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AJC.com > Legislature > Blog > Archives > 2009 > February > 11
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Senate committee approves bill for food safety in wake of salmonella outbreak
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A bill that would require Georgia food manufacturing plants — like the one linked to a nationwide outbreak of salmonella —to regularly test for contamination unanimously passed a Senate committee Wednesday.
The state Senate Agriculture and Consumer Affairs Committee approved SB 80, which chairman John Bulloch (R-Ochlocknee), said would throw “a red flag up” if a manufacturer found salmonella or some other contamination in a product.
The bill requires regular testing of food samples and reporting of any contamination found to the state Department of Agriculture. The company must also keep records of the tests for two years.
“If this bill had been in place, there would have been a red flag raised because of the tests coming back,” Bulloch said. He was referring to the case of the Peanut Corp. of America, which is under investigation as the source of the nationwide salmonella outbreak. The company had tested its product and found salmonella and then re-tested and found none. It then proceeded to sell the product.
“No, this won’t guarantee that we won’t have another contamination problem coming out of a Georgia plant,” Bulloch said. The bill would get the state Department of Agriculture involved earlier, he said. But that won’t be enough, he said.
“The federal government, they’re going to have to step up oversight,” Bulloch added.
State Department of Agriculture Commissioner Tommy Irvin watched the committee pass the bill and later congratulated the senators.
“You are going to be the national leader,” Irvin said. “Take pride in the fact that Georgia will be first.”
Irvin said his department would need more inspectors to work on testing of food samples if the bill becomes law. Senate Majority Leader Chip Rogers (R-Woodstock) has already said that the Department of Agriculture has seen its budget grow and might need to shift its resources.
“If they don’t load us down too much, I think we can find ways to accomplish the goals,” Irvin said.
The department may use local boards of health to help, he said.
He added that his department would probably need to switch inspectors from duties such as verifying the expiration dates on products, and put them to work on testing of food samples.
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Senate committee debates failing school boards
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A Senate education committee debated new rules for all Georgia public school board members and ways to remove them if they fail to perform their duties.
SB 84, introduced by Sen. Bill Heath (R-Bremen), would allow the governor to suspend board members and appoint new ones if a system is placed on probation by an accreditation agency.
The bill also requires ethics training and policies for all school boards; clarifies who can serve on school boards; defines the roles of board members and superintendents; and limits school boards to seven members, unless previous action authorized a school board be larger.
The legislation includes recommendations from a commission the State Board of Education created after Clayton County public schools lost its accreditation.
Many speakers at the Senate Education and Youth Committee asked whether the changes would improve student learning. They questioned the constitutionality of removing school board members and whether the bill usurps local control. No vote was taken.
Fulton County school board member Katie Reeves said Clayton was a unique situation and that legislation won’t prevent it from happening again.
She asked school boards be allowed to “try to solve this without imposing certain restrictions on us and without taking away voters’ voices.”
Others speakers said the bill places rules on school boards that city councils and county commissioners don’t have to follow.
Heath said school board members face unique responsibilities.
“They are representing people who can’t represent themselves,” Heath said. “They are representing people who can’t vote.”
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Senate approves Georgia Power bill
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgia Power won approval in the state Senate Wednesday to charge customers years in advance to help finance a nuclear power plant near Augusta.
“This bill is good for every homeowner. It’s also good for business,” said Senator Don Balfour (R-Snellville) the bill’s sponsor.
Other senators called the proposal a “lousy” bill that makes an end-run around the Public Service Commission, which is the state agency that would normally regulate utilities.
Also, large industries and big retailers are largely excluded from having to pay for the interest costs, which would be born by small businesses and homeowners.
Large industries have been “carved out,” said Robert Brown (D-Macon) Senate Minority Leader. “They got a deal.”
He told colleagues not to look in the bill for evidence of that deal.
“The place to see if the big rate payers are exempted is in the hall,” Brown said, referring to the crowds of lobbyists that assemble there. It there had been no deal, he said, lobbyists with “Gucci shoes would be all over you.”
After a presentation by Balfour, followed by the opposing view presented by Sen. David Adelman (D-Decatur), and a lengthy debate, senators voted 38 to 16 to approve the bill, SB 31, which will now go before the House.
The bill will allow Georgia Power to collect up front an estimated $1.6 billion in financing costs.
The company plans to charge the typical customer $1.30 per month starting in 2011, racheting up to $9.10 per month by 2017, when both nuclear reactors come online. After that, rates are expected to gradually decline over the next 60 years.
