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Request a DemoUpdate, May 10, 2023: After much negotiation the Legislature voted to fully fund HOPE scholarships, as the governor had requested. HB 249, which increases the total amount of need-based college completion grants to $3,500 from $2,500, was also passed in both chambers, but was vetoed by Gov. Brian Kemp in May. HB 310 did not advance in the House, but a similar bill, HB 607, which lowers the ACT score required for a Zell Miller Scholarship, did pass and was signed by the governor.
ATLANTA — When Gov. Brian Kemp announced last month that he planned to fully fund the HOPE Scholarship in fiscal year 2024 with a $61.5 million increase to the state budget, Rep. Stacey Evans, D-Atlanta, was among those in the Legislature loudly cheering.
Evans has been lobbying for over a decade to expand HOPE (Helping Outstanding Pupils Educationally), aiming to steer the program back toward its origins: a state lottery-funded program designed to make college affordable for Georgia residents.
“I am thrilled about the direction we’re going, and truly grateful to see these funds restored,” she said. “But there is more we need to do for our students to be able to make it through college going forward.”
While Kemp’s promise to fully fund the HOPE Scholarship has been met with wide bipartisan support, the governor’s proposal only fully funds the program for one year — from July 1, 2023, to June 30, 2024. The funding will mean an extra $444 per year, on average, for full-time students.
As the Georgia Lottery-fed education reserve fund swells to $1.9 billion and college enrollment continues to drop, legislators, education advocates, workforce development experts and families have expressed concern that seemingly fewer students from low-income families as well as Black and Hispanic children are being awarded scholarships.
In fiscal year 2022, the Georgia Student Finance Commission (GSFC) awarded close to a billion dollars — $945 million — to Georgia students, to fund five main programs: $472 million for HOPE Scholarships, $300 million for Zell Miller Scholarships, $23 million in HOPE Grants, $14 million in HOPE Career Grants and $13 million in Zell Miller Grants. GSFC also doled out $26 million in student loans.
But somewhere along the way, critics say, the HOPE program became a two-tiered scholarship award, evolving in ways that significantly affect who gets access to college funds.
HOPE began in 1993 with the creation of a statewide lottery to fund pre-K and higher education programs. It had a simple premise: earn at least a B average in high school, maintain that in college, and if you’re a Georgia resident, your college tuition, fees and books are covered. It was aimed at families of modest to middle class means, with a family income cap of $66,000. That cap was lifted in 1995, drawing applicants from all economic levels, who began snapping up the scholarships.
A key inflection point in the program came in 2011, when post-recession economic pressures — lower lottery revenues, higher college costs and an increased demand for scholarships — threatened to deplete the lottery reserve. In response, legislators enacted new academic requirements for the scholarship and created a new, full-tuition program known as the Zell Miller Scholarship.
The Zell Miller required a 3.5 high school GPA, a minimum number of academically rigorous courses and a 1200 SAT (or 26 ACT) score. The bar to receive a HOPE Scholarship still included a 3.0 high school and college GPA, but would only cover a portion of tuition (ranging from 80% to 90% in recent years). Books and fees were no longer covered by any of the scholarship programs.
Since its creation, Zell Miller Scholarship recipients have been pulling an increasingly larger piece of the HOPE pie, and fewer funds are now going to Black and Hispanic students from low-and middle-income families.
A 2021 study by the Georgia State University (GSU) Child & Family Policy Lab showed that white students are six times more likely than Black students to enter a USG school with a Zell Miller Scholarship. Students from families with low incomes and federal Pell Grant recipients are significantly less likely to gain and more likely to lose both Zell Miller and HOPE scholarships.
While 83% of students from households with annual incomes above $100,000 enter Georgia colleges with a HOPE or Zell Miller scholarship, only 54% of students with a family income of $30,000 or less enter college with one.
“The irony, of course, is that low-income people in Georgia are disproportionately funding the HOPE scholarships through purchase of lottery tickets,” said Ross Rubenstein, a professor of education and community policy at GSU and a co-author of the study.
