The clock is ticking under the Gold Dome.
Friday is so-called Crossover Day at the General Assembly, when legislation must be approved by the chamber where it originated — the Senate or the House of Representatives — to have a chance of becoming law this year.
With that deadline just days away — and the 40-day legislative session scheduled to adjourn on April 2 — it’s a fitting time to look at the status of legislation that matters to many Coastal Georgians, as reflected in a survey of The Current’s readers at the session’s start in January.
(Spoiler alert: The legislature’s efforts so far have been a decidedly mixed bag.)
Familiar pothole
In annual survey after survey, The Current’s readers rank as their highest legislative priority efforts to protect Coastal Georgia’s environment. This year, the explosive growth of data centers and warehouses was at the top of their concerns.
It has been a high priority of lawmakers in Atlanta, too — with patchy results.
Last month, an industry-backed bill, House Bill 1063, that would require Georgia Power to strike longer-term contracts with data centers and demand they pay a down payment to cover some of the costs of serving them easily passed the House.
Last week, however, a scheduled Senate vote on that bill was abruptly cancelled when a group of senators led by Chuck Hufstedtler (R-Rome) tried to reintroduce original legislation that was opposed by the utility company and representatives of the data-center industry. Senate Bill 34 would ban any costs related to providing electricity to a data center from being passed down to residential ratepayers.
The prospect of passing any legislation this session that regulates data centers is now uncertain.
Other environment-related legislation, including efforts to tighten protections for the crown jewel of Coastal Georgia’s wilderness areas, the Okefenokee Swamp, perennially rank high among The Current’s readers.
As in the past, those efforts face a familiar pothole: the House’s Natural Resources & Environment Committee, led Rep. Darlene Taylor (R-Thomasville) and whose members include Coastal Georgia lawmakers Buddy DeLoach (R-Townsend), Carl Gilliard (D-Savannah), Jesse Petrea (R-Savannah) and Rick Townsend (R-Brunswick).
The committee hasn’t scheduled hearings on three notable bills — a sign they may languish for another legislative session and will have to be reintroduced next year.
One, HB 561, would bar Georgia’s Environmental Protection Division from issuing surface mining permits along Trail Ridge, which sits adjacent to the Okefenokee Swamp National Wildlife Refuge.
Still another, HB 562, would impose a five-year moratorium on new applications for surface mining on Trail Ridge and on changes to existing permits.
Finally, a bill co-sponsored by Townsend, Ron Stephens (R-Savannah), Steven Sainz (R-St. Marys) and Lehman Franklin (R-Statesboro) and awaiting action would have broad repercussions for the future of Coastal Georgia. HB 1072 would allow the EPD to review a company’s environmental compliance history before issuing permits for air, water, or land use.
The legislation, if passed and signed into law by the governor, would hold out-of-state companies to the “same standards as Georgia businesses and help communities facing risks from nickel refining and titanium mining,” according to the Coastal Georgia environmental group 100 Miles.
Addressing the literacy shortfall
Readers surveyed by The Current in January urged improved health care, deplored Georgia’s poor literacy rate, and called for the use of the state’s $14.6 billion surplus to address nagging problems.
Some 62% of Georgia’s third graders aren’t proficient in reading, according to the Georgia Council on Literacy. House lawmakers embarrassed by that statistic last month approved a measure that will fund school districts to hire literacy coaches in schools with K-3 classrooms. The bill now goes to the Senate for a vote.
On the healthcare front, efforts by Democrats in the state Senate to fully expand Georgia’s Medicaid program were turned back last month by Republican senators led by state Sen. Ben Watson (R-Savannah), chair of the Senate Health and Human Services Committee.
Watson has said he’s working to expand rural health care in Georgia, including expansion of residency programs at area hospitals.
Gov. Brian Kemp’s mid-year budget was, at least in part, a response to calls to tap into the state’s budget surplus.
That budget, approved by lawmakers last week, earmarked $2 billion for highway construction; $409 million for a new 300-bed mental health hospital g; $325 million for a need-based college scholarship program called Georgia DREAMS; and $150 million to expand prison bed capacity.
Tax relief
Eliminating the state’s income tax ranked next-to-last as a legislative priority among those The Current’s readers surveyed in January. Still, the issue of taxes was far from absent in their responses, starting with property tax relief for seniors. And tax relief was certainly at the top of the list for Kemp and most lawmakers in this, an election year.
Today, Kemp is set to sign a midyear budget built on a smaller tax base, due to an income tax cut that would take the top rate from 5.19% to 4.99%, part of a yearslong project to drive down that rate.
With the session’s end looming, the state Senate still needs to approve it to make it official for this year. The GOP-dominated House already approved it on a near party-line vote.
A pair of more radical tax-cut ideas have stalled. House Speaker Jon Burns’ idea to end property taxes hasn’t received a vote in his own chamber. The pitch by Sen. Blake Tillery (R-Vidalia) to end income taxes has passed his chamber but hasn’t received a House committee hearing.
Either proposal would leave billions in funding gaps that would mean fewer public services or increasing some other tax.
Yet at $43.6 billion, the adjusted budget for the year ending June 30 is about 15% bigger than the original and now includes $850 million in grants to homeowners, framed as property tax relief.
The budget for the fiscal year that starts July 1 isn’t finished. Kemp proposes $38 billion in spending but is silent about tapping into the state’s surplus.