GA Legislative Watch 2025 | Week Four

February 8, 2025
Friendly Amendment, GLW, In the News

GA Legislative Watch

By Molly Mcloughlin ● February 8, 2025
Smart Brevity™ count: 5.5 mins…1,454 words

With legislative days 10-13 down, it’s officially that time when there’s at least three committee meetings going at the same time at every hour.

Situational awareness: We’re seeing swift movement on policies inspired by the Trump administration, signaling state Republicans will remain in lock step with federal Republicans.

🏈 One fun thing: Just in time for Superbowl weekend, Sen. Brandon Beach (R-Alpharetta) proposed exempting college athletes’ NIL compensation from income taxes, keeping Georgia competitive with other SEC states.

1 big thing: School safety

“Every child deserves the option to learn in a safe environment,” said Speaker Jon Burns as he announced his plan to bolster school safety, from utilizing more technology to increasing mental health funding and encouraging safe gun storage. Here’s a look at what the plan includes:

📊 The School and Student Safety (S3) Database will mandate that schools participate in a statewide database that allows GEMA and Homeland Security to evaluate the behavior of threatening students.

It will also share data with mental healthcare professionals so that students receive needed resources.

📲 An anonymous reporting app will allow for more efficient reporting of tips and have them evaluated and sent to law enforcement and other personnel across the state as needed.

School safety funding will allocate an additional $50M for one-time grants to all public schools and support the S3 Database development.

Threat Assessment Teams will be made up of school administration, mental health professionals, and law enforcement to support schools in developing and implementing threat assessment policies.

👩‍⚕ Student mental health resources will be added with new individual care coordinators and required violence prevention and suicide awareness training for students.

Suspension will be mandated for students who make terroristic threats until law enforcement and school personnel determine the student is cleared to return to school.

Senate Republicans, along with Sen. David Lucas (D-Macon), go a step further with SB 61, creating a new felony offense of a “terroristic threat of a school or terroristic act upon a school.”

💵 Safe storage tax incentives could be voluntarily applied for purchasing equipment like firearm safes and trigger locks as well as for gun safety training and courses.

Sen. Jason Anavitarte (R-Dallas) is pushing SB 47, an 11-day tax holiday for firearms, ammunition, gun safes, and other accessories.
Democrats note the lack of stricter gun control measures in the plan, which they say is necessary to prevent school shootings.

Yes, but: Advocates like the youth-centered nonprofit Georgia Appleseed suggest that increased investment in behavioral and mental health supports would go further to make our schools safe.

2. Notable legislation

⏰ On a $40.5B time crunch. The House approved its version of the amended FY25 budget with $811M in Hurricane Helene relief, a nearly $200M boost from Gov. Kemp’s original proposal.

It also designates funds to support Atlanta’s major upcoming sporting events.
Both chambers want to approve this plan ASAP to expedite desperately needed hurricane relief. Next, the Senate puts its twist on the plan.

“Child care is critical, not only for childhood development, but also for Georgia’s economy,” said Lt. Gov. Burt Jones of his child tax credit expansion proposal, SB 89. It:

creates a state income tax credit of up to $250 for every child under 7;
expands an existing child care tax credit giving parents up to $300 more per child; and
lets employers claim a larger credit for investing in on-site child care.

GOP priority #1. The General Assembly, White House and NCAA all came to the same conclusion this week when it comes to transgender athletes.

The Senate passed SB 1, banning transgender girls from competing on middle, high school and college teams that don’t match their sex assigned at birth, with the support of two Democrats.
The Speaker introduced the Riley Gaines Act proposing the same ban and similarly preventing biological males from receiving women’s athletic scholarships.
The Lt. Gov. and Speaker attended President Trump’s signing of an executive order to the same effect, with the NCAA shortly following suit.

The other side: State Democrats say if lawmakers really want to “protect girls sports,” the focus should be ensuring they receive the same funding, equipment and facilities as boys’ sports – introducing the “Equal Opportunities for Girls in Sports Act”, SB 41.

🚸 No more school zone cameras. HB 225 would repeal a 2018 law allowing the use of automated speed detection devices in school zones.

Why now? Over half the House signed onto the bill due to concerns around penalties and operating hours.
What they’re saying: Some school districts are concerned what this would mean for student safety and current contracts in place.

To exempt or not exempt. A new version of HB 92 made it out of committee which originally gave local governments an extra month, until March 31, to opt-out of the state referendum-passed property tax exemption.

Now, if governments don’t opt-out by the deadline, they would automatically be included in the exemption, but would have the option to reverse course through 2029.
What they’re saying: If local governments can “try it on” and then potentially opt-out, more will stick with the exemption.

💻 The first AI bill, SB 9, passed the Senate Judiciary Committee. It aims to criminalize the distribution of AI-generated, sexually explicit content depicting children – even if the children aren’t real – with up to 15 years in prison.

Data privacy. Sen. John Albers (R-Roswell) dropped a bipartisan plan, SB 111, to protect consumer privacy online, establishing rights over your personal data and imposing obligations on businesses that process that data, including enforcement mechanisms and penalties for non-compliance.

🥊 Sports betting is officially back with SR 131 from Sen. Carden Summers (R-Cordele) which would put the question to the voters to legalize sports betting and casino gambling. The first $2B in tax revenue would be split evenly among all 159 counties.

Yes, but: Should a county with over a million residents receive the same amount as a county with 5K residents?

Immigration enforcement. SB 21 passed out of committee, seeking to further enforce Georgia’s ban on sanctuary city policies and penalize local governments and school systems that don’t comply by removing their legal protections.

Big picture: On her first day, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi ordered the DOJ to halt federal funding for 220 sanctuary cities.

🍤 Is this local? The Agriculture and Consumer Affairs committee heard HB 117 mandating restaurants clearly indicate where their seafood is sourced.

What they’re saying: Restaurants don’t mind the transparency but are concerned with the cost of updating their menus so frequently, considering their seafood could be from India one week and China another.

State intervention. The Public Safety Committee passed SB 7 requiring the City of Atlanta to allow the Fulton County sheriff to use the city jail and pay no more than the cost of maintaining it.

This is the result of a study committee examining the troubled Fulton County jail.

3. Other political news

Drop the suit, says Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, asking U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to withdraw the DOJ’s suit against Georgia over the law that overhauled the state’s elections, the Election Integrity Act. Fighting back. In one of his first actions as DNC chair, Ken Martin joined the legal fight seeking to block the State Election Board’s controversial rules approved last year, including hand counting ballots on election night.

The long-running case is currently in the appeals process following the state Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling against the new rules. Oral arguments are set to begin March 19.

Choose a side. The state Republican party announced its “election integrity priorities,” including closed primaries. Making the case to eliminate “crossover voting,” party chair Josh McKoon said,

“It is common sense to limit participation in Republican primaries to those voters who declare their allegiance to the Republican Party so our nominees reflect the philosophy of our voters.”

Go deeper.

Former U.S. Rep. Doug Collins was sworn in as Veteran Affairs secretary with a majority of Senate Democrats voting with Republicans to confirm him, including Ga.’s two.

4. What’s next?

Next week is legislative days 14-17 with the Senate expected to take up the House version of the AFY25 budget, and the House expected to begin hearings on the FY26 budget, which begins in July.