“When we looked at who plays the lottery and how much they spend relative to who gets benefits from lottery-funded programs — if it’s a merit-based college scholarship program, of course it’s going to be skewed towards middle- and upper-income households. We found that lower-income households were spending a higher share of their income and on average spending more money on an absolute basis on the lottery,” said Rubenstein. “So you have where the money is coming from, and where it’s going, and it’s a very regressive way to raise revenue.”
At Maynard Jackson High School (MJHS), counselor Sakari Balam is on a team of five who support 1,450 students from a diverse array of socioeconomic backgrounds — “the haves, the have nots and the in-betweens,” said Balam. They work with students beginning in ninth grade to help them identify their college and career interests, introducing students to the Georgia Futures website, the portal through which financial aid forms, transcripts, Common App essays and college dreams flow.
The saving grace for many students who are “on the cusp, with a 2.9, or maybe a 2.5,” said Balam, is that “they can get money from Achieve Atlanta,” a nonprofit that provides need-based scholarships to low-income, predominantly Black and Latino students in Atlanta each year. Awards range from $1,500 to $5,000 and require a 2.5 GPA.
“I don’t know what other school districts are doing, you know, in helping these kids to close that gap, because I can’t imagine not having something like this in place, in addition to the various scholarships and businesses that we’re always trying to connect them with,” said Balam.
Despite their best efforts, some students do fall through the cracks.
Alayna Blash is a parent of a sophomore at Maynard Jackson and the president of the MJHS Go Team, which includes parents, teachers and community members. In 2018, her son Niles was a senior at the school, and struggling to secure financial aid with a 2.9 “HOPE GPA” (a GPA calculation that factors in “rigor” courses like advanced science, math, AP English and foreign languages, which are weighted more heavily than other basic courses).
“He just missed out on the HOPE Scholarship, and we didn’t know about a lot of other help he could have gotten,” said Blash, who said she found navigating the Georgia Futures portal and the whole financial aid process “bewildering” at the time, despite the fact that she works at Spelman College as associate director of student success.
Niles ended up going to Clark Atlanta University, a historically black, private college where tuition and fees are $12,000 per year, thanks to a tuition credit available through his mother’s job affiliation with the Atlanta University Center. Niles got a small HOPE grant that was “just enough to cover his books” each semester, Blash said. And he’s living at home until he graduates this year because they can’t afford for him to live on campus.
Blash said she’s better prepared now to help her son Marcus, who’s a good student and an athlete, to get a stronger aid package. But she worries about other Black students at Maynard Jackson and other Atlanta Public Schools.
“You know, my concern is always equity,” said Blash. “And if I just think about the eligibility requirements for HOPE, and who at my school [is] in those rigor courses, we know we have a gap there. There’s a disparity. And that’s something that our principal and the team are working on. Because if our Black students are not in the courses, then no, they’re not getting HOPE. And I do think the state should use the lottery money to expand HOPE to meet the need that programs like Achieve Atlanta are meeting because there’s a tremendous need among students who aren’t going to get that 3.0.”
In an effort to level the playing field for students, Rep. Evans, who sits on the House Higher Education committee, is co-sponsoring with Rep. David Wilkerson, D-Powder Springs, House Bill 310, which gets rid of the SAT/ACT score requirement for Zell Miller scholarships. And Evans’ bill HB 157 repeals the Zell Miller grant program altogether.
Evans noted that many students who don’t qualify for a Zell Miller Scholarship have 3.5 or better GPAs, but don’t have high enough standardized test scores, “which is not necessarily the best indicator of college success. It certainly wasn’t for me. I had a 3.8 GPA but barely a 1000 on the SAT. Under HOPE as it exists today, I would not qualify,” she said.
“So many people in the majority just can’t get past wanting to insert some sort of merit element into financial aid,” said Evans. “It’s frustrating. There are a lot of C students in Georgia, and a lot of colleges in Georgia that accept them. I don’t know why we don’t want to help them.”
Evans also introduced HB 316 last week which would mandate (by law, and not just per the 2024 budget) that HOPE grants, which fund diploma and certificate (but not degree) programs, cover the full cost of tuition for an academic year. In recent years the grants only partially funded tuition. And HB 157 calls for HOPE grants to start covering tuition for two-year associate degree programs at technical schools, a change the state Office of Budget and Planning estimates would cost $25 million in 2024.
