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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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Voting ‘no’ is a legislative way of life for these two Georgia lawmakers
ATLANTA —When it comes to voting ‘no’, Rep. Charlice Byrd and Sen. Colton Moore are the top two naysayers in the Georgia General Assembly.
The two conservative, Republican lawmakers have been in lockstep on several key pieces of legislation throughout the session. Between them, they’ve voted no on nearly 200 bills, often casting the lone dissenting vote. Each was the only lawmaker in their chamber, for instance, to vote no on the state’s fiscal year 2025 budget.
In fact, the two legislators have voted in unison on a number of bills this session that will impact Georgians in substantial ways. They’ve voted no on bills that would:
- Ease restrictions on expanding hospitals.
- Double parental leave for state employees to six weeks from three weeks.
- Forgive the student loans of mental health workers and veterinarians.
- Let nurses and physician assistants prescribe painkillers to patients.
- Require employers to provide secret ballot votes if their workers choose to unionize. Companies that do so get state economic incentives.
- Create a new program to provide housing and services for the homeless.
- Require convenience stores to post information from the human trafficking hotline.
All of those bills passed despite Moore and Byrd’s votes.
They don’t always go against the grain of their party, which controls both the state House and Senate as well as the offices of the governor, secretary of state and attorney general — known as the Republican trifecta.
Moore and Byrd have given a nod to some key Republican initiatives this year, including bills to support private school vouchers, enforce the tracking and detention of undocumented immigrants, ban foreigners from donating to political campaigns, and to ensure that legislation takes into account the impact on small businesses. They’ve joined the GOP on election reform measures removing the secretary of state from the State Election Board and making changes to ballots and voting procedures designed to improve election security. And both agree that people who don’t have cosmetology licenses should be allowed to blow-dry hair and apply makeup.
The pair’s far-right views are heavily influenced by the Georgia Freedom Caucus, a three-year-old, uber-conservative group that is the outgrowth of the congressional House Freedom Caucus. The national State Freedom Caucus Network favors social conservatism and small government and opposes immigration reform. It helped oust U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy last fall.
Byrd and Moore are chair and vice chair, respectively, of the Georgia group. Sen. Greg Dolezal, R-Cumming, the chief deputy majority whip in the Senate, is the third member of the Freedom Caucus in the General Assembly.
“I go by the four pillars of my Georgia Freedom Caucus,” which are, “Does it grow government? Does it raise taxes? Does it increase regulation? And does it go against personal liberties?” Byrd said on Georgia Public Broadcasting’s “Lawmakers” television show earlier this month when asked about her pattern of no votes. “I also throw in there for myself: Is it the proper role of government? … It was to protect, preserve and defend, and now we fund a whole lot of things that we really should not be funding.”
Byrd and Moore began the session in January promoting the Freedom Caucus proposal for a complete repeal of the state income tax by 2030, and belittling the gradual personal income tax drop of 0.1% per year to 4.99% from 5.49% by 2029 promoted by the governor and GOP leadership. “At that rate, it would take 54 years to get to zero,” said Moore.
Both Byrd and Moore are rabid supporters of former president Donald Trump. And both have caught flack for controversial moves in the Legislature.
Moore has burned up considerable political capital — and gained national attention doing so. He was kicked out of the Senate Republican caucus last September after attacking fellow Republicans for refusing to agree with him in calling for a special session to take action against Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who is prosecuting Trump in an election interference trial. Earlier this month, Moore was banned indefinitely from the House for a scathing tirade he leveled against the late-Speaker of the House David Ralston.
The self-styled “RINO (Republican In Name Only) Wranglers” were featured in this video calling for a special session and lambasting their GOP colleagues:
Byrd introduced a bill early this year to impeach Willis, but it was ignored in the House. Later in the session, Republicans in both chambers went after Willis and others they deem as “rogue prosecutors” in their own way, by standing up a prosecutorial oversight commission (a bill which Byrd and Moore voted against). The Senate, led by Dolezal, also launched an investigative committee to probe Willis’ conduct, which Moore supported and claimed credit for spurring on.