If Georgia Power didn’t charge early to minimize interest costs, bills would jump by $5.85 in 2016 and again in 2017, for a peak total of $11.70, the company says.
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HR 1 to return from exile
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
House Resolution 1, that mythical proposition that would cap increases in property tax assessments, will return from its exile in Rules Committee on Thursday.
That committee voted this morning to send the proposed constitutional amendment back to the floor — but this time with some back-up.
The resolution, sponsored by Rep. Edward Lindsey (R-Atlanta) was originally supposed to have been voted on Day 10 of the session, back in January. But its supporters pulled it when there were doubts they had the necessary two-thirds vote. It was sent back to Rules, and there it has languished.
But Friday, the Rules Committee voted to send it back to the floor. Accompanying it this time will be House Bill 233, also sponsored by Lindsey, which does much the same thing as HR 1. HB 233, according to Majority Leader Jerry Keen (R-St. Simon) would essentially freeze counties and local governments from increasing assessments at all for the next two years.
Rules chairman Earl Ehrhart (R-Powder Springs) said Wednesday that HR 1 will come up for a vote first. If it gets two-thirds of the chamber, great. If it does not, then HB 233 will come up, which only needs a simple majority vote.
Some lawmakers have already begun to question why one measure (HR 1) requires a constitutional amendment and the other (HB 233) does not, yet they both apparently do much the same thing, which is tell local governments what they can and cannot do.
That question, surely, will be a hotly debated one on the floor Thursday, should HR 1 fail.
The question is whether House Resolution 1, sponsored by Rep. Edward Lindsey (R-Atlanta), comes up for a vote in the chamber today. The resolution, you might recall, would cap local governments’ ability to reassess property, thereby ensuring that homeowners don’t face steep tax increases in a down economy.
But the resolution, which requires a two-thirds vote of the House as it is a proposed constitutional amendment, was on the House calendar for this past Friday. But, instead of debating it as expected, the House abruptly adjourned for the weekend.
The word late Friday and over the weekend was that the Republican majority didn’t have the votes to get the bill to the Senate and leadership wanted the weekend to try and change hearts and minds.
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Lawmaker defends academic freedom in sex expert spat
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Rep. Karla Drenner (D-Avondale Estates) said Wednesday that some of her colleagues in the House have engaged in “unsubstantiated fear and rumor mongering” by questioning the motivations of university instructors who are experts in subjects like oral sex, “queer theory” and male prostitution.
Drenner, an adjunct professor at DeVry University, said those lawmakers are challenging the foundation of academic freedom, which she said is a vital tool in research and in building a well-rounded citizenry.
Several Georgia State University instructors spoke at a House Higher Education Committee meeting on Tuesday after a pair of lawmakers over the past week have blistered the school for employing them.
Reps. Calvin Hill (R-Canton) and Charlice Byrd (R-Woodstock) have said the state should not fund professors and experts in those kinds of topics. Byrd has also questioned why the University of Georgia has a professor with a class dealing with “queer theory,” according to a story in today’s Athens Banner-Herald.
The GSU instructors do not teach courses in male prostitution or oral sex, but were listed as experts in those subjects in the university’s experts guide, which journalists and others use to find people knowledgeable in various topics.
Those teachers, Drenner said, “had to appear because of misleading accusations made from this well.”
“I know many people have a low opinion of things like academic freedom,” Drenner said. “As a college faculty member myself, I relish academic freedom. I do not relish it as being able to say anything I want and as some relic of the past to hide behind. I relish it because it allows us all to watch a student’s mind” grow and prosper.
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House panel advanced bill offering life with parole
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The House Non-Civil Judiciary Committee moments ago unanimously advanced to the full House a bill that would allow prosecutors to seek a sentence of life in prison without parole for murder without having to ask for the death penalty to get it.
Under Georgia law, prosecutors can get life without parole for murder by seeking the death penalty. If a defendant is convicted, the jury has three sentencing options: life with the possibility of parole; life without parole; or death. In regular murder cases, there is only one sentence: life with parole.
Senate Bill 13 would let a district attorney ask the judge during the sentencing hearing of a murder trial to give a life-without-parole sentence.
The bill has widespread support because it would spare DAs from mounting costly death penalty prosecutions when the sentence they want is life without parole. It also would let DAs focus capital prosecutions on the most heinous murder cases, potentially making administration of Georgia’s death penalty less arbitrary.
It has already passed the Senate.
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