A call for need-based scholarships
Many people in Georgia have been calling for years for the state to add more need-based college funding into the mix of merit-based financial aid available. Georgia is currently one of only two states in the country that does not have a comprehensive need-based scholarship program.
“We are absolutely missing the mark with our deep love relationship with the HOPE Scholarship and the lack of need-based aid,” said Ashley Young, an education policy analyst with the liberal Georgia Budget and Policy Institute (GBPI). While Georgia’s HOPE program is fourth in the nation in the total amount of scholarship money it gives to students “and that’s something to be proud of, that does not make it an equitable system,” she said. The HOPE program has awarded $13.7 billion to 2.1 million students since 1993.
“The HOPE Scholarships largely benefit students who were already on track to attend college,” said Young. “Whether they are second- or third-generation college student status, or already in a place to financially afford college, they have an advantage. When we invest more in merit-based scholarships, we invest for certain students to have options. It’s like, ‘So do I want to go to GSU versus Georgia Southern versus West Georgia?’ Need-based aid is about access, and determines whether someone can afford to attend college at all.”
A survey by GBPI in 2020 found that 75% of Georgians support a need-based college financial aid program
Kayla Daniel, 21, is among those students from a low-income family who are stretched to afford college. A student at Gwinnett Technical College in Lawrenceville, she’s studying to be a respiratory therapist, in a two-year degree program. She recently transferred from a four-year nursing program at nearby Georgia Gwinnett College (GCC) to cut costs. Though she had a federal Pell Grant and a HOPE Scholarship at GCC, and lives with her parents to save on room and board, she said the $13,000 annual cost was too much for her and her family to cover.
The tuition at Gwinnett Tech is less expensive — $1,850 per semester, plus $300 for used books and about $200 a month for gas to commute from her home in Loganville, 45 minutes away. Though she worked through the holidays full-time at Macy’s, she said she doesn’t have time for a job now.
“I knew that once I got into this program, I really wouldn’t have time to work,” said Daniel. “All my time goes into studying, and we have two or three tests every week. I don’t have time to be working on some job when this is supposed to be my future.”
Despite the college credits and 3.5 GPA she came in with, Daniel said she hasn’t yet qualified for a HOPE Scholarship at Gwinnett Tech and has taken out a $4,000 student loan for this school year, debt added to the $1,900 she already has on a credit card she uses solely for school expenses. Daniel said she’s worried about the mounting interest but is determined to get her degree next year and join the workforce where her skills are in high demand.
Her classmate Yancka Denis, 26, is in a similar situation, pursuing a respiratory therapy degree while carrying about $20,000 in student loan debt after transferring from a private nursing college. She lives with her aunt nearby, paying $600 a month in utility and cable bills, and $300 a month on a car loan. She works on weekends at an assisted living facility, tending to elderly patients with memory loss.
“It’s a lot to juggle, and I do get tired sometimes,” said Denis. “But I know I have good job prospects at the end of all this.”
Targeting high-demand career tracks with more lottery funding
What often goes along with faltering tuition and debt payments is a failure to graduate, a tragic outcome for any student, and particularly those who began their college careers with HOPE scholarships.
According to the GSU study of merit-based scholarships, more than 120,000 students will start a bachelor’s degree program in Georgia with a HOPE or Zell Miller scholarship. Twenty percent of students who enter with Zell Miller Scholarships will drop to HOPE or lose their scholarship altogether, and 30% of students entering with HOPE Scholarships will lose them. Most often it’s due to not maintaining the required GPA.
“We continue to see a really large percentage of our graduating students with relatively large amounts of college debt,” said Dana Rickman, CEO of Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education, a nonpartisan, nonprofit focused on student achievement and workforce development. “And it’s important to remember there’s a significant portion of students who accumulated a bunch of debt, and then had to drop out, especially among the population who were able to start with a [HOPE] scholarship but lost it.”
The Institute for College Access & Success reports that the average debt load of a college graduate in Georgia in 2020 was $28,000, the third highest in the U.S.
Rep. Chuck Martin, R-Alpharetta, who chairs the House higher education committee, said he’s keenly aware of the loan burdens that many students carry, as well as the state’s shortage of skilled and educated workers.
