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Request a DemoKemp signs bills on education, health care, taxes
Gov. Brian Kemp signed a slew of bills over the past week or so, including the private school voucher bill long sought by Republicans and a bill that will ease regulations over the construction and expansion of medical facilities in rural areas.
His bill-signing events were clustered into themes: education, health care, military members, human trafficking and Georgia’s coastal communities.
Education
Among the education-related bills Kemp signed was Senate Bill 233, also known as the Georgia Promise Scholarship Act, which provides the families of Georgia students enrolled in underperforming school districts with $6,500 scholarships that can be used toward private school or homeschooling expenses, including tuition, fees, textbooks and tutoring.
“Georgia is affording greater choice to families as to how and where they receive their education, while also continuing our efforts to strengthen public schools, support teachers, and secure our classrooms,” Kemp said, and thanked leadership in the House and Senate for prioritizing passage of the bill, which had failed in a close vote in 2023.
Democrats and many public education advocates who opposed the bill argued it will drain resources from public schools and primarily benefit students from wealthy families.
Kemp also signed Senate Bill 351, sponsored by nine Republican senators, which will require social media companies, as of July 1, 2025, to verify their users are at least 16 years old unless they receive approval from a parent.
House Bill 409, sponsored by Rep. Lauren Daniel, R-Locust Grove, directs school systems to consider not having bus stops where a student would have to cross a roadway with a speed limit of 40 mph or greater. The bill also increases the penalty for passing a stopped school bus to $1,000 from $250.
Kemp noted that Ashley Pierce, the mother of Addy Pierce, an 8-year-old who was fatally struck by a motorist as she boarded her school bus, “passionately advocated for and was instrumental in the passage of this legislation.”
Senate Bill 395, sponsored by Sen. Clint Dixon, R-Gwinnett, states that no school visitor or personnel can be prohibited from possessing an opioid reversal drug such as Narcan and directs schools to maintain a supply. It also allows opioid antagonists to be sold in vending machines and directs certain government buildings to maintain a supply of at least three doses.
Senate Bill 464, also sponsored by Dixon, creates the School Supplies for Teachers Program to financially and technically support teachers purchasing school supplies online. It also creates an executive committee of five voting members within the Georgia Council on Literacy and limits the number of approved literacy screeners to five, one of whom must be available to schools for free.
Health care
The governor chose his hometown of Athens as the venue to sign several bills aimed at improving health care in rural and underserved communities.
Among them was House Bill 1339, sponsored by Rep. Butch Parrish, R-Swainsboro, which revises the Certificate of Need process by which the state determines if and how new medical facilities can be built or expanded. The bill provides for several new exemptions, including psychiatric or substance abuse inpatient programs, basic perinatal services in rural counties, birthing centers and new general acute hospitals in rural counties. It also raises the total limit on tax credits for donations to rural hospital organizations to $100 million from $75 million.
Senate Bill 480, sponsored by Sen. Mike Hodges, R-Brunswick, establishes student loan repayments for mental health and substance use professionals serving underserved youth in the state or in unserved geographic areas disproportionately impacted by social determinants of health.
House Bill 872, sponsored by Rep. Lee Hawkins, R-Gainesville, chair of the House Health and Human Services Committee, expands cancelable loans for certain health care professionals to dental students who agree to practice in rural areas.
Senate Bill 293, sponsored by Sen. Ben Watson, R-Savannah, chair of the Senate Health and Human Services Committee, reorganizes county boards of public health and opens the qualifications for the CEO of each county board of health to include either licensed physicians or people with a master’s degree in public health or a related field.
Military members and veterans
Kemp on Wednesday focused on bills to improve military recruitment and provide more work opportunities for veterans and military family members.
House Bill 880, sponsored by Rep. Bethany Ballard, R-Warner Robins, allows spouses of military service members to work under a license they hold in good standing in another state while under the supervision of an existing Georgia medical facility or provider.
