Stay ahead of the curve as a political insider with deep policy analysis, daily briefings and policy-shaping tools.
Request a DemoHow Georgia evaluates thousands of sex offenders
- 1 in 23 sex offenders in Georgia are high-risk predators.
- State board uses “level” system to determine risk.
- Dozens of out-of-state sex offenders move to Georgia monthly.
How closely Georgia’s sex offenders are watched after returning to local communities post-prison depends on the work of a little-known state agency with a big case backlog.
Created in 2006, Georgia’s Sexual Offender Registration Review Board (called “SORRB”) is tasked with deciding every convicted sex offender’s risk for committing another serious crime such as rape, child molestation or possessing child pornography.
With short staffing and funds, SORRB’s investigators and volunteer board members classify dozens of sex offenders each month according to certain risk levels, dictating how much freedom they will have for years to come.
Georgia is home to around 24,000 convicted sex offenders out of a total of nearly 11 million residents.
SORRB evaluates each one of those offenders to determine their risks for reoffending. It does so by pouring over arrest warrants, police interviews with alleged victims, court records, behavior reports while incarcerated and psychological profiles. Digging into all that information quickly is a tall order.
SORRB’s 12-member board – made up of local sheriffs, district attorneys, parole officers, prison officials, attorneys, counselors and clinicians – comb through between 60 and 120 cases a month and take votes to decide offenders’ risk levels. Currently, SORRB has a backlog of about 5,000 sex offenders who have not yet received an official risk-level determination, said Tracy Alvord, SORRB’s executive director. About half of those outstanding cases involve sex offenders from out-of-state who now live in Georgia.
“The purpose of it is to identify the higher risk offenders so that we can put our resources toward those offenders,” Alvord said in a recent interview.
Roughly 1 in 23 sex offenders is classified as a “sexually dangerous predator,” marking SORBB’s highest risk category.
That rounds out to 1,230 sex predators who often have multiple convictions or accusations of sex crimes while showing a penchant for violence or preying on children, according to SORRB’s leveling criteria.
Around 7,240 sex offenders have been classified as “Level 1,” meaning they show less risk for re-offending despite convictions for illegal-porn possession, child molestation or rape. They can apply from removal from Georgia’s sex-offender registry once they’ve finished their sentences.
Another roughly 3,950 offenders received a “Level 2” classification, involving medium-risk offenders with prior criminal histories or parole violations whose convictions range from child molestation, aggravated sexual assault and statutory rape.
Sex predators must re-register twice a year for the state’s sex-offender registry. Level 1 and Level 2 offenders only have to do so once annually. Offenders of any risk level can petition courts after 10 years of good behavior post-sentence to be removed from the registry.
The risk levels help local sheriffs decide which sex offenders need to be tracked most closely in the communities where they live.
Many predators in Georgia are currently in prison or watched by parole officers with the state Department of Community Supervision. After that, it falls to local sheriffs to continue keeping tabs on sex offenders still on the state registry.
Sheriffs across the state have tight budgets and limited staff to run their sex-predator tracking divisions. Until recently, the highest-level sex predators were all required by state law to wear GPS tracking devices for life, even after completing their sentences.
That practice is now being phased out after a landmark Georgia Supreme Court ruling deemed lifetime ankle monitors as an unconstitutional form of search and seizure. By year’s end, around half of Georgia’s sex predators will be off their ankle monitors, Alvord estimates.
Additionally, more than 15,000 sex offenders in Georgia have not received a risk level at all.
That’s because their convictions occurred before SORRB’s creation in mid-2006 and, at times, due to spotty communication from some county officials that a local offender was convicted, according to Alvord.
Large conviction numbers also complicate information-sharing between a web of state and local agencies that track sex offenders. Chatham County district attorneys are quick to give information on sex convictions, Alvord said. But Fulton County, where around 10% of the state’s sex offenders reside, was slow to share convictions until recent leadership changes at the district attorney’s office, she said.
