GA Legislative Watch | Week Seven

February 25, 2023
Friendly Amendment, GLW, In the News

GA Legislative Watch

By Howard Franklin, Molly Mcloughlin & Rebecca Wallace ● Feb. 25, 2023
Smart Brevity™ count: 5.5 mins . . . 1,398 words

We at ORS love Jimmy Carter. Human rights activist, peace maker, (the proclaimed Rock n’ Roll 🎸) President, Governor, State Senator, Navy officer, Sunday School teacher, husband, father, grandfather, friend, neighbor. He and his family are a treasure to Georgia and the nation.

SB 145 would prohibit municipalities from banning certain leaf blowers

A funny thing: “This leaf blower bill doesn’t suck, it blows,” said Sen. Shawn Still in the hearing for SB 145 which would prohibit municipalities from banning certain leaf blowers. (It did, indeed, blow out of committee and on to the chamber.)

1 big thing: A tale of (too) many cities

Georgia’s process for creating new cities has undergone a seismic shift over the last 50 years. What began as one party leveraging its political dominance to stymie new municipalities, eventually empowered the other to use the same tactics – and new ones – to do the opposite. Along the way, the challenge of incorporation has gotten increasingly complicated.

Walk (or scroll) down memory lane with us to see how we arrived here:

1970s – After Atlanta attempted to annex a large swath of Fulton County in 1966, new cityhood proposals sprang up, partly in response to school desegregation and calls for local zoning control. Sandy Springs first attempted to incorporate in 1975, but a Democratic majority in the legislature blocked the proposal for 30 years.
2004 – Republicans gained control of the legislature, changed state law, and Sandy Springs was incorporated the next year as Georgia’s 6th largest city – managed largely by professional service firms. Other north metro cities soon followed, including Johns Creek, Milton, and Dunwoody. There have been at least 17 cityhood efforts in metro Atlanta since 2005.
2016 – Majority Black communities in metro Atlanta got into the incorporation act by creating the cities of Stonecrest (2016) and South Fulton (2017). The city of Greenhaven, proposed as the state’s second-largest, did not win approval from the General Assembly.
2018 – Proponents for a city called Eagles Landing attempted to de-annex from Stockbridge, a town of only 30,000 in Henry County, and incorporate. Though the proposal faced significant legal hurdles and failed at the ballot box, supporters of a proposed Buckhead City have largely followed the same playbook.
2019 – 15 years after incorporating with the promise to run city government like a business, the Sandy Springs City Council voted to cut $21 million in professional service contracts and instead offered full-time jobs to 183 employees.
2022 – Cobb County, where roughly 26% of its residents live in cities, proposed 4 new cities. East Cobb, Lost Mountain, and Vinings all failed, while Mableton passed with 53% support.

What’s next: Mableton leaders will soon elect a mayor and council for the city of 77,000. But some residents already want out of the new city, promising to deploy a tactic that’s also been floated if Buckhead City were to be approved.

Our thought bubble: Issues of land use, population density and zoning regulations are wrapped up in these proposals, not to mention impacts to Georgia’s bond rating. Have state leaders learned from our complicated history of creating new cities, or will new lessons present themselves this legislative session?

Go deeper on the cityhood process.

2. Notable legislation

SB 57 would legalize sports betting without a constitutional amendment

The Senate path to legalize sports betting without a Constitutional Amendment, SB 57, is now with the Rules committee to schedule a full chamber vote.

It would only require a simple majority vote in both chambers to pass.
Zoom out: Under this proposal, sports betting would be overseen by the Georgia Lottery and allow online and in person sports betting at kiosks placed at a variety of businesses, including sports venues.

Gov. Kemp’s $32.5B midyear budget which runs through June 30 was approved by the Senate and locks in $1B in property tax cuts, $50K in security grants for every school, and funding to address pandemic learning loss.

What’s next: The House approved their version of the budget a few weeks ago, so now both chambers historically go to conference committee to negotiate a final version.

More affordable and workforce housing is in sight with the introduction of HB 514 and HB 517, advancing Gov. Kemp’s push to relax local zoning laws.

State of play. The Georgia Chamber, Home Builders Association of Georgia, Georgia Association of Realtors, and Habitat for Humanity of Georgia formed the Georgia Coalition for Housing Opportunities to rally behind the legislation.
HB 490, introduced by Rep. Spencer Frye (D-Athens), would revise the tax code to make buying single family rental properties less attractive for institutional investors, keeping current inventory more affordable.

“This is in fact the decade of mental health,” said co-sponsor of HB 520 Rep. Todd Jones you ones (R-South Forsyth) alongside fellow co-sponsor Rep. Mary Margaret Oliver (D-Decatur) as they announced legislation to further the work started by the late Speaker Ralston last session.

Student loan forgiveness would be expanded for mental health providers already serving in the field.
The Gov.-backed bill also creates a study committee to address the shortage of treatment beds and other ways to increase access to care.
Go deeper.

Electric vehicle owners may never be stranded in a charging desert again. HB 406 allows for selling and taxing electricity to EV drivers and was unanimously approved in committee.

How it works: Retailers would charge EV drivers for electricity by the kilowatt hour, as opposed to current charges based on the length of time a vehicle is connected.

Fiddling with election laws, again. R’s in the Senate introduced a package of election bills that could be voted on as soon as Monday.

It bans foreigners from being election workers, eliminates votes scanned from barcodes, and prohibits counties from accepting election donations from organizations. (ex: ‘Zuckerbucks’)
What they’re saying: Election officials are concerned the continuous changes to voting technology and procedure will undermine confidence in elections, something supporters of the effort claim is their intent.
Our thought bubble: Would we still be messing with this stuff if Trump admitted his 2020 defeat?

3. In other political news . . .

A donation of $500K will pay for housing incentives for the city’s public safety officials.

Places to live and work. The Atlanta City Council unanimously approved a plan to donate $500K of federal American Rescue Plan Act funds to the Atlanta Police Foundation (APF) to pay for housing incentives for the city’s public safety officials.

The plan was proposed by Mayor Dickens last month.
With help from the Atlanta Apartment Association, APF will manage and distribute the subsidy to first responders so they can live near the area they serve.

More MARTA, really. The MARTA Board planning committee approved a $65.9M contract to build the Summerhill bus rapid transit line.

It will serve 14 downtown stops from Peoplestown to South Downtown including Georgia State University, the Capitol, and City Hall on a 5-mile loop.
What’s next: After the full board takes up the contract in March, construction is expected to start in May and open for service in 2025.

Hand it over, DOJ. U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden ruled that the U.S. Justice Department must disclose documents about litigation around Georgia’s 2020 general election.

With his own lawsuit, SoS Brad Raffensperger is arguing there was collaboration between the DOJ and Democratic interest groups in their lawsuits for alleged racial discrimination caused by SB 202.
Go deeper.

Looking closer at foster care. U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff is the new chairman of the Senate Human Rights Subcommittee and has launched an investigation along with Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) into Georgia’s foster care system.

He told the AJC that “potential malpractice, mismanagement or misconduct have left children at risk of abuse and neglect.”

More pediatric care in rural Ga. Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta has committed $200M to fund 10 full-tuition scholarships at Mercer University School of Medicine for students who commit to serve 4 years in rural Georgia.