According to Complete College Georgia (CCG), a USG program, by 2025, more than 60% of jobs in Georgia will require some form of post-secondary education, including bachelor’s and associate degrees, and a variety of industry certifications. But CCG reports that only 48% of the state’s young adults currently hold such credentials.
And the headwinds pushing against the state’s ability to achieve that goal are represented in another reality: college freshmen enrollment in Georgia has fallen by about 7% since 2020. The USG system expects fewer Georgia high school graduates over time due to lower birth rates.
To help financially stressed students stick it out, Martin is sponsoring HB 249, which would make one-time, need-based completion grants of up to $2500 available to students who run out of money after they’ve completed 70% of credits in a four-year program, and 45% of credits in a two-year program. Currently, these grants are funded at $10 million in the governor’s proposed 2024 budget. Martin said he’d like to fatten the completion grant fund by transferring capital out of the student loan program, currently funded at $26 million, “to help more students cross the finish line and avoid taking on more debt.”
When asked by State Affairs about his and the higher education committee’s willingness to use more lottery funds to pull more students who don’t qualify for merit-based HOPE programs into college and career pipelines, Martin said, “There is a sincere effort going on in the workforce subcommittee and higher ed to move the needle on this. We’ve talked about this for a long time, and then COVID happened. As Newt Gingrich used to say, ‘Real change requires real change.’
“We’re looking at applying additional monies toward incentivizing people to finish their education in programs that are most productive,” he said. “It’s probably going to be focused on certain high-demand careers in TCSG and certain fields in USG. There’s just not enough capital to do it for everybody. And frankly giving college tuition to every person that wants to go to college, you’re going to have people that don’t have a focus, and may go into debt with no reward, which isn’t good for them or for the state. But hopefully, we’ll get some more people headed to college and TCSG programs in 2023, and then we’ll come back and look at doing more, incrementally.”
GBPI’s Young said the education lottery reserve fund “has grown tremendously since 2015,” and now stands at $1.9 billion. About $770 million is required in case of a shortfall to be able to fund HOPE programs, she noted, leaving $1.1 billion in unrestricted reserves.
“If we tap the lottery reserve for need-based aid, I understand that there are valid concerns about how that would be sustained,” she said. “It depends on how you determine eligibility for students, how much money we’re giving out each year, and other factors. But I think it is certainly an embarrassment of riches to have this much money and still no broad need-based aid program.”
Have thoughts on how lottery proceeds or other state education funds should be spent or managed? Contact Jill Jordan Sieder on Twitter @JOURNALISTAJILL or at [email protected].
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Header Image: Gwinnett Technical College students Kayla Daniel and Yancka Denis are both studying to be respiratory therapists. (Credit: Jill Jordan Sieder).
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Kemp 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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Incumbent candidates for local, federal races likely to be no-shows at this weekend’s primary debates
ATLANTA — One of Georgia’s prominent media organizations is pleading with incumbent state and congressional candidates to participate in its primary election debates slated for Sunday.
For the first time in The Atlanta Press Club’s 30-year debate history, incumbents facing challengers in the May 21 primary have either declined or not yet committed to participating in the organization’s well-known debate series. The possible no-shows include candidates in four Congressional races as well as the Georgia Supreme Court, and the Fulton County District Attorney races.
“This is the first time that we’ve had so many [incumbents] not participate,” debate organizer Lauri Strauss told State Affairs. Strauss declined to speculate why candidates aren’t participating.
Hoping to encourage more participation, the organization issued the following statement:
“The Atlanta Press Club believes it is the responsibility of people running for public office to answer questions from their local media that will help inform voters before they cast their ballots. If a candidate is running for public office, the candidate should be willing to participate in the democratic process, which includes attending debates and fielding questions from journalists and opponents.”
Candidates have until Friday to RSVP.
Strauss said candidates who fail to appear will be represented on stage by an empty podium during the debate.
District Attorney Fani Willis has declined to participate and Democratic U.S. Reps. Lucy McBath and David Scott have yet to RSVP. Strauss said the organization is still in talks with Georgia Supreme Court Justice Andrew Pinson’s staff about his appearance in the debate.