The pair’s unconventional approach is “not the normal path that one follows when trying to build a successful career in the Legislature,” Charles Bullock, a University of Georgia political science professor who is widely-regarded as a preeminent scholar on Southern politics, told State Affairs.
“The old advice that [former] U.S. House Speaker Sam Rayburn used to give new members is ‘you have to go along to get along,’ ” said Bullock. “Help out other members and when you need help, you could turn to your colleagues and they’ll remember when you were helpful to them and they’ll reciprocate. If you’re out there burning bridges though, it means you are going to be less effective in doing things for your constituents.”
Byrd against immigrant ‘invasion’ and for the free market
Byrd, 72, is a former middle school teacher and political activist who lives in Woodstock and represents conservative, wealthy and mostly white Cherokee County. A self-described “pro-fair tax, pro-gun, pro-life Reagan conservative,” she has consistently voted for measures that return funds to taxpayers and against those that expand the budget.
She said the amended fiscal year 2024 budget signed by Gov. Brian Kemp this month “is full of crony subsidies, welfare and woke-ism while failing to deliver on conservative policies.”
Byrd said she took issue with spending $126 million on Kemp’s limited expansion of Medicaid through his Pathways program, despite its requirement for recipients to work or volunteer. And she’s opposed to “paying to grow the EV (electric vehicle) industry, train their workers, house their workers, subsidize them to the max. Free market should decide if EVs are our future, not the government.”
Byrd was also against returning $66 million to the University System of Georgia (USG) for teaching expenses, a line item in the 2024 budget vetoed by the governor last year. “Our universities are indoctrinating our kids … and USG is funding racism, sexism and radical gender ideology,” said Byrd.
Of Chinese and European descent, Byrd is a founding member of the Asian-American Pacific Islander Caucus in the General Assembly. Unlike other members of the mostly Democratic caucus, she regularly complains about “the invasion” of illegal immigrants in Georgia and at the southern U.S. border.
Last month she said, “Georgia is doling out our taxpayer dollars for everything that is not the proper role of government while doing nothing to address the invasion of our state or the root causes of sex trafficking or holding Fani Willis accountable. With the Republican trifecta, one would think we should be doing a lot better.”
Through March 21 of this session, Byrd has voted no 118 times out of 325 votes on legislation, or 36% of the time.
On Monday she posted this video on X, to brag about being “the state representative who votes ‘no’ the most,” and to preview the last two legislative days of the session, which she said “will be dangerous for freedom”:
Among Byrd’s solo no votes this year was a vote against allowing people who make cottage foods such as baked goods, jams and trail mixes in their homes to sell them in local stores. She was also alone in rejecting a bill to create the Weeping Time Cultural Heritage Authority to preserve the memory of more than 400 African slaves sold in Savannah in 1859.
Byrd acknowledged it can be tough to vote against everyone in her party and sometimes against the entire House.
“You lose a lot of friends, and that is very unfortunate,” she said. “I have made a lot of other friends that appreciate and respect what I do,” including some colleagues who tell her they wish they could vote the way she does. “And I always tell them, ‘There is not one person on that floor that votes for you. It is your district that votes for you, and you should be voting your district.’ ”
Even when she’s voting with the majority, she finds moments to work in her far right agenda. During a long debate this week in the House over Senate Bill 354, a bill to allow blow-dry stylists and makeup artists to practice without a cosmetology license, which several Democrats warned would pose health risks, Byrd said, “we should be more concerned about a doctor mutilating our children than the licensing of cosmetology.”
Moore pushing for criminal justice reform
In his first month at work in the Legislature this year, Moore voted no on a dozen of the 45 or so bills that came up for a vote in the Senate.
