A sound measure for assessing the Georgia General Assembly’s annual 40-day foray into lawmaking has long been what did – and did not – get done. Results show this year was no exception.
Legislators in 2016 took some modest steps toward the good; at other times, they veered dramatically into issues broiling with election-year fervor. In between, they somehow managed to get done mundane things that could not be avoided, such as approving the state budget.
Given a session that veteran state Sen. Vincent Fort, D-Atlanta, aptly characterized as fixated on “God, Guns and Gays,” many Georgians may still be wondering just how much progress might have been made had lawmakers focused much more on policy, and a lot less on political drama.
The Gold Dome didn’t do that for the most part. As a result, Georgia is left to wait for yet another year on adequate fixes for our large challenges.
If Georgians are dismayed, miffed or even disgusted by that, they should be. And they should demand more, both when they vote in November and beyond. Lawmakers will fully face our biggest actual problems only when we stop rising en masse to the legislative equivalent of clickbait and instead hold them accountable for doing the work needed to keep this state on track for a brighter future.
In fairness, the Legislature did make at least partial progress on some issues, and actually acted decisively in a good way on a few others.
On the perennial bugaboo that is transportation, lawmakers managed to persist against Perils of Pauline antics, Fulton County-style, and see through a hacked-down transportation bill confined to the city of Atlanta and Fulton. Given the mega-problem that is mobility in this state’s growing capital, most any allocation of resources toward transportation has merit.
Kicked once more down the gridlocked road, though, is the larger, still-urgent head-scratcher of how to get a region comprised of dozens of disparate, if not openly warring, entities to coalesce around a common issue. The need remains undiminished for a transportation funding plan worthy of a place where nearly half of metro Atlantans travel across county, or municipal, borders each workday. In the sense that time is money, we’ve incurred another year’s carrying cost from inefficient commuting with too little to show for our inaction.
Also in the good, but not enough category, lawmakers did approve a Band-Aid fix of sorts for the crisis faced by rural Georgia hospitals. A tax credit for charitable donations to stressed hospitals is a positive, if small, first step. It is far from a comprehensive fix for Georgia’s stressed health infrastructure. Add in Georgia’s 18 percent uninsured rate and the scenario grows even more serious and urgent. Waiting another year will bleed away needed money for health care here – and cost lives among Georgia’s poor. Statistics show that is no exaggeration.
And another school year will pass without strengthening Georgia’s K-12 public schools much beyond granting some test relief. After an education reform commission spent most of 2015 working on recommendations, Gov. Nathan Deal yanked their findings from consideration this year. That focused attention on November’s statewide vote on an Opportunity School District that would sweep perennially failing schools under state control.
The delay may make political sense, but it leaves for another year the pressing task of updating Georgia’s public school funding formula for the digital age. We should not be willing to risk the future prospects for Georgia’s children and the state’s economy by postponing hard funding decisions.
On the plus side, Legislators did overcome stalling tactics that had threatened a bill to improve the process of handling “rape kits” gathered from suspected sexual assault victims.
Left for the future, though, was the perennial topic of state tax reform. A proposal that would have reduced the state income tax by 10 percent did not find traction. This leaves another year for lawmakers to go back and ponder the eloquent case made half a decade ago for comprehensive state tax reform. They should reacquaint themselves with that now-dusty report.
Much attention was focused worldwide on the red-meat matters that the Legislature did approve. Gov. Nathan Deal’s veto of a religious liberty bill likely saved the state’s economy. Georgians await his decision on a “campus carry” gun bill.
Lawmakers rightly stalled other symbolic nose-thumbing at the status quo, such as bills that would have made English the official state language or punished businesses for opposing religious liberty legislation.
In the days ahead, Georgians will learn what else becomes law – or doesn’t. And we will await once more solutions on tough matters. We’d urge Georgians to carefully watch the former and not forget about the latter.
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