Top issues facing Georgia lawmakers this year

Perhaps the biggest issue at the Capitol this year will be transportation.

For the first time in more than a decade, the Legislature intends to raise serious money to prop up Georgia’s ailing transportation network. Step No. 1 might be raising the state’s gas tax.

High-ranking legislators spent months traveling the state last year studying the issue and, in December, issued their findings: Commutes are congested — no surprise — and expanding Savannah’s port will only add more highway traffic. The report called for raising a bare minimum of $1 billion to $1.5 billion more annually.

A big unknown is how much public transit they might include and how they would do it. Transit needs go from major systems such as MARTA and Xpress down to the state’s 100-plus tiny local systems, including on-call special-needs vans.

Without question the money would go to repair bridges and highways, and hopefully build more to cope with the state’s expanding population and commerce. But while the report openly declared that ongoing funding of mass transit is in the state’s best interests, it didn’t suggest how to do that.

Budget/Taxes

When it comes to the state’s $21 billion budget, lawmakers face a session of great expectations. Revenue is growing, so after years of austerity, everybody wants something. But most of the extra money will go for the basics, such as paying for increased school enrollment or higher public health care expenses.

Teachers and state employees may get raises, although it could depend on the financial shape of their school districts and agencies. Backers of private school scholarships — popular with the Republican majority — are vowing to press for a fourfold or fivefold increase in funding.

Expect the usual parade of special-interest tax breaks. While Gov. Nathan Deal has urged caution on doling out business tax breaks, it’s been pretty much business as usual in recent years.

Medical marijuana

Lawmakers came close to passing legislation in 2014 that would have legalized the use of cannabis oil to treat certain seizure disorders, but the bill failed in the session’s final moments.

State Rep. Allen Peake, R-Macon, has spent the interim gathering support for another effort this year. While it seems certain Peake will again get the bill through the House, it's unclear whether he can succeed in getting it to Gov. Nathan Deal's desk.

Also unclear at this point is whether lawmakers will consider a broader medical marijuana bill that would allow patients with diseases such as cancer and glaucoma to use a more potent product. Peake’s original measure allowed only the use of a marijuana derivative that does not produce the “high” most closely associated with the drug.

But others are pushing for legalization of more nonsmokable forms of marijuana, and a recent poll showed a vast majority of Georgians agree. But getting the Republican-dominated House and Senate, not to mention Deal, on board will be tricky.

Religious liberty

Georgia’s powerful business community has already issued a warning over efforts to revive “religious liberty” legislation, which it helped defeat last year after hometown heavyweights Coca-Cola, Delta Air Lines and Home Depot all spoke out against it.

Backers are basing their effort on federal legislation passed by Congress in 1993 and signed by President Bill Clinton. It asserts that government has to show a compelling interest for why its policy should override an individual’s religious freedom. In the years since, 18 states have adopted their own version of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and nearly a dozen others have adopted the same legal standard through court decisions.

But the issue flared here last year in the wake of national attention over lawsuits against businesses who refused to provide goods or services for gay weddings or gay advocacy groups.

Critics say passage would open the door for private business owners to discriminate against gays and other minorities — by citing religious beliefs — and make the Peach State a national laughingstock and economic pariah. When the issue sparked up last year in Arizona, Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed similar legislation that had brought widespread condemnation along with the possible loss of this year’s Super Bowl.

Ethics

After the meltdown at the state ethics commission in 2014, including judgments against the state of nearly $3 million and the firing of the agency’s director, Deal proposed a sweeping set of changes.

He and lawmakers are expected to propose changes to the state agency formally known as the Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commission that could include expanding the board from five to 12 members. The legislative, executive and — for the first time — judicial branches would each get four appointments, and the full board would choose a chairman.

While the agency has, in recent months, begun to recover, it is still without an executive director as the current board appears willing to wait to see what lawmakers have in store.

Outside interests, including the watchdog group Common Cause Georgia, have called for broader changes, including a boost in the agency’s budget and tweaks to the 2012 ethics bill that sought to rein in lobbyist spending on elected officials. It is unclear, however, whether lawmakers will agree.

Uber, Lyft, Tesla

Ride-sharing services Uber and Lyft, as well as high-end electric carmaker Tesla, all vroomed into January on lawmakers’ minds, thanks to public hearings and, in Tesla’s case, a looming court case. It’s just not clear what they want to do about it.

Efforts last year to regulate companies such as Uber failed, causing state House Public Safety Committee Chairman Alan Powell, R-Hartwell, to form a special study committee that is expected to soon weigh in about whether more regulation is needed and how so.

While the companies and their supporters don’t oppose some new rules, the state’s taxicab and limousine companies have adamantly pressed for strict oversight including requiring drivers to be fingerprinted and pass a state criminal background check — the same standards they have to meet.