The legislation Moore has voted against runs the gamut. He was the sole naysayer on a resolution that would create a Senate study committee to look at improving family caregiver services. He also was the single no vote on a resolution that designates May 1 as Purebred Dog Day. Both passed the Senate.
He was one of six lawmakers who voted no on a bill that defines antisemitism. That bill passed 44-6. And if he’d had his way, development authorities wouldn’t be allowed to hold their meetings by teleconference. His Senate peers disagreed with him, passing the bill 51-1.
While Moore and Byrd may appear to be legislative doppelgangers, they aren’t in sync on everything.
Moore voted against the Safe at Home Act, a bipartisan bill that would guarantee safe living conditions in rental properties. Byrd embraced it. Moore also voted no to create a Senate study committee on the preservation of Georgia’s farmland.
Bullock said he’s surprised that Moore, one of his former students, has aligned himself with extreme conservatives. During his senior year at UGA, Moore took Bullock’s legislative process class which dealt with “norms of behavior and getting along well with peers and mutual respect.”
Two years after graduating, Moore unseated State Rep. John Deffenbaugh, R-Lookout Mountain, the incumbent in his home county of Dade, becoming one of the youngest representatives to serve in the Georgia Legislature.
His voting pattern and behavior may mean the lawmaker is trying to create “an image that he thinks might be helpful to him in the future,” Bullock said. “But it does not position him well to secure things that he might want to get for his district.”
Moore’s ties with the Freedom Caucus, Bullock said, indicate he’s following a path set forth by the far-right group. “The Freedom Caucus like the [one in the] U.S. House is quite ideological and therefore not likely to engage in compromise or back down from its position when it thinks it’s right.”
Neither does Moore.
All told, Moore has voted no on 81` out of more than 250 pieces of legislation between Jan. 8 and March 21, including bills regarding the last two state budgets. That’s about a third of all bills.
A closer review of Moore’s Senate voting record this session shows he has cast the lone no vote in roughly 75% — 37 bills — of the more than 50 bills where a single no vote was cast.
The lawmaker, who is an auctioneer and works at his family’s trucking company, said he follows “a strict standard of principles.”
“When it comes to a piece of legislation, and in my opinion, any piece of legislation that misuses taxpayer money, it’s not the proper role of government. I typically vote against that,” the 30-year-old northwest Georgia lawmaker told State Affairs. “Bills that subdue individuals’ freedoms that shouldn’t be subdued, legislation that I think grants government power that it shouldn’t have, anything like that.”
Bucking their party, Moore and Byrd have come out strongly against House Bill 986, which would criminalize “deep fake” campaign ads relying on artificial intelligence to alter a candidate’s image, voice or likeness, which they argued infringes on free speech. Moore suggested the AI-generated image below of then-presidential candidate Nikki Haley could be subject to the measure:
In order to make their case for the bill, Republican lawmakers created an AI impersonation featuring Moore and Georgia Freedom Caucus state director Mallory Staples appearing to advocate for the legislation they oppose.
Moore isn’t rash about his decisions.
“In order to vote no as much as I do, I have to be pretty darn well prepared to defend those things throughout the course of the legislative session,” he said, noting that he spends hours, sometimes days, reviewing legislation coming up for votes.
He also has members of his staff go over “every single piece of legislation. And every piece of legislation, I get a report. There’s highlights in it. Good parts of the bill. Bad parts of the bill.
“What I look at every single day when I go in to vote is probably three times more in-depth than what the majority leader has.”
“A single nay vote is not going to have any policy impact,” Bullock said. “So in that sense, the risk the person runs is the person becomes viewed as something of a crank. If everybody else is going along with, say, passing the budget or whatever else, then eyebrows get raised for the one person who is voting no [for something] which has near universal consensus. And so that probably undercuts the perceptions, perhaps, or the soundness of the judgment of the individual and their effectiveness.
“Then the individual may say, ‘Look, I’m being true to my principles. But that doesn’t necessarily… win over anybody else,’” Bullock added.