Senate Bill 449, sponsored by Sen. Larry Walker, allows military medical personnel to practice for 12 months while a license application is pending, including working as a certified nursing aide, certified emergency medical technician, paramedic or licensed practical nurse. The bill also creates a new advanced practice registered nurse license and makes it a misdemeanor to practice advanced nursing without a license.
Human trafficking
The governor on Wednesday was accompanied by first lady Marty Kemp and other members of the GRACE Commission for the signing of an anti-human trafficking package. It includes Senate Bill 370, which adds certain businesses to the list of organizations that must post human trafficking notices, including convenience stores, body art studios, businesses that employ licensed massage therapists and manufacturing facilities.
Sponsored by Sen. Mike Hodges, R-Brunswick, the bill also allows the Georgia Board of Massage Therapy to initiate inspections of massage therapy businesses and educational programs without notice and requires massage therapy board members to complete yearly human trafficking awareness training.
House Bill 993, sponsored by Rep. Alan Powell, R-Hartwell, creates the felony offense of grooming of a minor and creates new penalties for offenses relating to visual mediums depicting minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct.
House Bill 1201, sponsored by Rep. Houston Gaines, R-Athens, allows human trafficking survivors who received first offender or conditional discharge status to vacate that status for certain crimes, as long as the crime was a direct result of being a victim of human trafficking.
Coastal communities
Earlier today in Brunswick, Kemp signed legislation impacting Georgia coastal communities, including House Bill 244, which amends the laws around how wild game can be hunted and how seafood dealers operate, and House Bill 1341, which designates white shrimp as the state’s official crustacean.
Taxes
Earlier this month Kemp signed several bills related to taxation, including House Bill 1015, sponsored by Rep. Lauren McDonald, R-Cumming, which lowers the state income tax for tax year 2024 to 5.39%, accelerating a multiyear drop in state income taxes that started at 5.75% in 2023 and will continue through 2029.
The Governor’s Office of Planning and Budget estimates the tax cut acceleration will save Georgia taxpayers approximately $1.1 billion in calendar year 2024 and about $3 billion over the next 10 years.
Kemp also signed House Bill 1021, sponsored by Rep. Lauren Daniel, R-Locust Grove, which increases the state’s income tax dependent exemption to $4,000 from $3,000.
House Bill 581, sponsored by Reps. Shaw Blackmon, R-Bonaire, and Clint Crowe, R-Jackson, enables a constitutional amendment (House Resolution 1022) to let voters decide whether counties can provide a statewide homestead valuation freeze, which limits the increase in property values to the inflation rate.
The governor has until May 7 to sign or veto bills passed during the legislative session that ended on March 28. Those he takes no action on will automatically become law.
Legislation signed by Kemp is posted on the governor’s website.
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Rural communities hopeful Kemp change to state soil amendment law will curb stink
After seven years and millions of dollars in restoration, Heritage GA opened its door last month to those seeking solitude and a chance to commune with nature. But the constant presence of trucks hauling a noxious concoction of waste byproducts from poultry processing plants threatens to ruin those plans.
The historic Catholic retreat sitting on 200 acres near Sharon is meant to be an economic boon and tourist attraction for Taliaferro (pronounced “Tolliver”) County, a poor, mostly Black county of 1,600, situated 90 miles east of Atlanta.
“It’s a very historic, sacred site. Our business is being threatened by this soil amendment. It’s [the retreat] been a major financial investment in the county and in the state and it’s really helping,” Betsy Orr, chief executive officer of Purification Properties LLC, which restored the retreat — a tribute to the first Catholic settlers who arrived in Georgia in 1790.
The sludge, known as soil amendment, is being transported to a hog farm about 1.5 miles from Heritage. The former hog farm was cited by the state Environmental Protection Division after residents complained that the waste being spread on the farm had polluted a nearby creek. The property owner resolved the consent order requiring him to pay $5,000, mark the buffer area on the farm and ensure no soil amendment is applied to that area, according to EPD spokesperson Sara Lips.
