The Jolt: The Georgia General Assembly is Sine Done

If the 2021 legislative session felt longer than it should have, you were right. The state House and Senate each gaveled out Sine Die after midnight Thursday morning.

Lawmakers stayed in session for more than 14 hours on the last day of the 2021 legislative session, scrambling to pass what they must, kill what they could, and leave the rest to another day. Bills that failed to pass this year may be reconsidered in the 2022 legislative session.

For all of the frenzied action on the chambers’ floors and backrooms, the biggest news of the day was a move by Delta Airlines, away from the Capitol, slamming SB 202, the elections overhaul the General Assembly passed last week.

Over the weeks and months the legislation was being crafted, Delta and other Atlanta-based corporate titans, including Coca-Cola Company, issued mostly tepid statements about the legislation.

But on the final day of the session, with lawmakers still formulating their last bills, the airline bashed the new law as “unacceptable” and “based on a lie.”

The timing of Delta’s moment of truth left Capitol watchers baffled-- too late to change the law, but still early enough for the House and Senate to retaliate for publicly bashing the bill after, in lawmakers’ words, Delta had been “at the table” as the details of the measure were negotiated.

Late Wednesday night, Republicans took action on the House floor, passing a last-minute measure to eliminate a jet fuel tax break used by airlines, including Delta, to save millions of dollars every year.

Fresh off swigging a usually frowned-upon Pepsi, Speaker David Ralston later explained the vote. “They like our public policy when we’re doing things that benefit them,” he said. “You don’t feed a dog that bites your hand.”

The Senate, on the other hand, never voted on the jet fuel tax break. The appetite to do more than send a message to Delta wasn’t there among the leadership in the Upper Chamber.

But speaking to GPB’s Lawmakers Wednesday night, Senate Appropriations Chairman Blake Tillery said he’s been against the carve-out for airlines all along -- and he added that special legislation may not be necessary if the state ever wants to modify the local perk in the future.

“I believe it was an interpretation by the Department of Revenue,” Tillery said. “So we probably don’t need a statute if we want to fix that one.”

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It took a spreadsheet and a lot of coffee to keep track of everything else that happened on the General Assembly’s final day. Here are the highlights:

What passed:

• House Bill 479. The overhaul of Georgia’s citizen’s arrest law was passed unanimously by the House, which sent the repeal of the 1863 law to Gov. Brian Kemp’s desk. The Senate had voted 51-1 approving the measure earlier this week.
• The 2022 state budget. The $27.2 billion budget funds state operations, beginning on July 1. Plus-ups next year include more money for schools, rural broadband, and mental health services. One Atlanta-related add-on: $6 million for improvements to the Bankhead MARTA station.
• The “anti-defund police” bill, House Bill 286, will prevent local Georgia governments from reducing police budgets by more than 5%.
• Senate Bill 100, the much-discussed bill that says Georgia will observe daylight saving time year-round, if Congress authorizes it. Don’t change your clocks quite yet. Federal law currently prohibits states from making daylight saving time permanent.

What failed:

• Sports betting. Despite last-minute chatter that Republicans could strike a deal for the extra Democratic support the measure needed, the effort to legalize online wagers for sports will have to wait another year;
• House Bill 218, the gun “reciprocity” bill. The proposal to loosen gun restrictions passed the Senate, but House Speaker David Ralston said the timing for the bill, two weeks after mass shootings in Atlanta and Colorado, wasn’t right for him. “I thought we needed to be very, very sensitive to (the timing of) any gun legislation.”
• The “Right to Visit” bill (House Bill 290), would have required hospitals and nursing homes to allow limited patient visits. Push-back from health care providers and last-minute additions doomed the effort;
• Senate Bill 115, which would have given new Georgia drivers instructions about interacting with police during a traffic stop, failed in the Senate 23-26.

And with that, they’re done. For now.

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Play ball? It’s Opening Day for the Atlanta Braves, but President Joe Biden spoke to ESPN Wednesday about suggestions that Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game, now scheduled for this summer in Atlanta, could move to another host city to protest Georgia’s new election law.

“I think today’s professional athletes are acting incredibly responsibly. I would strongly support them doing that,” Biden said, adding of SB 202, “This is Jim Crow on steroids.”

Gov Brian Kemp, who signed SB 202 into law last week, returned fire on Twitter.

“Joe Biden hasn’t told the truth about our election integrity legislation from the beginning. Georgia has a minimum of 17 early voting days, Delaware has none. Georgia has no-excuse absentee balloting, Delaware does not. Read the law. #FourPinocchios”

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Tech giant Apple is joining the chorus of corporate condemnation against Georgia’s SB 202, Axios reports.

Apple CEO Tim Cook, who is an Alabama native, told Axios, “The right to vote is fundamental in a democracy. American history is the story of expanding the right to vote to all citizens, and Black people, in particular, have had to march, struggle and even give their lives for more than a century to defend that right.”

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Stacey Abrams called the business community’s delayed response to SB 202 “untenable,” but also warned against the idea of boycotting events and corporations in Georgia, at least for now.

In an USA Today op-ed Wednesday, Abrams wrote, “Leaving us behind won’t save us. So I ask you to bring your business to Georgia and, if you’re already here, stay and fight. Stay and vote.”

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Same street, different worlds. That might be the motto right now for the relationship between the Atlanta’s City Hall and the Georgia State Capitol, which sit on adjoining blocks of Mitchell Street in downtown Atlanta.

The different-worlds dynamic played out Wednesday, as Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms delivered her State of the City address just as lawmakers in the state Capitol gaveled in for the final day of the 2021 regular legislative session.

Speaking in a pre-recorded video, Bottoms focused much of her remarks on addressing Atlanta’s surging crime rate, including a plan to spend additional money on policing by hiring 250 police officers beginning this summer.

One block up the street, lawmakers passed Senate Bill 286, which will punish cities that cut their police budgets by more than 5%.

State Rep. Houston Gaines, the Athens Republican who sponsored the measure, has cited Atlanta and Athens as two cities that could cut their police budgets in the future because of pressure from activists.

The plan that Bottoms laid out would do the opposite.

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As the federal government prepares to send billions of dollars to Georgia’s state and local coffers through the American Recovery Act, local leaders are working to decide how they’ll use the money.

Macon-Bibb County Mayor Lester Miller tells the Macon Telegraph, “One of the first things we have to do is make the county whole again...we need to shore up our reserves because of the losses from COVID.”

Miller said he’s also looking for long-term solutions for Macon’s homeless population, as well as ways to support the city’s tourist destinations, like local museums and the Macon Coliseum, after they closed for nearly a year.

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Insurance Commissioner John King is gearing up for re-election with a statewide tour that starts in Rome and swings through Gainesville, Columbus, Albany, Savannah and Macon.

The Republican formally announced he was running for a full four-year term in 2022 on Thursday, saying he’ll fight to lower insurance rates while pursuing “fraudsters and arsonists.”