Willis, declined earlier this week to participate, citing constraints around talking about sensitive cases like the criminal prosecution of former President Donald Trump.
McBath currently represents the 7th Congressional District and is now running in the newly drawn 6th Congressional District against two Democratic challengers, Jerica Richardson and Mandisha Thomas. McBath declined to participate in the press club’s general election debate in 2022, forcing her Republican challenger Mark Gonsalves to debate with an empty podium. McBath won with 61% of the vote.
The debates will air live on April 28 on GPB.org, on The Atlanta Press Club’s Facebook page (www.fb.com/TheAtlantaPressClub). It will be rebroadcast in early May on WABE.org.
Race | Tape and Livestream Sun. April 28 |
GPB-TV Broadcast | WABE Broadcast |
Congressional District 6 Democrats | 10:00 a.m. | April 29 at 7:00 p.m. | May 1 at 4:30 p.m. |
Congressional District 13 Democrats | 11:15 a.m. | April 28 at 4:00 p.m. | May 1 at 5 p.m. |
Congressional District 3 Republicans | 1:00 p.m. | April 28 at 5:00 p.m. | May 2 at 3:30 p.m. |
Congressional District 2 Republicans | 3:00 p.m. | April 29 at 5:00 p.m. | |
Georgia Supreme Court | 4:45 p.m. | May 2 at 4:30 p.m. | |
DeKalb County CEO | 5:45 p.m. | May 2 at 5:15 p.m. | |
Fulton County District Attorney | 6:45 p.m. | May 1 at 4 p.m. |
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‘It is nothing short of insane:’ Bill to criminalize squatting signed by governor
ATLANTA — Today Gov. Brian Kemp signed legislation criminalizing squatting, the illegal practice of entering and residing on someone else’s property without their consent.
The Georgia Squatter Reform Act makes squatting a misdemeanor criminal offense, punishable by up to a year in jail, a $1,000 fine, or both. It also speeds up the timeline to evict a squatter, giving landlords and law enforcement more tools to establish that someone is trespassing and to demand that they leave.
“It is nothing short of insane that there are some who are entering other people’s homes and claiming them as their own,” Kemp said in a post on X after signing the bill at the state Capitol. “Thanks to our legislative partners, I was proud to sign HB 1017 — once again making it clear that illegal squatters are criminals, not residents.”
Over the past few years, squatting has become more prevalent in Georgia, with trespassers breaking into vacant homes, claiming tenancy and refusing to leave.
A 2023 survey of institutional investors in single-family rental homes who are members of the National Rental Home Council found there were 1,200 illegally-occupied homes in and around Atlanta. Realtors told State Affairs they’ve encountered squatters in homes for sale and rent in Gainesville, Valdosta and Albany.
Until now, law enforcement in many jurisdictions treated the issue as a civil matter, telling property owners to file eviction actions in court, which could take months or even years to resolve.
The new law directs local law enforcement to issue citations and arrest people accused of squatting if they don’t provide a valid lease or proof of payment within three days. If they do produce such documents, it moves eviction proceedings to magistrate courts, and requires cases to be heard within seven business days after filing.
If the judge deems documents they present to be forged or fake, those accused of squatting could be charged with a felony. And judges can impose more fines based on the fair market value of rent that landlords lose.
On hand in the governor’s office for the signing was Rep. Devan Seabaugh, R-Marietta, the lead sponsor of the bill.
“Currently in Georgia law, we’re giving squatters tenant rights,” Seabaugh previously told State Affairs. “And my bill would take that away. It basically says, ‘You’re an intruder, you’re a criminal, and we’re going to treat you like a criminal.’ ”
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State troopers are stretched to fight drugs and curb highway deaths
ATLANTA — When Cpl. Anthony Munoz straps on his bullet-proof vest each day and pulls out of the Department of Public Safety headquarters in Atlanta, Munoz never knows how his shift will unfold. What is for certain is that the traffic — of cars, criminals and contraband — is constant.
And what is also true is that there are not nearly enough state troopers on the road to catch them all.