The Heritage property includes a commercial building, barn, cottages, prayer spaces, walking trails and the oldest Catholic Cemetery in Georgia. Orr predicts that if the smell from the former hog farm reaches Heritage, “it’s going to wreck our business.”
On Monday, Orr breathed an inward sigh of relief when she learned that Gov. Brian Kemp signed a bill into law that could prove fortuitous for landowners and other businesses battling problems created by soil amendment.
The new law adds a provision to the state Soil Amendment Act of 1976 that stops companies from hauling or receiving soil amendment if they’ve been notified by EPD to resolve an outstanding dispute or complaint. The notification is known as a consent order. The new law is effective July 1.
“It’s good because the state and the Agriculture Department have really prevented that kind of bill from being enacted because they say that it’s to the farmer’s benefit to be able to use the soil amendments,” Orr said.
Orr’s comments are a common refrain from business owners and families with properties in rural Georgia who sit near soil amendment sites and who complain of vultures, hordes of flies and unbearable smells floating across their properties.
“The problem is a lot of the soil amendments are causing pollution. They are stinky, nasty wastewater and other products,” Orr said. “Sometimes it is not even what they are allowed to dump. Finally, they have passed this amendment, and I hope they enforce it. Some of the things that these people are dumping are … ruining the landowners around them and the state has got to start caring about that.”
Doug Abramson, a retired corporate lawyer who lives in Wilkes County where a soil amendment runoff killed 1,700 fish in the Little River July 2022, called the new law “a step in the right direction.”
“Many counties throughout the state are encountering problems with sludge, improper dumping, and [other] soil amendment issues,” said Abramson, who along with his wife Susan have been working to address the problem for about a decade. “This [new law] is at least a recognition that there are problems out there. I do think the state could do better. The Department of Agriculture could do better but it is a step in the right direction.”
Have questions? Contact Tammy Joyner on X @lvjoyner or at [email protected].
Watch live: Kemp signs $36.1B budget bill
Today is the deadline for Gov. Brian Kemp to either sign or reject bills passed by the Georgia General Assembly during this past legislative session. Arguably, the biggest of those bills is the annual budget. Kemp and first lady Marty Kemp will be joined by Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, House Speaker Jon Burns, and members …
Bill adds violation to Soil Amendment Act, but will it stop the stench?
After years of enduring intrusive, foul-smelling waste spread on untold tracts of rural land, Georgians living near such sites are finally getting some relief.
On Monday, Gov. Brian Kemp signed into law a bill that adds a new violation to the state’s 48-year-old Soil Amendment Act. Soil amendment is meant to help farmers create healthier soil.
The law’s new provision is being hailed as a small but significant breakthrough in a 15-year battle to rein in abuses and mismanagement and create more safeguards and oversight in the disbursement of soil amendment. Many rural communities have long complained that the state-approved, sludge-like substance smells like “rotting corpses,” draws flies and vultures, and has led to other environmental problems.
Soil amendment is a state-approved additive derived from waste created mostly at chicken-processing and pet food-processing plants. It’s intended to be used as fertilizer on farmland where crops are grown. It’s supposed to help reduce erosion, improve water retention, change soil pH, pump up nutrients and provide other soil-boosting enhancements. Georgia law allows chicken processing waste to be applied to land as a soil amendment. Some farmers use it as a cheap alternative due to the rising cost of fertilizer.
The new provision, which goes into effect July 1, makes it illegal for a company to continue spreading soil amendment if the company or the site in which the waste is being distributed is under some kind of enforcement action from the state Environmental Protection Division or the state Department of Agriculture, the bill’s sponsor Rep. Rob Leverett, R-Elberton, told State Affairs Monday. Violators must be notified by the agriculture department and must resolve the prior problem before they can resume dispersing more soil amendment, he added.
