POLITICAL PULSE

The 157th session of the Georgia General Assembly

TThe 157th session of the Georgia General Assembly has drawn to a close, and while the Governor’s signing period has not yet concluded, it’s clear with the Georgia legislature that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

What once began with conviviality between the Georgia House of Representatives and the Senate, devolved into late session conflicts between the two chambers, rekindling the traditional inter-chamber enmity and initiatives like the budget, mental healthcare, and school choice became negotiating tools.

Another thing that will never change with the legislature is the constitutional requirement to pass a balanced budget. As is always the case, lawmakers passed two budgets this session. The first of which is referred to as the amended budget, which adjusts the spending plan for the final months of the fiscal year ending June 30th to reflect the actual revenue collection and expenditures over the current fiscal year. The full budget sets the entire fiscal year’s spending plan and is primarily based on estimates for what the coming year’s revenue collection and expenditures may be.

The amended budget enjoyed a $6.6 billion surplus, roughly $2 billion of which went back to taxpayers in the form of income and property tax rebates. However, the full fiscal year 2024 budget contained across the board cuts. In a brief late night address to the Senate, Governor Kemp expressed concern for the upcoming fiscal year’s economic outlook and the various expenditure reductions that came as a result of the projected “storm clouds on our nation’s economic horizon”, stating “there are significant holes in this year’s final budget that my office will need to work closely with you all, the House, and the office of planning and budget to address over the coming months […] I believe there remains work to be done”.

The budget was also ACEC Georgia’s #1 legislative priority this past session – more specifically, obtaining funding for the newly independent Professional Engineers and Land Surveyors (PELS) licensing board. Last year’s House Bill 476 removed the PELS Board from under the Professional Licensing Board Division of the Secretary of State’s (SOS) Office, making it an administratively attached agency that can operate autonomously to improve licensure and compliant investigations for engineers and surveyors. HB 476 acted as enabling legislation, granting the board legal authority, while the funding from the budget gives the board the ability to operate.

The amended budget allocated $300,000 in funding to the PELS Board for new licensure software and start-up costs. And despite the state’s overall reduction in most spending categories, appropriators recommended $1,032,895 in funding for the full 2024 fiscal year, which will allow the board to begin to hire staff, lease office space, and purchase equipment. ACEC Georgia remains at the disposal of the PELS Board for any assistance they may need as they begin the process of becoming fully operational and navigating the next year and additional funding opportunities in 2024.

Despite a near 40% turnover in the legislature over the past four years—which continued with multiple vacancies and special elections throughout the 2023 session—and a leadership change in both chambers, the age-old struggle between trial lawyers and businesses resulted in another major blow to tort reform. Reforming the state’s tort system was one of the business community’s #1 priorities, since it affects almost every kind of business. This year’s proposals included premises liability and seat-belt nonuse admissibility, among others.

Senate Bill 186 (SB 186) by Senator Greg Dolezal (R-Cumming), dubbed the “Georgia Landowners Protection Act,” would have revised Georgia’s premises liability statute by clarifying when a landowner is liable for criminal actions which have taken place on his/her property. Currently, landowners are often found liable for over 50% of damages for criminal actions that they had absolutely nothing to do with and no prior knowledge of simply because the action occurred on their property. SB 186 would have ensured that landowners would be treated appropriately and only held responsible only for the percentage of damages that they could reasonably be assigned. Unfortunately, the Senate never voted on this measure.

Another major legal reform initiative, Senate Bill 196 by Senator Ben Watson (R-Savannah), aimed to address the state’s seatbelt gag law by allowing a defendant to introduce evidence of a plaintiff’s seatbelt nonuse to a jury in car wreck cases when determining fault and damages. Currently under Georgia law, passengers are required to wear a seatbelt in a moving vehicle; however, if a car occupant is not wearing a seatbelt and is involved in a crash, the jury awarding damages is legally barred from knowing whether or not a seatbelt was worn. This often results in oversized settlements where defendants are held responsible for damages that could have been prevented by seatbelt use.

One of the most egregious abuses of the seatbelt gage rule was the $1.7 billion punitive damages verdict charged to Ford Motor Company in August of last year. Ford was found guilty for a faulty roof on truck in a rollover accident; however, Ford was barred from stating their product operated as it ought to if the passengers had worn seatbelts. Further, the company could not properly defend the vehicle’s protection system without addressing the safety mechanism’s relationship between seatbelts and airbags. While the constitutionality of the seatbelt gag rule was questioned in this case the legislature failed to address this problematic statute in Georgia’s law.

While it seems as though the business community may have lost this year’s tort reform fight, hope springs eternal as we look to our neighbors to the South who passed comprehensive legal reform that aims to lower insurance rates for Floridians.

Despite this session’s feuds, a welcome reprieve from the status quo came from this session’s particularly impressive freshmen class. New legislators in both chambers and both parties shined and passed numerous bills. In fact, of the nearly 60 freshmen, 22 sponsored successful legislation that the Governor will consider, while dozens more passed legislation out of at least one chamber.

With the 2023 session over and barring an unexpected special legislative session, lawmakers will not reconvene until January of 2024. To fill the holes in the hearts of your political advocacy team, please feel free to contact us about any local, state, or federal initiatives you think we should be working on until the legislature reconvenes next year. Just as it’s true that the more things change, the more they stay the same, you can always count on your ACEC Georgia advocates to continue to fight for the business of engineering. A