A 13-year veteran, trooper Munoz, 45, is part of the department’s Criminal Interdiction Unit, whose main focus is suppressing the robust illegal drug trade flowing through Georgia. Last year the eight-member team made 1,309 arrests, including 76 felony drug arrests, and helped other agencies seize $24 million worth of contraband.
In 2019, the unit had 25 members.
Capt. Greg Shackleford, the troop commander, said that in 2020 the unit was split up and half the team was sent to Georgia State Patrol posts around the state, which were hurting for staff, to conduct the Department of Public Safety’s core functions — traffic enforcement and responding to car crashes.
The split has translated into Munoz and the rest of his team now spending most of their time monitoring Interstate 20 just south of Atlanta, and Interstate 75/85 west of the city. He said they regularly support the investigations and busts of other local and federal agencies, and frequently join the governor’s crime suppression details, which have included taking down car thieves and street racers.
All this leaves his team with less time to develop intelligence on their own drug cases and to snare more traffickers. It also means the troopers no longer have time to monitor roads in rural areas in south Georgia where, Shackleford said, many drug traffickers driving trailers full of drugs and contraband enter the state on highways coming from Florida and Texas and now ride around unchecked for hundreds of miles.
Chronically understaffed
The Georgia State Patrol remains chronically understaffed. While the state’s population has grown, and with it the number of motorists, car crashes and criminal activity, the number of state troopers has hovered stubbornly between about 750 and 850 for over a decade, giving Georgia the unwanted distinction of having lowest number of troopers per capita in the country.
The average number of state troopers per capita in the U.S. is 21; for Georgia, it’s eight. And the outlook for changing that is not great, Col. William “Billy” Hitchens, the public safety commissioner, told legislators during hearings last fall — Unless the state makes bold moves in improving compensation. He said Georgia State Patrol has “aimed to reach 1,000 troopers for as long as I have been employed,” which is 30 years.
The state saw its trooper numbers plummet to 745 during the pandemic in 2021. The agency is now back to 845 troopers. The current trooper school started with 61 candidates, and if recent history is a guide, about 70% will graduate in September and put on the badge.
While “things are moving in the right direction” this year in terms of recruitment, said Hitchens, he said too many veteran officers are either resigning or retiring early.
Between 2018 and 2023, 48 troopers left the agency on a full-service retirement, meaning they had served for 30 years. During the same period, 341 troopers resigned, retired early or departed for other reasons. As it costs the department $153,397 to train a trooper, those who left early cost the state $52 million, said Lt. Col. Josh Lamb, director of administrative services for the Department of Public Safety.
Fewer troopers means more highway deaths
Fewer troopers on the state’s roads impact everyone, say law enforcement officials. .
“As our trooper strength decreases, traffic fatalities increase,” said Hitchens.
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data shows a direct inverse relationship between trooper staffing and the number of fatalities in Georgia. At its low ebb in 2021, with 769 troopers, 1,925 people died on Georgia roads. More recently, in 2023, with 820 troopers, Georgia saw 1,647 fatalities, an 8% decrease over 2022.
“We are concerned with traffic patterns, the way people drive, and we enforce the law out there,” Hitchens told State Affairs. “When you start losing personnel, whether it’s the state, or cities and counties, one of the first things that may be taken away is traffic enforcement. Because they’re responding to other calls — robberies, domestics, you name it. And when troopers stop doing it, there are just fewer people out there reminding you, ‘Hey, that’s dangerous. Slow down.’ ”
The state patrol wrote 408,574 citations to motorists last year, but issued even more warnings — 510,265. Hitchens noted that mere trooper presence on the highway is a strong deterrent.
“It doesn’t have to be you that gets stopped,” he said. “Those 50 cars that ride by during that time and see that patrol car, go ‘Ooh, I don’t have my seatbelt on … I’m playing with my phone,’ and it just impacts that behavior. But the less officers you see on the road, the less you have people changing their driving behavior.”
Along with encouraging safer driving, DUI enforcement has become a higher priority for the department. A “Nighthawks” squad of 22 officers patrols after midnight in areas of the state where data analysis shows high incidences of alcohol and drug-induced crashes and violations. The state patrol made 16,409 arrests for driving under the influence in 2023.