“I’m very excited. I appreciate the governor signing the bill,” said Leverett who lives in Elbert County where some residents have had problems with soil amendment. “The passage of the bill indicates there’s some recognition by the Legislature that we do need to take a look at this. What I’m trying to do is address what I believe to be legitimate complaints. Hopefully, we started to do that this year and we’ll take other incremental steps as needed. I look forward to the Ag department enforcing this new violation once it’s gone through their regulatory process.”
David vs Goliath
In a state where agriculture wields tremendous power — it provides paychecks for 1 in 7 Georgians and contributes about $75 billion a year to the state’s economy, most of it from poultry processors — the new legislation is a milestone, local government officials and activists say.
“It is a very big step,” Tonya Bonitatibus, executive director and riverkeeper at the environmental nonprofit Savannah Riverkeeper, told State Affairs. “This bill made it through the Senate and the House Ag committees, which are traditionally definitely not in the business of overregulating Ag, and it passed almost unanimously [in the Legislature] and that speaks volumes.” Bonitatibus has been tracking the issue for 13 years.
While state lawmakers are recognizing the harsh impact the state’s poultry industry waste is having on some rural communities, leaders in those communities are waiting to see what the Georgia Department of Agriculture does. The department has sole power to regulate soil amendment.
“I hope the new [agriculture] commissioner Tyler Harper brings us more positive results,” said Oglethorpe County Commission Chair Jay Paul, a former state Environmental Protection Division specialist who dealt with soil amendment most of his 17 years with the agency. “I’m trying to give him the benefit of the doubt.”
Shortly after taking office in January 2023, Harper vowed to review the department’s Soil Amendment Program. Since then, he has issued recommendations and is beefing up the program, which when he arrived had only two people, one of whom was the inspector for the entire state. With $550,000 in funding from the state, Harper has added two more inspectors, a program manager and an attorney.
The department is updating its software so inspection reports can be completed digitally and tracked online rather than hand-written. It’s also updating its licensing and registration software to help registrants more easily comply with soil amendment program rules.
“Our team has done a really good job,” Harper told State Affairs. “We’ve really been working to get our arms around it since I walked in the door last year, and we’ve been committed to addressing the issue and ensuring that the agricultural industry can be successful and that we’re protecting our state, our resources and the public all at the same time.”
Rep. Robert Dickey, chairman of the House Agriculture Committee said Leverett’s bill is “about the [state agriculture] department having some teeth in the rules and law to really shut down” companies with abusive soil amendment practices.
The Ag department’s recent efforts are more than what’s been done in the past, critics say, but more needs to be done.
“I really haven’t seen a whole lot of difference. I mean, we’ve heard some good rhetoric,” Wilkes County Commission Chairman Sam Moore told State Affairs.
“Unfortunately, it’s the little bitty counties against the Department of Ag. And we lose every time,” Elbert County Commission Chairman Lee Vaughn said. “The Department of Ag has 100% control over what soil amendments are and what they allow and how they allow them to be applied.”
Local leaders in counties affected by the sludge onslaught say they’ve been kept in the dark for years about soil amendment. To make matters worse, they say they have no regulatory authority to resolve the problem because that’s left up to the state agriculture department.
“We want to know where it’s going. We want to know what it is,” Moore said. “I mean, we don’t even know if they [sludge-hauling companies] have a permit or not. You call the Department of Ag and they act like they don’t know. It’s just the same old thing that’s been going on for years.”
In the last year, some counties have started fighting back, creating local ordinances that discourage the sludge haulers from coming into their communities. At the same time, the problem has sparked activism among local residents in several counties where the problem prevails.
‘Death and Diarrhea’
State Affairs spoke to local government officials, activists, environmentalists, farmers and residents in a half dozen counties where soil amendment has been applied for years. Their stories all seem to align.
They talked about how their communities have been overrun with tractor-trailers hauling millions of gallons of sludge — or as locals call it “chicken blood and guts” — presumably from chicken and dog-food processing plants. The additive is being spread on open land in rural communities — usually small, sparsely-populated counties — across Georgia, with little state regulation, scrutiny or intervention.
