgia in the state’s amended FY 2025 budget. He also designated $867 million for recovery and rebuilding efforts following Hurricane Helene, $266 million for water and sewer infrastructure development projects across the state, and $311 million in local road improvements.
What fraction of the funds tagged for water and sewer infrastructure and local road improvements will end up in Coastal Georgia wasn’t specified.
State lawmakers shared another priority of Current readers — improving school safety.
Spurred by the shootings carried out by a 14-year-old student at Apalachee High School in north Georgia last September, which left two students and two teachers dead, Senate lawmakers on Crossover Day passed Senate Bill 17. The proposed law would require schools to install “panic” buttons to quickly summon police and emergency responders in the event of school shooting.
That measure was co-sponsored by three Coastal Georgia state senators: Billy Hickman (R-Statesboro), Mike Hodges (R-Brunswick), and Ben Watson (R-Savannah). The region’s other senator, Savannah Democrat Derek Mallow, voted in favor of the bill.
Lawmakers also passed HB 268, co-sponsored by House Speaker Jon Burns (R-Newington), which creates a student “threat” database for schools, as well as SB 179, co-sponsored by Hickman, which requires schools to receive disciplinary records from new transfer students within five days.
Savannah gun ordinance targeted
Gun safety was also at the center of a Senate bill that would allow opponents of local gun storage requirements to recoup actual damages or up to $50,000, whichever is greater. That’s up from $100 under current law.
The bill’s author, Sen. Colton Moore, a Republican from Trenton, in northwest Georgia, said the catalyst for the bill was the Savannah ordinance requiring people traveling with guns to keep them locked up and out of sight when the vehicle is parked.
“When citizens in northwest Georgia go to a place like Savannah, and there is a mayor there who has put in ordinances that violate their Second Amendment rights, my piece of legislation simply says that those citizens, just like your citizens, have a right of tort to sue those governments for violating those rights,” Moore said during floor debate about the bill on Crossover Day.
Mallow, the Savannah Democrat, said the ordinance was a response to the problem of guns being stolen from unlocked cars in the city, with some 200 such instances in 2024.
“Dr. King said you cannot legislate morality, you can only legislate behavior, and so what the city of Savannah did was to try to create some recourse to have folks just lock their vehicles if they’re going to leave a loaded firearm in their vehicle,” he said.
The Senate approved Moore’s bill, SB 163, in a largely party-line vote, 33-23. Watson, the Savannah area’s other state senator, and Brunswick’s Hodges voting in favor of the measure; Hickman, the Statesboro Republican, joined Mallow and other Democrats in voting against it.
In a statement following the vote, Moore called the vote “a blow against the Radical Left’s agenda of persecuting gun owners in Georgia.”
The measure now goes to the House for consideration.
Falling short
Crossover Day was also notable for measures that didn’t get the necessary vote from either the House or the Senate, likely preventing them from reaching the governor’s desk for either his signature or his veto.
SB 120, which aimed to ban K-12 schools, colleges and universities from promoting, supporting or maintaining “any programs or activities that advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion,” was tabled. Statesboro’s SHickman was one of 16 senators, all Republicans, who co-sponsored the bill.
SB 57, intended to prevent banks from refusing services based on social or political stances, also co-sponsored by Hickman, lost in a 43-13 vote in the chamber.
Marty Daniel, founder and board chamber of arms manufacturer Daniel Defense in Bryan County, testified in favor of the bill. He said banks had stopped doing business with him in violation of his constitutional rights following the 2022 shooting deaths of 19 elementary school students and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas. The 18-year-old assailant used a Daniel Defense rifle in the attack.
During debate on the measure on the Senate floor, the bill’s author, Sen. Blake Tillery (R-Vidalia), read from first lady Melania Trump’s book, in which she said she was “debanked.”
As the clock ticked down on Crossover Day, those readers surveyed in January were unlikely to lament the fate of sports betting legislation, their lowest legislative priority.
Burns, the House speaker from Screven County, adjourned the House without bringing up the measure for a vote — effectively scuttling the measure, at least for this session.
While that may have been a setback for Savannah-area lawmakers Mallow and Stephens, who have championed gambling legislation, it wasn’t so for another important class of players in Atlanta, said a former Republican state representative from Holly Springs.
“There’s always next year,” Turner said. “I’m willing to bet a whole bunch of lobbyists are about to make a lot of money over the next 12 months.”
