Capitol Recap: Georgia House, Senate each back plans to send money to taxpayers

The Senate budget plan increases spending by about $2.36 billion, which Senate Appropriations Chairman Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia, said is in line with inflation.

One-time bonuses of about $500 would also be paid to 54,000 state government pensioners, who last year received their first cost-of-living increase in more than a decade.

The Senate version of the midyear budget also includes $50,000 safety grants for each school, money to help students who may have fallen behind academically during the COVID-19 pandemic, and more money in dozens of other areas, such as health care, rural workforce housing development, prisons and public safety.

The House passed its version of the spending plan a few weeks ago, and the two chambers will soon negotiate a final deal.

Then the work will really get started on the budget for fiscal 2024, which begins July 1.

Tillery warned that “if you think the ‘23 budget is difficult, the ‘24 budget will be harder.”

The state has realized massive tax surpluses in the years following the COVID-19 economic shutdown, but revenue collections are expected to be down this year, giving lawmakers less money to work with as inflation continues to increase costs for the government, just as it does on taxpayers.

Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC

Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC

Work resumes on improving mental health care in Georgia

A bipartisan group of lawmakers last year won passage of legislation to increase funding for Georgia’s mental health system. Now, those same legislators are working to boost the number of people who provide those services.

The state’s mental health providers face a heavy load.

Georgia ranks 47th in the nation for the number of mental health professionals per capita at 640 residents for every one provider, according to a report this year by Mental Health America, a century-old nonprofit advocacy group. The national average is 350 residents per provider.

“We know that workforce deficiencies are a part of many of the problems all our businesses and social services are facing this year and will for the immediate future,” said state Rep. Mary Margaret Oliver, a Decatur Democrat and co-sponsor of House Bill 520.

The legislation would expand a student loan forgiveness program created last year for mental health providers who work in underserved areas of the state. It also would allow mental health workers who still have student loans to apply for loan forgiveness.

“If they’re serving people in Georgia but still have a student loan, we want them to apply (for forgiveness) and get the benefits,” Oliver said.

HB 520 also aims to increase capacity for people who need inpatient care.

State Rep. Todd Jones, a Republican from Cumming and also a co-sponsor of HB 520, said the bill would ask the Behavioral Health Reform and Innovation Commission to do a “bed study” to determine how many people can receive inpatient behavioral health care in Georgia facilities.

HB 520 builds on work done during the 2022 session that was guided by then-Speaker David Ralston, who died in November.

Ralston’s goal was to ensure parity in the coverage by insurance companies for both mental and physical health in compliance with a 2008 federal law.

“Today we’ve begun the next chapter of our ongoing commitment to better mental health care in Georgia,” House Speaker Jon Burns, R-Newington, said during a press conference announcing the introduction of HB 520. “We are mindful that Speaker Ralston and his wife, Sheree, were driving forces behind last year’s success. While we miss him dearly, we are proud to continue the work he inspired.”

Panel endorses bill that sets limits on treatment for trans kids

A state Senate panel passed legislation that would prevent transgender children from receiving certain hormones or surgical treatment that assists them in aligning with their stated gender identity.

Senate Bill 140 cleared the House Health and Human Services Committee on a 10-4 party-line vote, with Republicans supporting the measure.

The bill would not ban medication that slows or stops puberty, but it would bar health care professionals from giving transgender minors hormones such as estrogen or testosterone. Doctors also would not be allowed to perform surgeries on children.

Children who don’t identify with their biological sex at a very young age may be prescribed hormone treatments that aim to delay puberty or stop it from progressing.

“This is a bill simply designed to say, ‘Let’s wait and see,’ " said state Sen. Carden Summers, the Cordele Republican who sponsored the legislation. “Get them to 18 years old and do what you want to. Until we get to that point in time, no sex changes in children will take place.”

Transgender advocates say it is rare for doctors to perform nonreversible procedures on minors.

Karl Nicholas, who has a transgender grandson who lives in DeKalb County, made a three-hour drive from North Carolina to testify against the bill.

He said he was grateful his grandchild was born at a time when medicine could help him.

“Many of the folks that are critical of Sam’s decision are probably enjoying the results of other treatments made possible in this century, like breast enlargement or pills to shore up a failing sex life — things they might be too shy to discuss but which they find less objectionable than sex change,” Nicholas said. “To those folks I say, ‘The things that trans people or all LGBTQ folks use to cope with the life they have are none of your business. Butt out.”

There are exceptions in the bill for treatment of intersex children — those who are not born with the genitalia, chromosomes or reproductive organs of only one gender. There are also allowances for physicians to treat children for nongender-related reasons, such as a sexual development disorder or an injury or infection.

SB 140 would also allow for minors to continue to receive hormone treatments if they began before July 1, when the bill, if signed into law, would take effect.

Credit: Natrice Miller/AJC

Credit: Natrice Miller/AJC

Bill targeting antisemitism advances

A Georgia House committee gave its approval this past week to a bill that would expand Georgia’s hate crimes law to cover criminal acts motivated by antisemitism.

