Legislative update: safety, women’s healthcare and classroom technology

Editor’s Note: The following legislative update is from Rep. Victor Anderson (R-Cornelia) who represents the 10th State House District of Georgia. The District includes portions of Habersham and White counties. Anderson presently serves on the House Energy, Utilities & Telecommunications Committee, Governmental Affairs Committee, and State Planning & Community Affairs Committee. He also chairs the study committee on annexation and cityhood issues. You may contact him at victor.anderson@house.ga.gov

Greetings from the Gold Dome!

Thursday, February 24, brought to a close legislative day 20 of 40. This means we have successfully completed half of this year’s legislative session. With 20 days down and 20 to go, we expect the pace to quicken as we all work to ensure our respective bills make it through the process in time to receive passage from both the House and Senate chambers prior to our last day deadline. Below, please see my latest update covering our House action.

As always, I will be updating you weekly on all happenings concerning your government at work. If you have concerns or questions regarding legislation, I ask that you reach out to our office directly. Thank you for allowing me the honor and privilege of serving our home under the Gold Dome. May God bless you, and may He continue to bless the great state of Georgia.

Public Safety

To hold to our promise of a safer Georgia, the House has prioritized arming our law enforcement officials with new, cutting-edge tools to combat the war on gang crime which has been an ongoing issue in recent years. The passage of House Bill 1134 would allow the state’s attorney general to collaborate with local district attorneys to prosecute certain gang-related crimes across the state. Additionally, HB 1134 would allow the attorney general to employ peace officers for investigative purposes. This bill would also work in tandem with the governor’s plan to create the Gang Prosecution Unit within the attorney general’s office. HB 1134 is now in the Senate to receive further consideration.

Wildlife/Environmental Protection

In order to ensure that we continue our efforts in protecting our state’s natural resources, we successfully passed House Bill 893. This bill works to extend the collection of hazardous waste fees, which are crucial to supporting the Hazardous Waste Trust Fund and its work to restore Georgia’s environment. This fund was established to collect fees from hazardous waste generators, solid waste tipping fees, and violation fines to help fund the cleanup of hazardous waste sites. Without this fund, it would be challenging for the Georgia Environmental Protection Division to continue its critical missions to remediate contaminated sites, and our local governments would be left with an unfunded mandate to fund the cleanup of leaking landfills, abandoned and contaminated properties. Originally set to expire this summer, HB 893 extends the sunset date of this Fund to July 1, 2027.

We have always been dedicated to the continued preservation of Georgia’s unique wildlife.  Those efforts were enhanced through the passage of House Bill 1147. This bill builds off the current framework used to protect various species such as turkeys, ground-nesting birds as well as year-round protection of our loggerhead turtle population. HB 1147 would allow property owners to hunt and trap raccoons and opossums year-round thus removing bag limits for these animals as they are known predators to some of Georgia’s most endangered species, most specifically, ground-nesting birds.

Healthcare

We also passed House Bill 1092, also known as the Georgia Women’s Child Care Alternatives, Resources, and Education Act. This bill would allow eligible pregnant women, sentenced to a period of confinement in a penal institution to have their sentences deferred for the duration of their pregnancies until six weeks postpartum. If deferment is accepted, the offender will be required to maintain perinatal health care, treatment and assessments, as well as participate in education and resource programs. The bill also requires that every female offender who is not released on bond within 72 hours of an arrest to be given the option to submit to a urine pregnancy test. Further, deferment of one’s sentence does not count towards “time served.” We are hopeful that more perinatal care and resources to these pregnant women will yield better health outcomes for both the unborn child and the mother.

Education

To keep up with ever-evolving technology trends, regarding education, we successfully passed House Bill 1217, or the Student Technology Protection Act. This measure works to promote the safe and appropriate use of school-issued technology. The Student Technology Protection Act requires the following:

• Local education authorities would be required to adopt an acceptable-use policy to better prevent any school computer or network from accessing obscene materials deemed harmful to minors.
• The requirement to update school technology to better block or filter access to these explicit materials online. The Georgia Department of Education would provide local school systems with guidance and technical assistance to develop guidelines for training school personnel.
• The State Board of Education is given the power to withhold a portion of state funding allotted for that school if that school has not implemented the practices outlined above.