Tesla, meanwhile, is battling just to be able to sell its cars in Georgia after being sued by state auto dealers who say the California company’s business model to sell directly to consumers — bypassing a third-party dealer — violates state law.

Both sides await a decision by a state administrative judge. The battle, however, has already jumped to the email in-boxes of state lawmakers, who heard last week from the National Auto Dealers Association about how local dealers provide an economic boost to their communities.

Look for car dealers to press that point in the General Assembly especially if the judge’s decision doesn’t go their way.

K-12, higher education

Gov. Nathan Deal has pledged a multiyear effort to rework Georgia’s two-decade-old school funding formula, known as the Quality Basic Education Act. He’s assigned a task force of superintendents, teachers, lawmakers and community advocates to meet over the next year to begin drafting recommendations.

He also hopes to give the state new powers to intervene in struggling school districts, similar to experiments in Louisiana and Tennessee. More conservative members of the Legislature may try to revive efforts to make the state cut ties with national academic standards known as Common Core.

The state’s Democrats also want to revive proposals seeking to expand access to Georgia’s popular HOPE scholarship program.

The state’s colleges and universities, meanwhile, are focused on securing pay raises for employees. University System of Georgia Chancellor Hank Huckaby has indicated that years of austerity cuts to state agencies and stagnant wages have taken a toll and are becoming a hurdle in retaining and attracting top talent.

Cityhood

New cities could be formed across metro Atlanta if state lawmakers agree to let residents vote on incorporation, an issue that has divided residents over what’s best for their areas.

Cityhood supporters want more local control of their government, but opponents say additional cities would further fracture the region.

In DeKalb County, the communities of LaVista Hills and Tucker are furthest along toward becoming cities after a legislative subcommittee voted last month to set their borders. LaVista Hills would cover about 65,000 people living mostly between the eastern edge of I-285 and I-85 while also including some residents outside the Perimeter near Spaghetti Junction. Tucker would include about 35,000 residents from the Perimeter to Stone Mountain and beyond.

Several other areas are also pushing for local governance by founding cities, including Stonecrest, south DeKalb and south Fulton. Additionally, a group in the Druid Hills community is seeking to join the city of Atlanta in hopes of gaining more control of its schools.

Economic development

Look for tax credits to again be on the agenda to spur economic development — including a possible expansion of Georgia’s perks for Hollywood.

The new year could bring proposals to lower the $500,000 threshold for film and TV projects to qualify for incentives, or incentives could be expanded to cover more post-production, such as special effects and editing.

Other new tax breaks for various industries are likely, but these one-off perks make it more difficult for lawmakers to enact a sweeping tax overhaul. And some critics say Georgia doesn’t do enough to ensure it gets enough of a bang for all the tax breaks. There may be a push for a tax break review system to see whether the perks indeed work.

Other bills may address the minimum wage — whether through a statewide increase or proposals that would allow counties and cities to increase the minimum wage within their boundaries.

But such proposals could face stiff opposition from Republican leaders, including Gov. Nathan Deal, who has previously said an increase in the minimum wage is not on his legislative agenda.

Rural hospitals

Earlier this year, Gov. Nathan Deal created a committee of hospital executives, state lawmakers and industry experts to address the financial crisis dozens of rural hospitals face.

Eight rural hospitals have closed since 2001, and dozens more are losing money at an alarming rate. Aging populations, disproportionate shares of uninsured patients and new regulations under the Affordable Care Act are among a host of challenges increasingly putting these facilities in dire financial straits.

The state Rural Hospital Stabilization Committee has been studying possible solutions, such as allowing struggling hospitals to downsize into free-standing emergency departments; employing telemedicine; and coordinating efforts among federally funded health centers, regional hospitals, urgent cares and other types of providers.

The group is expected to present recommendations as early as this month, which may be used in developing legislation aimed at helping keep rural hospitals afloat. Rep. Terry England, R-Auburn, and Sen. David Lucas, D-Macon, both serve on the committee.

Certificate of need

Hospitals and doctors could possibly clash yet again this session over the state’s so-called “certificate of need,” or CON, process, which requires health care providers to prove to the state there is a genuine need in a community for the services they want to offer.

In 2013, proposed legislation aimed at allowing multiservice outpatient surgery centers to avoid the CON process ultimately failed to pass, but legislators and hospital officials continue to debate the idea.

Hospitals say making such stand-alone facilities exempt from CON would put small community hospitals at financial risk by draining away paying patients that help make up for the cost of caring for the poor and uninsured. Unlike hospitals, they say, the surgery centers don’t have the overhead costs of operating an emergency department and aren’t required by law to accept patients who can’t pay.

Supporters of changing the CON process, however, say that multispecialty surgery centers are able to offer consumers lower-priced care at a time when paychecks are stagnant while health care costs and deductibles are rising. Currently, single-specialty practices are exempt from the “certificate of need,” or CON, process.