Lawmakers ready to wrap up
Local legislators are preparing for a last-minute push on bills with two business days left in the session.
With two voting days left in the 2017 Georgia General Assembly session, Rep. Katie Dempsey, R-Rome, was celebrating passage of a measure she’s worked on for years.
Senate Bill 201 lets employees who have sick leave use it to take care of immediate family members. Dempsey sponsored similar legislation in the past, and spoke in favor of it before it passed the House last week, 114-51.
“This was one of the hard ones,” she said. “It’s for employees who want to work, who don’t want to lose their job, but perhaps may need to take care of a sick husband or child or be with a dying parent.”
Opposition focused on its effect on employers, but the House Industry and Labor Committee added a sunset clause — it expires in 2020 — to garner more votes. The bill will have to go back to the Senate for a vote on the change.
Dempsey said expiration dates are often included in controversial measures, so they can be reassessed after several years and stopped if they’re not doing what was intended.
The sunset also can be extended or repealed, as was the case with SB 52, which she carried to passage in the House last week. The bill allows licensed professional counselors to temporarily commit a mentally ill or drugor alcohol-dependent person in an emergency.
“We passed it in 2014 to sunset in 2015, extended it to 2018, and this removes the sunset,” Dempsey said. “It’s working. It’s helping people.”
Also last week, Dempsey’s House Bill 463 passed the Senate and was signed into law by Gov. Nathan Deal. The bill allows the Department of Early Care and Learning to establish a public foundation to accept donations.
“They’ve received almost $14 million from private funds through an auxiliary foundation. This lets them raise money themselves,” Dempsey said.
She said a foundation gives the pre-K Bright from the Start program the flexibility to launch initiatives beyond what the state is able to fund. It also helps them respond quickly to natural disasters, such as the January storms that devastated Albany.
Several other measures of interest to Northwest Georgia met their fate last week.
HB 205, which regulates fracking, passed the Senate by substitute Friday and will go back to the House for confirmation of the changes. The hydraulic fracturing method of natural gas extraction is only likely to be used in Floyd and other counties in the region
where the Conasauga Shale Play extends underground.
Sen. Chuck Hufstetler, R-Rome, carried the bill in his chamber and made several floor amendments to clarify some wording and require local governments to collect a surcharge to pay for waste disposal from a mining or drilling operation.
Legislation that would have set up a vote on allowing local school districts to elect their superintendents was rejected by a House committee and won’t move forward this year.
Hufstetler was a cosponsor of Senate Resolution 192. However, he said he only signed on to help Sen. John Wilkinson,
R-Toccoa, who wanted voters in his county to have that choice.
“As I said, it was a local option and would never have happened in my senate district,” Hufstetler said.
Hufstetler saw his SR 130 pass the House Friday, 153-0. It sets up the Joint Transparency and Open Access in Government Study Committee to examine ways to share data between state agencies to boost efficiency.
The House also unanimously passed his SB 200, which lets pharmacists synchronize refills of medications a patient takes regularly to manage a chronic condition.
The Legislature meets Tuesday, and will close out the session Thursday.