We are hopeful that as technology continues to evolve, this bill would ensure that Georgia’s public schools have these policies in place and are equipped with the resources needed to protect children from harmful online content.

Bills of Interest

• House Bill 963 would provide the annual update of provisions of the Controlled Substance Act for Schedule I and Schedule IV controlled substances;
• House Bill 969 would update reporting requirements for insurance holding companies to include information on their financial profile and group capital calculation;
• House Bill 500 would allow a second round of funding of $100 million to the  Georgia Agribusiness and Rural Jobs Act program for capital investments, increase the program’s application fee from $5,000 to $25,000, establish an annual maintenance fee of $7,500 for all rural funds and update the program’s reporting requirements;
• House Bill 896 would update a homestead exemption for counties that had populations between 23,500 and 23,675 on the 2010 U.S. Census with counties that had populations between 25,400 and 25,500 on the 2020 U.S. Census;
• House Bill 1008 would amend the operations and composition of the Georgia Higher Education Savings Plan (GHSP) board of directors, dissolve the Georgia Achieving a Better Life Experience program and transfer this program’s authority and trust to the GHSP, as well as remove the board of directors’ authority to require and collect fees to cover administrative costs and impose withdrawal penalties;
• House Bill 1059 would provide exclusions to unfair trade practices and unlawful inducements by allowing insurance companies to provide loss-mitigation safety products to consumers;
• House Bill 1086 would lower the age at which hospitals would be required to offer an inpatient the influenza vaccine prior to discharge from 65 to 50 years of age;
• House Bill 1088 would authorize non-judicial foreclosures of time-share estates by an owners’ association and would update notice of sale requirements for these foreclosures;
• House Bill 1146 would require that vehicles driven by officers enforcing traffic laws be equipped with flashing blue lights and would allow the Georgia State Patrol to have vehicles without such exterior-mounted roof lights;
• House Bill 1148 would prohibit individuals from bringing a cervid carcass, such as a deer carcass, from outside Georgia into the state if any part of the carcass contains a portion of the nervous system, and this bill would provide exceptions for antlers, skulls, skull plates, teeth or jawbones that have soft tissue attached;
• House Bill 1186 would expand the eligibility for individuals who can have a non-diagnostic electro-physiologic screening done by a non-licensed audiologist from ages three and under to birth through 22 years of age;
• House Bill 1195, which would update the reporting options for interlocal risk management agencies within local governments to include statutory accounting principles;
• House Bill 1215 would allow students to withdraw from their local school and enroll in a charter school with available classroom space without penalty and would require local education boards to adopt a universal, streamlined transfer process, as well as clarify how local revenue allocations would be collected and calculated for charter schools;
• House Bill 1233 would revise the effective date of rules and regulations promulgated by the Georgia Board of Natural Resources to January 1, 2022, consolidate various species of black bass, update requirements for shotguns used for hunting migratory game birds and create the umbrella term “migratory game birds;”
• House Bill 1276 would require the Georgia Department of Community Health to post detailed statistical reports with data for administered state health plans on its website biannually;
• House Bill 1307 would require excavators to make an emergency 911 call to alert emergency services if they strike or damage a utility facility that carries gas or a hazardous liquid;
• House Bill 132 would update the state’s definition of “Internal Revenue Code” to include the provisions of the federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, such as changing which bonds qualify as tax-exempt bond financing, extending interest-rate smoothing for defined benefit plans and expanding certain non-taxable contributions for government water or sewage disposal services;
• House Bill 1361 would require that if a General Assembly act is alleged to be unconstitutional or invalid in an action, the attorney general would be served with a notice and would be entitled to be heard in defense of the act.