The companies bringing in the waste have contracted with or paid farmers or landowners to apply it on their property. Some locals report seeing dozens of tanker-trucks a day hauling the waste into their communities. It’s an endless procession where the sludge is applied throughout the day, all hours of the night and even in the rain.
The usual hoot owls and honey bees have been replaced by vultures and flies, community members say. Millions of flies land on farm animals and get entangled in children’s hair when they play outdoors. In Hancock County, locals have resorted to firing shotguns in the air to scare away the vultures perched atop churches and other buildings. The vultures feast on the land where the soil amendment has been deposited.
“Buzzards or vultures, whatever you want to refer to them as, eat dead rotting flesh,” said Angela Walden who lives in Jefferson County, 45 minutes south of Augusta.
Dirt roads have become muddy, well-worn crevices as dozens of tanker trucks haul tons and of the liquid ooze into communities nonstop.
In most instances, the sludge is spread on top of the soil, locals and officials say, instead of injected into the ground, as the state requires, creating a horrific stench that stretches for miles.
“It smells like death and diarrhea,” said Patrick Dragos, a former Seattle ironworker who moved his wife and daughter to Jewell in August 2022. The family owns an historic wedding venue on a 42-acre estate with an 1895 Victorian home and barn near the Ogeechee River.
Dragos was so incensed after getting nowhere with state and local officials and the sludge-hauling companies that he is now running for chairman of Hancock County Board of Commissioners. The 34-year-old Republican is running against three Democrats, including the incumbent Helen “Sistie” Hudson who has held the seat since 2016.
“If they’re not going to handle our issues and take this seriously, I guess I’m going to have to do it myself,”Dragos said.
Problems began near the Dragos family’s Hancock County property in March 2023 when soil amendment was applied to a farm about a mile away. The smell and flies continued through October, leading Dragos to believe the problem was over. Then, the sludge-filled trucks returned in March of this year and have shown up frequently since then.
The family’s heading into a busy season of weddings, graduations and baby showers and never know when the trucks and smell will show up.
“The threat of the smell and flies is constant. So that stress is always there,” Dragos told State Affairs.
Dragos worries that nonstop application of the soil amendment may eventually seep into the water tables and eventually his well water.
It’s already created one environmental mishap.
In July 2022, some 1,700 fish died in the Little River in Wilkes County after soil amendment runoff from Mar-Leta Farms leached into the river, a Georgia Environmental Protection Division report found. The waste came from washdown water at a Hartwell County Nestle Purina facility provided by a company called Proponic Solutions, according to the EPD report. The report described the waste as “grey, turpid wastewater.” Mar-Leta, also known as McAvoy Farms, was later fined $85,000.
“It’s a major environmental concern,” said Paul, the Oglethorpe County Commission chairman. “And I’m not convinced that the fish kill in Wilkes County will be the last one because nobody really knows what’s in it. It’s just that simple. It comes as wastewater and suddenly goes on a truck and it becomes soil amendment.”
Fighting Back
Unable to get much help from the state agriculture department for years, some counties have taken steps to deal with the problem themselves:
In Warren County, companies wanting to apply soil amendment have to notify the county and get a permit to do so, Commission Chairman John Graham said. The companies also are limited to storing the sludge in certain industrial areas of the county and onsite for no more than 12 hours.
The ordinance was put in place about a year ago so that county officials “ would have more knowledge of what’s going on,” Graham said. “We’re going to stand on our ordinance. Our attorney put it together and he said he followed everything [based on the law]. He feels like we did the right thing.”
The issue had become such a problem that the county was forced to close one dirt road because “they had brought so many tanker-trucks of that stuff in, it messed up the dirt road. With all the rain we’ve had and them bringing in 20 trucks a day and that weight on a muddy dirt road just ruined it,” Graham said, adding that activity has “slowed down in the last little while,” Graham added.
