The American Conservative Union is praising Georgia lawmakers for several bills passed this year, including one to help charter schools.
The ACU lauded that school legislation and bills on other issues, from preventing an increase to the minimum wage to requiring the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to keep a website listing convicts who are undocumented immigrants and released from incarceration.
The charter bill, House Bill 430 by Rep. Buzz Brockway, R-Lawrenceville, passed the General Assembly in the waning hours of the last day of the legislative session and was signed into law by Gov. Nathan Deal in April.
It calls on state education agencies to establish charter school authorizing standards, mandates hearings for charter schools that are trying to obtain unused school buildings, ensures that charter schools get a proportional share of certain federal school funding and establishes a $100,000 grant fund for charter school facilities.
The portfolio of bills boosted Georgia's conservative bonafides in the ACU's eyes -- raising the Senate's conservative score 7 percentage points to 61 percent this year and the House of Representatives' score by 3 percentage points to 49 percent.
The group notes that Republicans control both legislative chambers in 32 states.
“With these victories comes an ability to implement policies that restore individual liberty and return us to a limited form of government run by and for ‘We the People.’”
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