While Moore’s approach may confound some political observers, he may have political ambitions beyond the Georgia Legislature, Bullock surmises.
“My best guess is that he has a longer, broader ambition, maybe to go to Congress,” Bullock said. “He’s in the same district with Marjorie Taylor Greene. She has played something of that kind of role, not necessarily being the sole naysayer, but certainly an outspoken person who does not compromise, does not trim her sails or back down. And she has done very, very well. She, I think, has become something of a role model.”
Bullock noted that Taylor Greene, who is from the same northwest Georgia mountain area as Moore, was one of the top fundraisers in Congress when she was a freshman.
“My guess is a lot of other young members as well as individuals who would like to get to Congress, look at her behavior and say, ‘Okay, yes, she’s clearly outside of the mainstream. Yes, she gets a lot of criticism but she also gets an awful lot of publicity. And she raises a lot of money. The person watching her might say, ‘You know, I could do the same thing.’”
But Moore insists he’s driven by injustices and a desire to reform the criminal justice system.
“What keeps me motivated in politics were the injustices that I experienced as a young child,” Moore said. “My father was charged with a crime that he didn’t commit and was sentenced to 10 years in the penitentiary. Hundreds of people wrote letters and said that they think they got this case wrong. The case sentence was overturned and I had a chance to grow up with a dad.”
Both Moore and Byrd have voted against bills to increase mandatory minimum sentences for many crimes, and against Senate Bill 63, a bill that passed in both chambers that would require cash bail for nearly 20 new misdemeanor offenses.
Reelection prospects
The pair’s disruptive approach may not win them friends or influence in their respective chambers, Bullock noted, but it may sit well with their constituents.
“If it works with your constituents, that’s all that matters,” he said.
Both lawmakers are running for reelection this year. Byrd has no opposition in District 20, and will coast to an easy victory this November. She joked that she’ll “enjoy a lot of golf” this summer and fall.
Moore has more of a fight on his hands. He’ll face Republican challenger Angela Pence in the primary this May, who told the Chattanoogan, “I’m running to be the voice for ordinary citizens who want real results, not never-ending partisan shouting matches.”
A small business owner and resident of Chickamauga, Pence ran for Congress in 2022 as a Libertarian against Marjorie Taylor Greene. She said she decided to run for the state Senate “because I realized our district was not being represented. Our current senator’s actions have put us in a position where he can no longer do his job.”
Citing Moore’s banishment from the House and isolation in the Senate, Pence said, “he can no longer even attempt to represent us.
“While Senator Moore grandstands for retweets and shares, real crises in his district like toxic water contamination in our schools and skyrocketing property taxes — due to an outdated state education funding formula —have gone unaddressed,” she said. “The people don’t need any more unhinged sideshows — they need someone who will roll up their sleeves, put in the real work, and score concrete wins that positively impact their daily lives. District 53 deserves a state senator who not only knows how to pick the right battles but how to win them.”
GEORGIA GENERAL ASSEMBLY’S TOP NAYSAYERS
Rep. Charlice Byrd
Age: 72
Birthplace: New Orleans, LA
Residence: Woodstock, GA
Occupation: Former teacher, campaign organizer
House District: 20, covering parts of Cherokee County
Years in Legislature: 2009 to 2013, and 2021 to present in House
“No” votes in 2024 session*: 118 of 325 total votes, or 36%
*Votes on passage of legislation from 1/08/24 to 3/21/24
Sen. Colton Moore
Age: 30
Birthplace: Trenton, GA
Residence: Trenton, GA
Occupation: Auctioneer, truck driver
Senate District: 53, which covers Dade, Walker, Catoosa, Chattooga and Floyd counties in northwest Georgia.
Years in Legislature: 2019 to 2020 in the House; 2022 to present in the Senate
“No” votes in 2024 session*: 81 of 257 total votes, or 32%
*Votes on passage of legislation from 1/08/24 to 3/21/24
Have questions or comments? Contact Jill Jordan Sieder on X @journalistajill or at [email protected] and Tammy Joyner on X @lvjoyner or at [email protected].