Oglethorpe County created an ordinance last June that requires companies applying soil amendment on a tract of land to be at least 100 feet away from the property line of the nearest private property. During the 2021-22 legislative session, Senate Bill 260, sponsored by then-Sen. Tyler Harper, limited local buffers and setbacks to 100 feet.
“If we get a complaint, we will at least go out there and walk the perimeter of a property and make sure they’re not within 100 feet,” Paul said. “If we see something more egregious, like septage [human waste] for example, we can turn it over to the George Environmental Protection Division. It [Oglethorpe’s ordinance] does give us something new but that’s about it.”
Probably the strongest local government push back comes from Wilkes County. Two months ago, county leaders adopted an ordinance that requires landowners to prove they’re using the land where soil amendment is being applied to grow products, not just as a dumping ground. One soil amendment-application company sued the county two weeks ago saying the ordinance is illegal.
“Who knows what’s going to happen,” Moore, the Wilkes County Commission chairman, said when asked about the county’s chances of winning. “You would think we’d have a good chance. [But] We’ve been dealing with the state for so long, our expectations are not real high.”
Accidental Activists
The ongoing sludge fight has also created a motley mix of NIMBY activists.
Angela Walden and her husband had plans to build their dream home on their family’s nearly 200-year-old farm in Jefferson County. Those plans died on July 13, 2022 when they got the first whiff of a mysterious sludge that had been spread on her cousin’s farm across the two-lane highway dividing their properties.
A month later, Walden’s husband, who often tended the family farm after working his day job, got sick. He was vomiting. He had a sore throat, watery eyes and headaches. He was ultimately diagnosed with thyroiditis, a condition that occurs after coming in contact with hazardous toxins. That was the beginning of the Summer of Hell — 69 days of stomach-churning stench and flies — for Walden and her family.
It was also Walden’s swift induction into activism that would take her to the state Capitol to fight against the substance that ultimately caused a family rift that continues to this day.
“It’s small town, rural Georgians up against big industry,” said Walden, who has appeared in a Rural Georgia Protection Alliance documentary about soil amendment. “The chicken industry is big in our state. You’re going up against them, these lobbyists who have millions of dollars and big time attorneys. And you have the politicians. If I can just inform my county, my residents about what this really is and to try to keep it out of my community … that’s the best way to combat it.”
Walden wants to see regulatory authority over soil amendment removed from the state agriculture department and returned to the state’s Environmental Protection Division.
“That would be a huge win,” she said. “You know, we have to do what we can to try to bring some regulation and some oversight to what they’re doing.”
Have questions? Contact Tammy Joyner on X @lvjoyner or at [email protected].
House speaker Jon Burns hires new communications director
House speaker Jon Burns, R-Newington, announced today that he has hired a new communications director. Kayla Roberson, who has served as press secretary at the Georgia Chamber for the past year or so, will now oversee all external communications, media relations and strategic messaging for Burns.
“I’m excited to welcome Kayla to our team,” Burns said in a statement. “Kayla has an excellent background, deep skill set and strong work ethic, and we’re excited to have her on board to continue getting our message out and sharing the House’s priorities ahead of and into the next session.”
A double major in political science and journalism at the University of Georgia, where she graduated in 2022, Roberson interned for U.S. Rep. Andrew Clyde, a Republican in north Georgia’s 9th Congressional District, and worked as a consultant for GOP political candidates before joining the Georgia Chamber.
“I’m beyond grateful for the opportunity to work under the leadership of speaker Burns,” Roberson told State Affairs. “Whether it’s improving education opportunities, putting money back in the pockets of hardworking Georgians, creating jobs or supporting our rural communities, speaker Burns always prioritizes doing what is best, and what is right, for Georgia.”
Political strategist Stephen Lawson, who has held the top communications role for the speaker since last December, announced he’s joining Dentons, where starting today he’ll lead the global law firm’s public affairs efforts.
Have questions or comments? Contact Jill Jordan Sieder on X @journalistajill or at [email protected].