There’s also a trend of many sex offenders moving to Georgia from other states in order to become residents and request removal from the sex-offender registry, Alvord said. She estimated between 35 and 50 out-of-state sex offenders relocate to Georgia each month, adding to the state’s growing list of offenders for local police to track.
Like most state agencies, SORRB has to balance a heavy workload with limited staff and funding.
With a roughly $845,000 budget, SORRB staffs one full-time and two part-time investigators to review lengthy police reports and behavioral profiles. They send their work to six evaluators tasked with compiling risk-factor reports that can top 1,000 pages about a convicted predator.
“Not as many as we need,” Alvord said of her staff numbers. “But at least we have those.”
It’s not just SORRB that faces a staff and funding crunch. Local sheriffs and district attorneys also feel the pinch for their officers and investigators focused on sex offenders, Alvord said.
“You have district attorneys that have been extremely overwhelmed with their cases,” Alvord said. “They’re just like us: you only have so many staff that can do so much.”
Not everyone agrees SORRB should have so much power to chart the course of many sex offenders’ personal freedoms.
Joseph Park, a 69-year-old convicted child molester whose state Supreme Court case led to the ankle monitors’ removals, believes SORRB shouldn’t touch convictions like his that came before 2006 and make up the bulk of the agency’s backlog. Now, Park has his sights on fighting another legal battle over SORRB’s ability to level offenders with pre-2006 convictions, as well as challenging the foundations of Georgia’s sex-offender registry.
“I don’t see why I should be coerced into participating in updating their database,” Park said in a recent interview. “They just want to give you the opportunity to re-offend for failing to register.”
Other states besides Georgia have also seen court rulings that prohibit lifetime ankle monitoring for certain sex offenders. Courts in Missouri and New Jersey struck down lifetime ankle-monitoring laws in 2017, similar to Georgia. Same for North Carolina in 2019, where the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the state’s ankle monitors constituted a search under the U.S. Constitution’s 4th Amendment.
Alvord has her sights set on sharpening Georgia’s sex-offender tracking system to focus more on the most dangerous predators.
In the coming years, Alvord hopes to work with state lawmakers on overhauling SORRB’s level classifications to tighten up whether certain low-risk offenders should go on the state’s registry or show up only in internal law-enforcement databases. Doing so could help local authorities spend their time even more wisely on tracking Georgia’s most dangerous sex offenders, Alvord said.
Alvord would also like more funding to study how well Georgia’s risk-leveling system works compared to states like Florida, in which the kind of conviction is the basis for determining an offender’s future risk rather than the many other reports and sources that SORRB considers.
In the meantime, Alvord feels confident Georgia does better than many other states in targeting only the state’s worst sex offenders. Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith agrees. Smith, a former SORRB board member, says having access to a wide range of criminal, behavioral and psychological background information helped him temper his own no-tolerance attitude toward sex crimes when deciding an offender’s risk level.
“It’s not arbitrary at all,” Smith said in a recent interview. “There was a formula on how they were leveled. And I won’t say the state does everything right, but they did it right with this.”
Are there any other state agencies in Georgia like SORRB that you want us to examine? Share your thoughts/tips by emailing [email protected].
Read this story for free.
Create AccountRead this story for free
By submitting your information, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy.
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].
And subscribe to State Affairs so you do not miss an update.
X @StateAffairsGA
Instagram@StateAffairsGA
Facebook @StateAffairsGA
LinkedIn @StateAffairs
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.
Have questions or comments? Contact Jill Jordan Sieder on X @journalistajillor at [email protected]
And subscribe to State Affairs so you do not miss an update.
X @StateAffairsGA
Instagram @StateAffairsGA
Facebook @StateAffairsGA
LinkedIn @StateAffairs
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].
And subscribe to State Affairs so you do not miss an update.
X @StateAffairsGA
Instagram@StateAffairsGA
Facebook @StateAffairsGA
LinkedIn @StateAffairs