Hitchens said the work of such special units is compromised when they’re pulled into other duties due to statewide manpower shortages. The three Nighthawks units, for example, are often pulled into other traffic stops and crime suppression details in Atlanta, Macon and Columbus. And drug interdiction officers have had to cover vehicle crashes and multiple public protests over the Atlanta Public Training Center (dubbed “Cop City”) and, more recently, conflict between Israelis and Palestinians in Gaza.
Besides securing troopers, Hitchens said the department is struggling to recruit dispatchers, who are the lifeline for troopers and officers who patrol alone and depend on dispatchers to provide critical information quickly. Today, the department has 129 dispatchers who work at nine regional call centers. They need 169 to be fully staffed.
A tough sell in the ‘Cop City’ era
Hitchens told lawmakers that heightened public criticism of law enforcement over the past few years has played a role in the department’s ongoing challenges to recruit and retain officers.
“People without understanding of what it’s like to be involved in a rapidly evolving life and death situation started scrutinizing officers, cities started defunding their police departments while demanding greater accountability and more training, both of which cost money,” he said. “Following the George Floyd, Rayshard Brooks and Breonna Taylor instances, the media and some leaders in our community nationwide began to demonize the police.”
Hitchens said that since the death of Manuel Teran, a protester against the planned Atlanta Police Training Center who was allegedly shot by a Georgia trooper during a firefight on the forested property in 2023, and the sometimes violent public demonstrations that ensued, “that dynamic just got worse. For a long time with ‘Cop City,’ it was constant protest, and you know, that weighs on you.”
Munoz, who was patrolling with other local law enforcement on the perimeter of the training center site the day Teran died, said the public’s jaundiced view of that episode and other recent struggles between police and citizens that have gone viral on social media can be frustrating.
“I know that a lot of the narrative out there is not true at all,” he said. “There are millions and millions of police encounters every day. And those [violent] ones are fractions of a percent of incidents, and whether a trooper or officer responds the right way, it all boils down to compliance. If you just comply, you’re presumed innocent, you’ll have your chance to make your case, and the facts will come out. Don’t argue, don’t fight, don’t resist. We don’t want to fight you.”
Noting that he has a wife and four children he wants to come home to, Munoz said, “We’ve been pounded with de-escalation in training, and that’s what we practice. I’m sure there are officers out there now that freeze and that say, ‘Do I do my job? Or am I going to be put in prison, because I reacted in a certain way?’ So we do carry that, and it’s a heavy, heavy burden.”
Last year three House Democrats introduced House Bill 107, the Police Accountability Act, which proposes an end to qualified immunity for law enforcement officers and would have required body-worn cameras for all peace officers. The bill did not advance out of committee, but Hitchens said taken together with the public unrest and anti-police sentiment since 2020, it all had a demoralizing effect on his officers.
“All of these factors are forcing officers to become fatigued with our profession,” he said. “They feel that support is ending and the job is not worth the risk.”
According to the Georgia Peace Officers Training and Standards (POST) Council, the number of officers with basic council certifications in Georgia dropped to 5,956 in 2023 from 6,666 in 2017.
“I don’t think there’s a single law enforcement agency in Georgia that is fully staffed,” said Chris Harvey, deputy executive director of Georgia POST. “And they have a very hard time getting qualified people on board. … There just aren’t enough quality people that are interested in doing this job.”
While some agencies have raised salaries and added signing bonuses, he said, “I can tell you that it’s not a solved problem. Because I don’t think it’s primarily a money issue. I think it has a lot to do with the difficulty of doing this job these days. I’m not sure it’s ever been harder to work in law enforcement. The amount of scrutiny along with the amount of violence that police officers encounter on a regular basis, they generally feel like they’re out there alone. If they make one mistake, they’re gonna pay dearly for it. … It’s a tough sell.”
Father and son patrol leaders fight for trooper compensation
For Hitchens, his push to recruit potential state troopers and convince state leaders to increase pay and benefits for troopers is supported by an unlikely suspect — his dad.
House Appropriations public safety subcommittee chair Rep. Bill Hitchens, R- Rincon is a former trooper who served in the Georgia State Patrol for 28 years, and was later appointed by former Gov. Sonny Perdue to serve as public safety commissioner from 2004 to 2011. The elder Hitchens has served in the House since 2013.