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Sky-high lottery jackpots equal windfall for Georgia education
Georgia Lottery jackpots are once again up for grabs to lucky winners, with the Powerball soaring to $865 million and the Mega Millions has reset to $20 million. That’s because a winner walked away this week with the more than $1 billion Mega Millions jackpot, according to reports. The next drawing for Powerball is tonight. …
Thursday is Sine Die: Do-or-die deadline for bills this Legislative session
The Gist
This is the last week of the 2024 Georgia General Assembly’s legislative session and Thursday is expected to bring a last push for dozens of bills to cross the finish line by the end of Sine Die (pronounced “sigh-knee-dye”), the 40th and final day of session.
What’s Happening
Some bills that didn’t move last year have resurfaced this session, to be considered along with new legislative priorities of the governor, leadership in the House and Senate, and Democrats and Republicans.
Tomorrow and Thursday are the last two legislative working days, and the last chance for dozens of bills that leadership and lawmakers want to get passed for their constituents back home. Wednesday lawmakers will be in committee hearings.
This is not only the last week of the 2024 session, but the last week of the two-year term of the 157th Legislature, also called the biennium. Each of the General Assembly’s 236 seats are up for reelection, and all but a handful of legislators who have announced their retirement face primaries this May, and a general election in November.
Lawmakers are also working hard on the fiscal year 2025 budget, which is the only constitutionally required piece of legislation they must complete each year. Last year the fiscal year 2024 budget was approved just before midnight on Sine Die.
Why It Matters
So far during 38 legislative days spread over the last three months, lawmakers have passed hundreds of bills regarding education, health care, taxes, transportation, law enforcement, the judicial system, social welfare programs and economic and workforce development — bills that will impact Georgia’s 11 million residents in important ways.
Some bills still in contention may determine how future elections are conducted, if sports betting is legalized (and what education programs may benefit from it), and where desperately needed hospitals and health care services are located around the state.
The 2025 budget will fund all state departments, programs and employees from July 1, 2024 to June 30, 2025. So far the House and Senate have weighed in, and seem ready to approve key elements of the governor’s proposed $36.1 billion budget, which makes significant new investments in public schools, higher education, housing, health care and transportation projects (including funds for roads and bridges across the state) and gives healthy raises to most state employees while cutting income and property taxes.
In the final budget negotiations between the two chambers, some local districts and some programs and services that legislators are fighting for will win or lose funds, in amounts ranging from a few thousand dollars to millions.
What’s Next
Committee meetings happening today will produce many of the last bills that have a chance of making it through to the Rules Committees, which decide which bills are sent to the House and Senate floor for debate and voting. Other bills that have already passed through the committee process may be gutted and merged with others — a process nearly always marked by strategic gamesmanship, impassioned speeches and at least a few long and vigorous debates.
The bills passed in both chambers by Thursday’s end (or perhaps the wee hours of Friday) will be sent to the governor to approve or veto. He’ll have 40 days to do so, and any bills he does not address by then will automatically become law.
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Bills to expand hospitals, protect renters, honor former slaves move in Legislature
Georgia lawmakers passed bills this week to expedite hospital construction, create a private school voucher program, monitor undocumented immigrants and reignite gender-based culture wars.
As often happens on the homestretch of the legislative session, which ends March 28, legislators used sleight of hand maneuvers to advance some bills.
Among the ‘Frankenstein bills’ containing parts of bills that were otherwise dead — because they didn’t make the Crossover Day deadline on Feb. 29, mashed together with bills that did make the deadline, was House Bill 1170. Originally aimed to provide drug overdose reversal kits in schools and public buildings, it was hijacked by a Senate committee to include provisions to ban puberty-blocking medications for transgender minors.
