“Providing reliable broadband service to rural Georgia at a reasonable price,” that’s what Georgia’s 50th District Senator John Wilkinson views as the top priority this legislative session.
The 2018 Georgia General Assembly convened on January 8. By law, each session lasts forty days. Wilkinson (R-Toccoa) says he expects there will be a vote on broadband before the session ends.
The Toccoa Republican served on the legislature’s rural broadband study committee in 2016. As a result of the committee’s findings, a bill was introduced during the 2017 session but it was not voted on. “It is a complex issue with a complex bill,” Wilkinson explains. “We have studied and worked on the bill since the end of the 2017 session and I believe we will have a good bill this year.”
Wilkinson stresses that, while lawmakers don’t have authority to regulate the internet, they can provide grants and incentives for providers to serve rural areas. “This is an important issue and I believe you will see movement to help solve the challenge this session.”
Rural healthcare
Other challenges facing state lawmakers include the critical condition of rural healthcare. Georgia faces ongoing concerns over failing hospitals, rising insurance premiums and increased costs of care.
“There is a national rural health care crisis and we have been impacted by it. We did not arrive at crisis mode overnight and it will take time to turn things around,” Wilkinson cautions. He scoffs at the promises made when the Affordable Care Act was passed. “We were told by the federal government that we could keep our coverage if we liked and that our health care premiums would go down. We all know how that turned out.”
Sen. Wilkinson holds tight to his conservative ideals and states he believes deregulation and market forces can help correct the problems now facing the healthcare industry and consumers. “If the government will get out of the way, we have the ingenuity to make things work without burdensome government regulation.”
No minimum wage hike
Wilkinson’s free market philosophy also extends to business. When asked by Now Habersham for his views on raising the minimum wage, the senator says the government should stay out of it.
“I think it is a mistake for the government to try to tell businesses what their pay scale should be. We need to incentivize business, not discourage it,” he says.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 18 states raised their minimum wages at the start of this year. Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia now have minimum wages that are higher than the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. Fourteen states have minimum wages that are equal to the federal minimum.
Georgia is not one of them.
The minimum wage in Georgia and Wyoming is $5.15 per hour. They’re the only two states with minimum wages lower than the federal minimum, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Workers in Georgia who are covered under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act are subject to receive the federal minimum wage, which was last increased in 2009.
“For the past 24 months the number of jobs posted with the Georgia Department of Labor have ranged from 100,000 to 200,000,” says Wilkinson. “There are jobs available if people are willing to work and many of them statewide and in our community pay more than the minimum wage.”
Job training and education
The more jobs that are available, the more workers are needed to fill them. Sen. Wilkinson views job training and education as the biggest challenges facing the 50th District today.
“We must continue to invest in education, particularly Career and Technical Education and our Technical College system to provide educated, trained, and credentialed workers. We must use technology to work more efficiently and work to keep the money with the people who earned it.”
Committees and contact info.
Sen. Wilkinson serves as the Chairman of the Senate Agriculture and Consumer Affairs Committee, Vice-Chairman of the Education and Youth Committee, and is a member of the Appropriations, Administrative Affairs, Assignments, Natural Resources and Environment and Rules committees.
Wilkinson encourages constituents with questions or concerns to contact and visit him in Atlanta. He’s located in office 421A at the State Capitol. Sen. Wilkinson’s office phone number is 404-463-5257 .
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