At the House Working Group on Public Safety meeting last fall, Rep. Hitchens noted that the state patrol has maintained around 700 troopers since he joined in 1969, when the state population was about 4 million. “Now it’s 11 million people … and we have a lot more murders, stolen cars and merchandise,” the elder Hitchens said. “Where we fell down, I don’t know. It’s just we’ve never grown. … And now we’re at a breaking point.”
The younger Hitchens was appointed by Gov. Brian Kemp as deputy commissioner for public safety in 2020, and then as commissioner in 2023. As commissioner he oversees the Georgia State Patrol, the Motor Carrier Compliance Division, the Capitol Police Division, and other special law enforcement units, including the crime suppression, SWAT and canine teams.
The son and father team have successfully fought for substantial pay raises for troopers, whose salaries have increased over the past three legislative cycles by nearly $17,000. That includes a 4% cost of living increase and a $3,000 bonus for law enforcement officers approved by the General Assembly in the fiscal year 2025 budget. The starting salary for a new trooper will be $63,684 as of July 1, if the governor approves it in the budget, as expected.
Dispatchers will also get a boost in next year’s budget, with new pay step increases that can take them from a starting salary of $39,000 to up to $56,000 as they earn promotions.
Col. Hitchens said those pay bumps seem to be turning the tide on recruitment. The number of applicants and graduates rose for the last few trooper schools held over the past year. Other changes the department made to trooper school requirements have also helped, including allowing people to go home more often during training, permitting access to mobile phones at night, and allowing people with arm tattoos to train and serve, if they cover them with long sleeves.
“We tried to make changes in training that we felt like really didn’t help people stay,” said Hitchens. “And we didn’t make it kinder or gentler. I mean, in this job that you sign up for, there’s got to be a certain level of discipline, there’s got to be a certain level of respect, with high physical training standards, that’s still there. But the things that we could change, we decided to do.”
Both men remain concerned about how to stem the trend of early retirement, and agree that sweetening the retirement package is the key way to combat it.
Currently most troopers qualify for a pension equal to 1% of their final pay for every year of service, and can also participate in a 401(K) savings plan while they serve, which the state matches up to 9%, depending on their number of years on the force. But Col. Hitchens is pushing for a more generous “defined benefit” retirement plan, with a 3% pension, which he said would double what most troopers get when they retire. Instead of earning about $25,000 a year on average, they would receive about $52,000.
Presently, the average tenure of a state trooper is 10 years, nowhere close to the 30-year careers Hitchens and other leaders want his officers to pursue.
And he knows it matters to them, as retirement benefits emerged as the number one retention issue on a recent agency-wide, anonymous survey.
“Every other agency is increasing their hiring packages, raising pay and offering better benefits, from retirement to free health care,” Hitchens said, noting that the Atlanta and Sandy Springs police departments offer substantially higher pay and 3% defined benefit plans.
“We’re in a competitive bidding process, and we have to offer a reward that’s worth the risk our people are taking with their lives and liberty.”
The tenure of senior officers also matters because of the crucial role they play in mentoring new recruits.
“When we have our young troopers, the men and women that come into the field, they’re excited,” said Shackleford, the troop commander, who spent much of his 36-year public safety career in SWAT before taking over Troop K, which includes the crime suppression, criminal interdiction, K-9, SWAT and dive units. “They see the fast cars, they want to get into something. And the problem is, it’s just like a puppy. A puppy’s gonna get into something and make a mess. So we need the older ones to kind of calm them down and guide them a bit, show them how to see and assess a situation.”
Such role modeling of behavior, said Hitchens, “is very important, especially with de-escalation. A senior officer, having dealt with so much of that, has that confidence and the competence to carry out [their] job in a way that I think a lot of younger, less experienced officers don’t have yet. And that’s how you learn and morph over a career,” said Hitchens, adding that that transfer of knowledge and practice from veterans to recruits “benefits the public as well.”
Rep. Hitchens co-sponsored two bills related to bolstering retirement plans for law enforcement that passed out of the retirement committee during the last session. One passed in the House, but did not get a vote in the Senate. Other lawmakers balked at the cost.
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