African Americans/Minorities COVID-19 Health Disparities Virtual Town Hall on May 2, 2020
Virtual Town Hall on March 28, 2020
Click here to listen to the March 28, 2020 Legislative Delegation's Virtual Town Hall.
Legislative Committees and Weekly Updates
During the ninth week of the 2020 legislative session, my colleagues and I also passed the following bills and resolutions in the House chamber: This is just a sampling for additional information go to the House of Representative site at
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House Bill 86, which would allow tenured teachers to appeal a summative personnel evaluation of “Unsatisfactory,” “Ineffective” or “Needs Development” to an independent third party, and local school administration would be required to develop a complain review policy for teachers by October 1, 2020;
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House Bill 245, which would allow surviving spouses of members of the Peace Officers' Annuity and Benefit Fund to retain spousal retirement benefits if the spouse remarries;
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House Bill 336, which would allow the public school system to hire a retired member of the Teachers Retirement System of Georgia to provide classroom instruction in an area of highest need if one year has expired from the member’s effective date of retirement;
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House Bill 479, or the “Child Victim Protection Act of 2020,” would allow plaintiffs between the age of 23 and 38 years to bring civil actions for recovery of damages suffered as a result of childhood sexual abuse committed on or after July 1, 2015, to be brought within four years from the date that the plaintiff knew or had reason to know of the abuse, and the abuse resulted in injury established by competent medical or psychological evidence;
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House Bill 488, which would require merchants that buy or resell stored value cards to record certain information regarding the transaction in the same way as a pawnshop, and knowingly failing to do so could be punished as a misdemeanor;
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House Bill 903, which would allow citations to be issued to the owner of a vehicle rather than the individual driving the vehicle if the owner is present at the time of issuance for the following citations: operation of an unregistered vehicle or a vehicle without a current license plate and citations for driving an unsafe or improperly equipped vehicle;
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House Bill 1046, which would require every attendant employed by a gasoline station to dispense gasoline for the holder of a special disability permit;
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House Bill 1084, which would create the Georgia Endowment for Teaching Professionals in the Technical College System of Georgia (TCSG) to support the efforts of the Department of Economic Development through education by identifying key courses, subjects and disciplines for the expansion of state businesses and provide grants to branches of the technical college system that enable teachers to offer those courses;
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House Bill 1090, which would require employers to provide break time to employees who need to express breast milk;
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House Bill 1092, which would authorize an advanced practice registered nurse to order radiographic imaging tests in non-life threatening situations if delegated to do so by a physician and increases from four to six the number of advanced practice registered nurses the physician may supervise in a nurse protocol agreement.
House Broadcast Schedule
Click here to view video broadcasts by the Georgia General Assembly.
*Hearing-impaired individuals may access transcripts of video of proceedings of the House of Representatives by emailing a request to betsy.theroux@house.ga.gov. Every effort will be made to provide such access as quickly as possible after the request has been submitted.
Did You Know . . .
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Members of your Clayton County Delegation led the successful effort to have a grant included in the 2018 State budget of almost $27,000,000 to replace the local general sales taxes (LOST) that the County and cities would forfeit through 2021 after the General Assembly ratified former Governor Deal’s suspension of the taxes. The suspension was in response to a 2014 Federal mandate that required local general sales taxes on aviation fuel to be used only for aviation related purposes. The Delta Air Lines Foundation also agreed to make monthly grants to Clayton County Public Schools to replace the ESPLOST that Delta would have paid on aviation fuel through the end of 2019. That amount was estimated at $18,000,000 using then existing fuel prices/purchase volumes,
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Members of your Clayton County Delegation wrote letters and contacted members of the Georgia Congressional Delegation in an effort supporting legislation that would have the Federal mandate delayed or changed that would require local general sales taxes on aviation fuel to be used only for aviation related purposes,
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Members of your Clayton County Delegation introduced legislation during the 2019 session of the General Assembly that carried over to the 2020 session that would lift the tax-exempt status from the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and add several hundred million in value to the Clayton County Property Tax Digest. The lifting of the exemption could add as much as $50,000,000 to the property taxes collected in the County,
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Members of your Clayton County Delegation worked with County, local school district officials and the Clayton County community for almost twelve months and continue in 2019 in developing a strategic plan to replace revenues lost due to the Federal mandate related to the exemption of aviation fuel from local general sales taxes. That working relationship resulted in the publication of a whitepaper on the strategic plan to replace the revenue forfeited,
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Members of your Clayton County Delegation met with City of Atlanta officials and had discussions with Mayor Bottoms while the General Assembly was in session in an effort to have the City of Atlanta voluntarily agree to pay property taxes to Clayton County that are allowable under Federal airport revenue use policies. The City of Atlanta owned airport occupies approximately 3,163 acres in Clayton County,
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Members of your Clayton County Delegation are surveying the County, the school district and the cities to determine the impact that the loss of the local general sales tax will have on general fund budgets after 2019 and 2021, respectively. Local taxes are used to rollback County and cities ad valorem taxes and used by the school district to fund capital improvements,
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Members of your Clayton County Delegation are supporting the efforts of Member of Congress David Scott (D-GA) and Member of Congress John Lewis (D-GA) who co-sponsored the “The State and Local General Sales Tax Protection Act” that would lift the mandate by the Federal Aviation Administration on the use of local sales tax thus allowing for possible reinstatement of the local general sales tax on aviation fuel sales transactions in Georgia. The efforts of Congresswoman Grace Napolitano (D-CA) to amend the transportation appropriations bill to prohibit the local sales tax on aviation from being subject to restrictive use requirements is also being supported by Congressmen Scott and Lewis and your Clayton County Delegation.