Ask Coastal Georgians what lawmakers should prioritize during the new session of the Georgia General Assembly, their answers are clear: protecting the region’s environment and natural resources. Upgrading and building roads and bridges. School safety.
COMING MONDAY
• How readers’ priorities stack up to those of lawmakers as we head into a new legislative session.
This is the first of a two-part series on The Current’s reader survey of legislative priorities. In the second, to be published Monday, we’ll look at what Coastal Georgia lawmakers are saying about their legislative priorities and ask how much they’re in sync with the results of our reader survey.
Ask them what lawmakers should drop to the bottom of their to-do list, their answers are equally clear: Legalizing gambling, tort reform and funding for the state prison system.
These are just some of the top takeaways of a survey of readers’ legislative priorities conducted by The Current, as the state’s 236 lawmakers prepare to convene in Atlanta on Monday for the legislature’s 158th session.
In addition to ranking a list of legislative priorities drawn by The Current from speeches by local lawmakers and officials, as well as issue papers by business groups and other non-governmental organizations, readers offered their own priorities, highlighted by their concerns over the state of health care and education in Georgia.
Weaving through many of the readers’ views on legislative priorities is the concern about the intended and unintended consequences of growth in Coastal Georgia.
After deploring what they described as the “rapid and destructive development along the coastal plain,” one reader asked: “Are areas that should not be developed being adequately considered? Are questions about the water needs of new manufacturing businesses being considered before construction or land sale is allowed?”
How the survey was carried out
The Current’s informal survey, posted Jan. 2 and noticed in 3 regular newsletters, offered a basic list of 13 possible legislative priorities, drawn mainly from legislative agendas prepared by local lawmakers and municipal officials, as well as business groups and other non-governmental organizations.
The list included, in order, “housing support,” “Okefenokee Wildlife Refuge protection, “water management,” “voting processes,” “regional transportation,” “roads, bridges maintenance, replacement,” “new funding for state corrections facilities,” “stricter guidelines on tax credits or breaks,” “tort reform,” “climate change resilience,” “school safety,” “legalized gambling,” and “firearms safety.”
On a scale of one-to-seven, with seven being “it should be a top priority” and one being “not a big deal now,” we asked readers to rate each of those possible priorities. More than 150 readers responded to the survey online.
Water management, protecting the Okefenokee
Whether urging legislators to pass stricter recycling guidelines, increase funding for land conservation, or enhance incentives for electric vehicles, those surveyed indicated environmental protection was their biggest concern.
They gave the highest urgency — five-and-above — to water management (83.4%) and protection of the Okefenokee (83.1%). That was followed closely by construction or upgrading of roads and bridges (79.0%), school safety (76.2%) and firearms safety (75.5%), and climate change resilience (74.6%).
Those surveyed gave the lowest priority — four-and-below — to legalized gambling (84.6%), followed by tort reform (63.8%), funding for state correction facilities (55.0%), and stricter guidelines for tax credits (42.8%).
Protecting the Okefenokee drew the single, most passionate response from the survey’s respondents (61.5%), followed by firearms safety (60.5%), water management (49.7%), climate change resilience (49.3%) and school safety (44.9%).
Legalizing gambling drew the single, most lukewarm response (59.2%) from readers, followed by tort reform (15.9%), voting processes (12.3%), and climate change resilience (11.6%).
Health care, education
No list of legislative priorities is complete. So, in addition to The Current offering its own suggestions in the survey, readers were provided space to comment and indicate their own preferences.
In last year’s survey, readers rated access to health care — whether it’s the availability of mental health care or any kind of care in rural Coastal Georgia — the highest legislative priority. That sense of urgency persists.
“Expand Medicaid for increased access to treatment for mental illness and substance use disorders,” wrote one reader.
“Rural community access to health care, need for more medical personnel and clinics, including, but not limited to, pregnant women and children,” wrote another.
One reader was specific, exhorting lawmakers to pass a measure championed by Sen. Kim Jackson (D-Stone Mountain) to “bring more foreign-credentialed doctors into Georgia’s healthcare system.”
Improving education and worries about the consequences of the state’s new voucher program was another recurrent theme, with one reader urging a curb on the program’s expansion and “taking even more funds from public schools.”
Another reader urged measures to improve literacy and support public libraries. Still another called on the legislature to change the state’s outdated Quality Basic Education formula for funding public schools.
Echoes of 2024 presidential election
Immigration, transgender rights, and other issues that roiled last year’s U.S. presidential election and could impact this session of the General Assembly also figured prominently in the legislative wish lists of some readers.
“ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION,” wrote one reader, another adding, “LIMIT TAXES BEING SPENT TO SUPPORT FOREIGN ALIENS.” Another respondent instead urged, “protection for undocumented workers.”
Another reader pushed for further measures to bar “biological males participating in female sports.” Another appealed for measures to protect the civil rights of cis [cisgender] women and the trans community.
One comment succinctly reflected part of last year’s core Republican campaign agenda: “Stiffer penalties for voter fraud or cheating of any kind during an election. Get rid of any type of DEI [diversity, equity, inclusion] program. Drive NGOs [non-governmental organizations] out of our state.”
‘Big deal’ v. ‘little deal’
For lawmakers and their constituents alike, the fate of any legislative priority in the legislature’s upcoming session depends, of course, on many factors — political makeup, to start with.
Republicans hold the proverbial trifecta in Atlanta. They control the governor’s office, and they have a 10-seat majority in the 56-seat Senate and a 24-seat majority in the 180-member House. That means they control not only what proposed measures become law but whether they’re even addressed.
It’s also important to remember that the Georgia General Assembly is a part-time legislature, with senators and representatives receiving a salary of $24,341.64 annually, plus a daily allowance of $247 while the legislature is in session. The assembly meets just 40 days a year to take up the business of the 8th most populous U.S. state east of the Mississippi River.
That means that, to an unusual extent, the assembly’s work is driven by lobbyists and by agency and legislative staff. Coastal Georgians may rank the legalization of gambling as a low priority, for instance, but legions of lobbyists working for the gambling industry are determined to see it done.
Then there’s the crucial role of Gov. Brian Kemp. He’s barred from seeking another term as the state’s chief executive and will be looking during this session to cement his legacy and further his ambitions for whatever election campaign may lay ahead.
While respondents to The Current’s survey ranked tort reform as a low priority, Kemp has put it atop his wish list, though the details of his proposals are still unclear. And while respondents also assigned little urgency to prison funding, the governor, under pressure from the U.S. Justice Department, is making that a priority, too, lest the condition of the state’s corrections facilities become a stain on his record.
Finally, next year’s elections, which will see a U.S. Senate seat and all statewide offices contested, are certain to shape the legislative preferences of state House and Senate leaders, many of whom have already made clear their plans to run and will want to position themselves for the campaign ahead.