The Senate passed House Bill 301, which began as a bill to increase penalties for illegally passing school buses and was later loaded with language to penalize local governments for acting as ‘sanctuary cities’ for illegal immigrants. The bill would impose financial punishments on law enforcement agencies and local governments the state considers to have policies or practices that violate state and federal immigration law. It also gives any state resident the right to sue local governments for not enforcing such laws.
House Bill 1104, providing mental health resources and counseling to high school athletes, was turned by a Senate committee into a bill banning transgender youth from participating in girls’ sports and from accessing school bathrooms, and requiring schools to tell parents what books their children check out from school libraries. The Senate is expected to vote on it next week.
The Senate Finance Committee made changes to House Bill 170, authored by Rep. Kasey Carpenter, R-Dalton. The bill was originally a tax sales and tax use exemption for specified digital works items but was gutted by Sen. Jason Anavitarte, R-Powder Springs, and it now includes parts of Senate Bill 344, adding a sales tax holiday for hunters and exempting sales of firearms, ammunition, gun safes, trigger locks, and related accessories during five days in October each year.
Lawmakers still have three working days left before Sine Die, the final day of the 2024 session, next Thursday.
Here are some highlights from this week under the Gold Dome:
In the House
- The House voted 96-78 along party lines to approve Senate Bill 362, which would deny state tax credits to companies that voluntarily recognize unions through a check of signed union cards rather than through a secret ballot election. Companies would also be punished for sharing their workers’ contact information with unions. Democrats decried both provisions as being in conflict with what federal law requires and said it would invite litigation. It now goes to the governor for consideration.
- After vigorous debate, the House passed Senate Bill 420, which bans foreign adversaries from buying farmland or land near military bases in Georgia. Opponents called the bill, which passed 97-67, xenophobic and said it would invite lawsuits and federal fair housing challenges. It now goes to the governor.
- The House passed Senate Bill 426, Lt. Gov. Burt Jones’ tort reform priority legislation. The bill, sponsored by Sen. Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia, limits the ability of plaintiffs to sue motor carriers and their insurers simultaneously, commonly known as “direct action.”
- The House passed SB 480 which provides student loan repayments for mental health and substance abuse professionals who work with underserved youth or who work in certain areas of the state in great need of behavioral health professionals. In presenting the bill, Rep. Sharon Cooper, R-Marietta said, “We just flat out don’t have enough people to take care of” Georgians with mental health issues. Rep. Ruwa Romman, D-Duluth, said fentanyl- and opioid-related deaths and overdoses “have skyrocketed” and “bills like this give us an important tool to address these crises” by helping to recruit and retain addiction specialists and other mental health professionals who have high student loan debt but receive low pay in Georgia. The bill passed 167-2 and now goes to the governor for consideration.
- Senate Bill 456 is meant to give peace of mind to people who hire home health aides to care for their disabled family members. The bill would add persons with physical or mental disabilities to the purview of the Central Caregiver Registry, which presently partners with the FBI to do background checks on those who care for the elderly in residences. It passed the House 168-0 and now goes to the governor.
- The House and Senate passed House Bill 1425, landmark legislation intended to preserve the legacy of the Weeping Heritage Corridor where 429 enslaved people were sold in Savannah on March 2-3, 1859. The bill, which creates the Weeping Time Cultural Heritage Corridor Authority, was introduced by Rep. Carl Gilliard, chairman of the Georgia Black Legislative Caucus. It now goes to the governor for his consideration.
In the Senate
Each of the following bills are on the way to the governor’s desk for his consideration.
- The Senate and House gave final passage Thursday to House Bill 1339, legislation that updates Georgia’s outdated Certificate of Need laws. The bill, which now heads to Gov. Brian Kemp, allows Morehouse School of Medicine to open a hospital in a badly-needed area of Atlanta that saw the closure of Atlanta Medical Center. The bill also enables a hospital to open without a permit in any rural county where a hospital has been closed for more than a year. Before the passage of the bill, however, Democrats rallied for one last-ditch effort to expand Medicaid. A Senate committee heard testimony about a proposed bill that would have created a Medicaid-style program called PeachCare Plus. It was narrowly defeated, essentially ending any hope of seeing Medicaid expansion this legislative session.
