Up at the Gold Dome in Atlanta, during every two-year term, lawmakers bring hundreds of pieces of legislation that only affect one city or county. Folks at home may have asked for it — or may not have.
Lawmakers from the coast have filed such bills about paying local elected officials, setting up or remaking whole public boards and more.
Take House Bill 476 as an example, by state Rep. Ron Stephens, R-Savannah All his fellow legislators who represent any part of Bryan County have endorsed it.
This action in the bill is controversial, but only in one county, so you’d only hear it in the din of the Atlanta legislature if you listened very hard.
This “local bill” sets up a Bryan County vote on whether property values should be capped to rise no faster than inflation, when it comes to calculating school tax bills.
Fast-growing Bryan schools argue that inflation-capped property values won’t keep up with the system’s needs. Yet these caps are popular. Last year, state lawmakers and referendum voters nudged these caps toward becoming law for cities, counties and school boards.
Though there was an opt-out provision. And Bryan County’s school system took it — by holding three public hearings this year and a vote to opt out.
But Bryan County’s state House and Senate members are not taking “no” for an answer. Instead, they turned to local legislation to force a public vote.
The bill followed a typical path toward the governor’s desk.
The three House members who represent Bryan County agreed to a local bill, HB 476, to put the cap question to voters. The state senator representing the county would vote for it in his chamber.
Together, these four folks are the Bryan state House and Senate “delegation:” all the legislators who represent any or all of that county. Every county and city has a “delegation,” even if it’s just one person in each chamber.
If everybody in a delegation endorses a local bill, by and large, the rest of the General Assembly will take their word for it and approve the bill. Usually these bills have no partisan angle to stir up anyway, and rarely would anyone from another county want to get into another county’s business.
These bills are assigned to a committee and can be heard there, but if nobody is making a stink, uncontested local bills quickly go into bundles approved by the House and Senate every morning.
That’s exactly how House Bill 476 passed.
Yet while they hardly make a squeak in Atlanta, local bills can cause a fuss at home.
For example, a 2023 effort to double the size of Garden City via local legislation failed. For one problem, the bill drew part of Savannah into Garden City. For another, changing a city’s boundaries can mean a lot of adjustments for the county to make in service delivery from fire and police to water and zoning; and Chatham’s leadership was out of the loop. The proposal has not reappeared since its 2023 death.