House backs bill allowing panel to oversee prosecutors

A panel the General Assembly created last year could soon begin its work overseeing local prosecutors under a new bill that would essentially delete a requirement in the original legislation.

Lawmakers last year gave the Prosecuting Attorneys Qualifications Commission the power to sanction and even oust district attorneys and other prosecutors it determined were not doing their jobs, such as enforcing Georgia’s anti-abortion law.

But they also required that the state Supreme Court approve rules to guide the panel.

The high court, however, expressed “grave doubts” that it had the constitutional authority to approve rules and standards of conduct for the commission.

State Rep. Joseph Gullet, an Acworth Republican, responded by introducing House Bill 881, which would remove the requirement that a third party approve the commission’s rules. Only one Republican voted against the measure this past week when the House approved it on a nearly party-line vote of 95-75.

Gullett said HB 881 would “reinforce the integrity of our legal system.”

But state Rep. Stacey Evans, an Atlanta Democrat, pointed out that while lawmakers last year approved creating the commission to oversee prosecutors, they did so thinking the panel also needed to operate under the eye of the Supreme Court. Now the monitor would have no monitor.

“For a body so concerned about oversight, when the person we picked to do the oversight said they can’t do it, we didn’t pick a substitute overseer,” she said. “We just said, ‘We’re good, don’t oversee us.’”

The battle over the commission has drawn national attention because Donald Trump’s allies aim to use the law to punish Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis for seeking criminal election interference charges against the former president in his efforts to reverse the results of the 2020 election in Georgia.

HB 881 now heads to the Senate for its consideration.

Joseph Gullet