- As expected, the Senate passed its long-sought private school voucher bill, which would provide some Georgia families with children with $6,500 per student per year for private school tuition or homeschooling expenses. The children must attend public schools in the bottom 25% of lowest-performing districts in the state for at least one year, or be rising kindergarteners in those districts.
- House Bill 663, the No Patient Left Alone Act, which mandates that parents can visit a hospitalized child, or at least one designated person can visit a hospitalized adult, passed the Senate by a vote of 49-0. It was created in response to rules at many hospitals that prevented relatives from visiting people who were sick and dying from COVID-19 at the height of the pandemic.
- The Senate passed House Bill 1410, which would create a stable housing accountability program to provide voluntary and immediate housing to homeless persons for up to 18 months while helping them secure permanent housing. It also amends who appoints members to the State Trust Fund for the Homeless Commission. The bill will allow the trust fund to receive state, federal and private funds to provide housing and services to the homeless, which is expected to considerably grow available funds. The bill passed 45-1.
- House Bill 51 would allow local school districts to transport students to and from school and school-related activities in school-owned vehicles with a capacity of five to eight persons, instead of in school buses. It’s aimed in part to help districts where bus drivers who hold commercial driver’s licenses are in short supply. The bill passed in the House last year and was tabled by the Senate, which took it up this week and passed it 50-1.
- A newly divorced woman who wants to use her maiden name will now be able to do that without problem. The Senate passed House Bill 896 which provides additional means for changing a person’s married surname to their previous surname after receiving a divorce decree.
- The Senate passed House Bill 1105, the Georgia Criminal Alien Track and Report Act, requiring law enforcement to enforce federal immigration laws. The vote passed along party lines, 34-19. This bill gained momentum after an Augusta University nursing student was killed in Athens last month.
- The Senate passed Senate Bill 465 — Austin’s Law —which goes after those who make or sell fentanyl and charges them with a felony offense of aggravated involuntary manslaughter if their distribution results in someone’s death. In 2022, nearly 2,000 Georgians died from overdosing on fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine.
- A new Juvenile Treatment Court Division will be established through House Bill 873, which will provide “alternative adjudication” to youth charged with delinquency or offenses or who need services due to addiction, truancy or running away from home. It will be managed by the Council of Accountability Court Judges, which oversees adult accountability courts. Like those for adults, the juvenile treatment courts would provide addiction and mental health treatment, with a goal of keeping kids in school and connected to their families instead of detention or incarceration. The program also aims to prevent and reduce gang involvement. The bill passed 52-0.
- House Bill 827 makes entering into the cage or enclosure of a wild animal at a zoo or other venue where land or sea animals are kept for public visitation an act of criminal trespass. If the animal is injured or killed, sentences range from one to 10 years. The bill also increases fines for stealing livestock to $10,000 from $1,000, and ups the maximum sentence to 15 years from 10 years. It passed in the Senate 52-0.
And this bill made major progress:
House Bill 404, known as the Safe at Home Act, passed in the Senate 44-2. It requires rental property be “fit for human habitation” and for landlords to give tenants who are behind on rent, utilities or other fees three days’ written notice before filing an eviction action. It also forbids landlords from shutting off cooling and other utilities to force a renter out, and caps security deposits at two months’ rent. The Senate updated its effective date to July 1, 2024, so the amended bill will return to the House for another vote, where it is expected to pass.
In other news
Read these related stories:
Correction: This story has been updated to correct the status of House Bill 404. Because the Senate amended its effective date, the amended bill is expected to be voted on in the House next week, and not sent directly to the governor.
Have questions or comments? Contact Jill Jordan Sieder on X @journalistajill or at [email protected] and Tammy Joyner on X @lvjoyner or at [email protected].
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