House Bill 30 would also prohibit using swastikas with the intent to terrorize another person.

“These are despicable acts,” said state Rep. John Carson, a Republican from Marietta and HB 30′s sponsor. “It’s hatred, and it must stop.”

The measure defines antisemitism so that it would be included under the hate crimes law that the General Assembly passed in 2020 to allow harsher criminal penalties against those who target their victims on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, sex, national origin, religion, or physical or mental disability.

The vote by the House Judiciary Committee comes after antisemitic flyers were found earlier this month in the driveways of some predominantly Jewish neighborhoods in metro Atlanta. The flyers have been tied to the Goyim Defense League and White Lives Matter, two organizations defined by the Anti-Defamation League as racist networks targeting the Jewish community.

State Rep. Roger Bruce, a Democrat from Atlanta, voted against the measure.

Bruce said other communities also need protections after swastikas, racial slurs and graffiti defaced Atlanta’s Providence Missionary Baptist Church this month.

“I am not for anyone being harassed, anyone going through this in your community or mine,” Bruce said. “I’m just trying to understand how this is worse for you than it is for me because I don’t see it that way. I see this being just as hateful, just as horrible.”

Carson said prohibitions on terroristic usage of swastikas apply to everyone, not just Jewish people.

If the bill passes, illegal use of swastikas would be punishable as a misdemeanor unless there’s also a death threat involved, in which case it would be a felony.

Credit: TNS

Credit: TNS

Proposal for small increase in cigarette tax spurs huffing and puffing

Georgia has the second-lowest cigarette tax in the country, and — judging by a House subcommittee hearing this past week — that’s not likely to change.

Proposals to bump up the 37-cents per pack tax, usually by a dollar, are an annual rite at the General Assembly. Thanks in part to big campaign donations from tobacco companies, so are their defeats.

It’s been that way for nearly two decades.

State Rep. Ron Stephens, R-Savannah, thought going smaller might yield results.

He filed House Bill 191, seeking an increase of 20 cents per pack on cigarettes. He also filed House Bill 192, which would double the relatively new state tax on vaping products.

Stephens made his case for the bills a matter of economics.

The state’s Medicaid health care program for the poor and disabled spends $700 million a year treating tobacco-related illnesses. The current tobacco tax takes in about $150 million a year, he said. That’s a gap of $550 million that nonsmoking taxpayers are filling to subsidize the health care of smokers.

Stephens’ proposal to up the cigarette tax would only narrow the gap a little, raising about $90 million a year.

The measures immediately ran into resistance on the Ways and Means subcommittee.

“This is nothing more than a tax on the poor,” said state Rep. Jason Ridley, R-Chatsworth. “This country was founded on freedom.

“We don’t penalize and look down on a group of people (for smoking).”

Ridley expressed concern about how a higher tax would affect convenience stores on Georgia’s borders that sell to out-of-state smokers looking for a discount on smokes.

He also doubted it would inspire smokers to quit.

“I don’t know if you raise it $1.50 (a pack) it’s going to make a difference,” he said. “If you are going to smoke, you are going to smoke.”

That message may have been meant more for health care groups that attended the hearing to push for a buck-and-a-half boost in the tax.

Those groups, however, said Stephens’ bills didn’t go far enough.

Danna Thompson of the American Lung Association said 20 cents per pack “will generate little to no health benefits.”

Tobacco companies, she said, offer coupons to regular smokers that would mitigate the impact of such a small increase in cigarette taxes.

The subcommittee adjourned without voting on the measures.

Greene calls for ‘national divorce’ to split red and blue states

Breaking up by text is considered bad form.

Tweeting demands for a “national divorce” may be an even sharper violation of etiquette.

That didn’t stop U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Rome. She made the call for the big split on Presidents Day, writing:

“We need to separate by red states and blue states and shrink the federal government. Everyone I talk to says this. From the sick and disgusting woke culture issues shoved down our throats to the Democrat’s (sic) traitorous America Last policies, we are done.”

Democrats and centrist Republicans, such as former U.S. Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger and former GOP Chairman Michael Steele, were quick to criticize Greene.

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, the Republican governor of Utah, issued one of the strongest rebukes, writing: “This rhetoric is destructive and wrong and — honestly — evil.”

Greene fired back at critics, trying to make a distinction between her suggestion to divide the country and a call for civil war. But she also tweeted that the nation has “tragically” reached the point of “irreconcilable differences,” and then she promoted her theories on what red states could accomplish on their own.

How to make a divorce work for a nation of 330 million people and nearly as many political opinions is a question that just leads to other questions.

For one, where does Georgia fall? Greene’s home state has two Democratic U.S. senators, and it voted for Joe Biden as president in 2020. That makes for an odd shade of red.

And what about one of Greene’s biggest benefactors, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who gave her choice assignments to the House Oversight and Homeland Security committees? He’s from California, which would be best represented by one of the darker hues of blue. Who gets McCarthy in a divorce?

The nation is also more than the states. The District of Columbia fits well with blue states, but what about the territories, such as Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands?

Who would get weekends with Guam?

Political expedience

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