Legislative Recap: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

                Sine Die wrapped up Thursday night and it took the better part of Friday to figure out what exactly happened in the final hours. This year’s session was, for the most part, uneventful. Much of the heavy lifting was taken away from the legislature; the hospital bed tax is now administered by the Department of Community Health and the Falcon Stadium deal is being brokered by the city of Atlanta. Surprisingly, Gwinnett seems to have escaped unscathed. There were only two seriously contested pieces of legislation- a bill changing how cellular towers would be zoned and how trash collection fees were assessed both failed to gain any traction. Besides that, I’ll attempt to run down what exactly was accomplished, what failed and what to look forward to for the rest of the year. As there are hundreds of bills which were introduced this year, this blog will only look at major, often controversial, pieces of legislation. If there is a certain piece of legislation your trying to track, feel free to email me and I can try to assist you!

The Good:

Hope Technical Grant Funding Expansion-  HB 372 reinstates the old parameters for the HOPE Grant program (this is the HOPE program for two year technical colleges) before the overhaul of the program two years ago. By lowering the GPA requirement from 3.0 to 2.0, we can bring 2500 to 5000 students back into school to learn vocational trades which don’t require the cost and training of a traditional four year degree.

Ethics Reform- Georgia managed to pass an ethics reform passage which should crack down on some of the excessive lobbyist spending and “crony capitalism” in the state. Georgia, unfortunately, has long been regarded as one of the worst states for corruption and transparency. This package limits how much can be spent and on what it can be spent on with a gift cap, along with other disclosure commitments. In the long run, this will probably do little to end the type of cronyism that we’ve seen in the past but it is a good first step and something had to be done.

The Bad:

Fulton County Legislation- one of the major pushes this year was changing how Fulton County is governed. House and Senate Republicans sought to change how appointments, voting districts and many other aspects in Fulton County. Much of this legislation was a blatant political attack by Republicans in Georgia to deny the right of Fulton County to home rule. Even if we don’t like the choices elected officials in Fulton make, no party has the right to completely redraw a system for political benefit. The idea here is to design Fulton to fail so people will be happy to recreate Milton County.

HB 125/SB 160- The immigration fight reared its ugly head this session again. In the last hour of the 2013 session the House reinstated harsh language which the Senate had taken out in committee previously. This language redefines what official secure documents are and who can apply for driver’s licenses in Georgia. Now legal immigrants have to carry obtrusive identification papers such as I94’s and DREAMers will be unable to obtain lawful driving privileges, needlessly endangering themselves and others on the roads.

HB 361/SB 179: This was a comprehensive anti-union bill package which had a second bill with it, HB 362, that died in committee. This bill limits the ability of unions to control membership which will allow for members to collect benefits but then retire from the union before paying dues and conflicts with federal labor laws that are preempting.

HB 246: This bill stripped away the ability of state employees to have an abortion covered under their employer provided healthcare. Now state employees, many of whom haven’t seen a raise thanks to our austerity budget, must cover the procedure out of pocket. This is simply an attack on women’s rights using the cover of our states budget to diffuse debate.

The Ugly:

Refusal to allow debate in the last hour of session: Several important bills were brought up in the last minutes of session and instead of allowing debate, Republican leadership in the Senate simply forced votes on bills which scarcely had been read. This tactic was used to pass SB 160 and the substitute to SB 179 which had harsh anti-labor provisions. This was nothing more than rubberstamping majority party desired bills by forcing bling votes in the last few minutes and I fear that this action may have poisoned the well between any spirit of cooperation between the Democrats and Republicans in the state.

                While these were the major agenda items this year, there were hundreds of bills introduced during this session. One of the major items to note is if a bill didn’t pass this session, the door is still open for next year before the election and after. A bill is rarely ever truly dead and we will have our work cut out for us next year as many of the large initiatives will likely be revisited in January 2014.

Reprinted from 5th District State Sen. Curt Thompson's (D-Tucker) blog. Thompson represents parts of unincorporated Duluth, Norcross, Tucker, and Lawrenceville. Also, check the Senator out on Facebook and Twitter.