Deal, lawmakers return with long list of priorities
By KATHLEEN FOODY
Associated Press
ATLANTA — Georgia's Legislature convenes Monday in Atlanta, and a rough list of legislative priorities still is shaping up. But it's clear Gov. Nathan Deal and legislative leaders have high hopes for the 40-day session.
Both parties view the start of Deal's second and final term in office as an opportunity to get some work done.
Here's a look at several topics likely to come up for discussion this session:
TRANSPORTATION AND TAXES
Though transportation funding is expected to be a top priority at the Capitol, Republican leaders are keeping their preferences quiet. A study committee that met throughout the summer laid out a variety of options in a report issued last month, including gas tax increases, a 1-cent sales tax or shifting money into transportation.
The report estimated $1 billion to $1.5 billion is needed to maintain Georgia's existing roads, bridges and transit options. The document did push for more support for mass transit.
House Speaker David Ralston, a Republican, this week declined to endorse any specific proposal but said he's hoping the House, Senate and Gov. Nathan Deal can reach a consensus instead of "bickering."
The study committee's Republican co-chairs, Rep. Jay Roberts and Sen. Steve Gooch, have previously said they expect to introduce legislation aimed at addressing the state's long-term transportation needs.
EDUCATION
Since his re-election in November, Deal has said examining the state's system for funding education is a top priority in his second term. Deal has said the complicated formula Georgia uses is outdated but also indicated he's focused on making better use of state money given to schools, not an overall increase.
BUSINESS REGULATION
Fights between established business interests and relative newcomers are expected to crop up again.
Ride-sharing services including Uber and Lyft are gearing up to fight regulations of their driver background check system and subject the ride-hailing companies to the same taxes and fees on taxis or limo services in Georgia.
The electric car company, Tesla, may take on the car dealer establishment in Georgia. The dealers' association challenged Tesla's direct car sales to customers before state revenue authorities. Dealers may turn to state lawmakers if the decision doesn't go their way.
Craft breweries want to change state law to allow beer sales directly to customers at brewpubs or manufacturing sites. They've hired a full-time lobbyist. But they likely will face opposition from liquor distributors.
'RELIGIOUS FREEDOM'
State Rep. Sam Teasley pre-filed a bill preventing government entities at all levels from "burdening" an employee's religious expression, resurrecting legislation that failed to get a floor vote last year.
Opponents say such proposals are aimed at LGBT people. The state's business community has warned that any such law would damage Georgia's reputation.
The recent firing of the city of Atlanta's fire chief has re-energized supporters. Mayor Kasim Reed suspended and then fired former chief Kelvin Cochran after learning he had self-published a book that described homosexuality as a "perversion." Reed has said Cochran was fired for lacking judgment, not his faith.
MEDICAL MARIJUANA
A Republican lawmaker said Friday that he has Deal's backing for a bill to decriminalize possession of cannabis oil purchased in other states by people with certain medical conditions. The oil could contain between 3 and 5 percent THC, the chemical that can cause a high feeling.
The bill scales back Republican Rep. Allen Peake's earlier hopes to introduce a bill allowing the sale cannabis oil in Georgia to people with certain disease who had their doctor's approval.
Peake said Friday that the bill he now plans to introduce meets his goal of bringing home "medical refugees" who have relocated to other states where the oil can be legally purchased. It also would set up a committee to study growth and distribution of medical marijuana in Georgia and report to the legislature by the end of the year.
Lawmakers failed to pass a bill aimed at treating children with seizure disorders last year after an unrelated issue was attached.
ATLANTA — While funding for transportation improvements and another attempt to allow limited use of medical marijuana have been grabbing headlines across Georgia leading up to this year’s legislative session, education figures to play a bigger role under the Gold Dome than it did last year.
Look for two significant initiatives from Gov. Nathan Deal, who is about to be sworn in for his second term, concerning education: reforming and updating the beleaguered funding formula and, perhaps more controversial, some kind of intervention for persistently failing schools.
State Rep. Mike Dudgeon, R-Johns Creek, the vice chairman of the House Education Committee, and House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams, D-Atlanta, discussed these and other issues Friday with reporters from throughout Georgia as a preview to the legislative session, which begins Monday.
The funding formula, known as Quality Basic Education, or QBE, has remained largely the same since it was established in 1985. It sets baseline state funding targets for school districts based on student enrollment, class sizes and teacher salaries based on training and experience. It also determines how much money districts receive for school staff specialists (such as counselors or art teachers), central office and school administrators, and instructional materials, Claire Suggs, senior education policy analyst the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, told reporters attending the Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education’s annual media symposium, held at Georgia Public Broadcasting’s headquarters in Atlanta.
The Legislature has not fully funded QBE since 2003, when it began imposing “austerity cuts,” Suggs said. Those cuts reached their peak, well over $1 billion each year, during the Great Recession and the sluggish recovery that followed, though the $746 million austerity cut for fiscal 2015 was an improvement, she said.
Dudgeon said Deal, and many others, believe it is time to “rewrite that formula for the 21st century,” despite several failed attempts to do so previously.
“It will, hopefully, come to a formula that is more student-centric instead of employee-centric,” Dudgeon said. “And a priority of mine is that once that money is calculated, I want to make sure our local districts and locally elected people get the flexibility that they need to implement the stuff. In other words, they don’t need to be told, ‘You have to have x counselors and y teachers and z principals.’ I think that we elect our local school boards that know their community best.”
Abrams largely agreed.
“The challenge is accepting that it costs more to educate children in Georgia than it did 30 years ago,” she said. “We have a very different composition of our student population. It is more expensive to
educate a rural child than an urban child; it is more expensive to educate a poor child than a middle-class child. And our funding formula did not acknowledge or anticipate how different our counties, our school districts would be because we now have districts that encompass all of those models at the exact same time.”
Statewide ‘Recovery School District’?
The other of Deal’s priorities, Dudgeon said, is likely more controversial — a possible statewide “Recovery School District,” based on the district by that name that is best known for operating a number of New Orleans schools in the years since Hurricane Katrina wiped out large swaths of the city in 2005.
The Louisiana model has received praise from education reformers nationwide, especially those who see charter schools as an effective way to help students that traditional public schools have not. The district became the nation’s first “all charter school” district at the beginning of the 2014-15 school year.
“The thesis is this. If you have consistently failing school districts, or schools, that have not been able to use their local resources, their local leadership, to get out of the ditch and provide adequate schooling for their children, then at some threshold point, the state would be empowered to come in and make leadership and personnel changes in order to, hopefully, obtain change in that area,” Dudgeon said. “This kind of happened by accident in Louisiana when Katrina wiped out the entire city and also wiped out the public schools.”
Abrams was cautious about this proposal, saying the state needs to adequately fund school districts before it can tell districts they are failing some or all of their students. She added, as Dudgeon also had acknowledged, that not all students benefited in the Louisiana Recovery School District.
“The challenge with the analogy of the school district being stuck in the ditch is, if the state is the bulldozer that keeps shoving you back in there every year, you’re never going to get out of the ditch,” she said. “And so if we think about failing schools and failing school districts, what we have to understand is, what are the atmospheric and environmental issues that maintain the failure of the school district?”
Jason Wermers may be reached at (912) 489-9431.