Lawmakers Quickly Rewrite Bills

Sunday Solutions — March 24, 2024

Good morning! It’s easy to love the first days of spring — blooming dogwoods, warm sun and nesting birds. This week also brought the flurry of legislative changes in pending Georgia legislation, along with much less sunshine on the work in sprint to Sine Die. But there’s more, so let’s go!

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Hijackings and mystery meat

Over the past two weeks, lawmakers have taken bills passed by their colleagues in the other chamber and substituted completely different language and policy into them – we’ve mentioned this more than once. But, we’ll continue to do that as long as the language and work is hidden from public view, review and comment. In many cases, the substitute meat of a bill is even hidden from members of committees assigned to vet and decide whether the bill is ready for a full chamber vote.

This week, there were two high-profile examples — these things aren’t announced or posted and require eagle’s eyes to spot and supportive ones to share them to public view. The Okefenokee mining moratorium, which didn’t get a vote before Crossover Day, turned up in a bill that would stopped some sale of farmland to foreign citizens. The Current‘s Mary Landers reports on how this bill differs from the Okefenokee version that didn’t pass earlier.

Often changes and substitute versions aren’t posted publicly until they are headed for a chamber voter. You can attempt to track the life and changes in a bill, as well as watch committee meetings, here. So, actually watching the process is possible, but tracking changes is hard; in some cases, you’re left to only hold your district officials accountable at the ballot box because you won’t have time to get a word in.

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Library books and ‘whatnot’

And yes, we spoke of a second noteworthy hijacked bill: House Bill 1104, the Quality Basic Education Act, was designed to address mental health risks for student athletes in Georgia schools, and it passed the House in February, 159-4. This week, the Senate Education and Youth Committee reworked it to pull in text from a number of bills left on the table at Crossover Day that dealt with sex education, library books, and transgender bathroom rules. We send kudos to our colleagues at Georgia Recorder for finding and reporting the story with the committee debate with detail over the changes. You can read it here.

Here are the main points of the new HB1104, from which the original sponsor, Rep. Omari Crawford, has requested to remove his name:

• School librarians must inform parents of every book their child checks out.
• Transgender students won’t be able to participate in school sports.
• Sex education cannot start in school until 6th grade, but does allow a discussion of menstruation as long as human reproduction is not part of it. This debate was highlighted by state Sen. Clint Dixon’s declaration “But I would say to the reproductive organ part of it or whatnot, I don’t think that would align with sex education.” Sen. Elena Parent replied “So you think you can talk to a girl about menstruation without touching on any aspect of human reproduction? Because that’s what the bill – How? Please let us know.”

If you want to follow it for yourself, the video of the committee discussion is here and the presentation of the original mental health portion starts at 46:21; the discussion of the additions to the bill start at 56:00 and continues past the 1:45 mark.

Other stories on moves leading up to the session’s final day on Thursday:

• General Assembly sets new elections for PSC members
• Bill criminalizing AI use in deceptive election ads advanced by Georgia Senate panel
• Medicaid expansion chances dim again this year as key health care proposal passes without it
• Georgia Senate passes bill to punish local governments with loose immigration policies

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Test yourself

Every Sunday, we give you the opportunity to test your news knowledge with a few short questions related to stories we published earlier in the week. Here’s how players fared last week:

Want your chance to be featured in next week’s leaderboard? Leave a first name or nickname so we can keep track of your score.

Here’s this week’s quiz — have at it!

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In your backyard

It’s not news to some that Brunswick and Glynn County are home to four federal Superfund sites — toxic land that for decades has been mostly uninhabitable and set aside for cleanup. Yet, many neighbors — and there are many — haven’t ever seen the sites or learned more than the basics: Don’t go there, don’t eat fish from the waters and don’t play there. And it’s fair to say the dangers aren’t going away soon, and the chemicals left there often don’t observe conventional property lines. The Current‘s environment reporter Mary Landers has written a primer on the sites to explain what’s there and the status of each. You can take an actual tour of sites April 13, and get more information during a Glynn Environmental Coalition Tech Talk Monday night. Go here to get info and start your online tour with Mary.

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Mark your calendar: Woodbine documentary

One of the nation’s worst industrial accidents occurred in Coastal Georgia in 1971 when the Thiokol munitions plant in Camden County exploded, killing 29. Two generations later, their stories are largely found only at a memorial in Woodbine. Savannah filmmaker Patrick Longstreth, inspired by a story by Laura Corley in The Current, has produced a documentary that includes interviews with survivors and first responders to look at the heroism of the workers making trip flares for the Vietnam War and the fight to honor them now. “The Day That Shook Georgia” airs at 10 p.m. Monday on GPB TV. It will also be part of the ReelSouth series on PBS on April 8. Here’s a trailer to watch and a link to the original story.

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Your second cup: Social media’s gray area

Social media has become a public relations crutch for some government entities and a way for many elected officials to bring their messages straight to citizens without fact checks or paraphrases. A recent Supreme Court ruling regarding social media posts, public officials and blocking commenters addresses an official’s right to moderate social threads. While we’ve seen the blocking and troll debates play out with officials ranging from Georgia Public Service Commissioners to a former U.S. president, the challenge comes home daily with public servants like teachers who just want to make sure parents and students get information they need. A story from Chalkbeat breaks down the ruling and potential effects on school board members, teachers and others. In the end, the ruling — which accepts that the answers aren’t all black and white — says that personal accounts can be moderated and owners can block whomever they choose, but official-use pages can’t always do that. Enjoy.

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