In news of what the state Legislature didn’t approve this year, put: any takeover or oversight of Atlanta’s airport. Or a tax break for jet fuel. Or a boost to rural transit.
That would solve a problem for people who have a state medical marijuana card, but no place to buy the liquid they use to fight the side effects of chemotherapy, the frequency of seizures or other disorders.
Medical cannabis advocates think a rewrite of a House-approved medical cannabis cultivation bill is mainly unworkable and contains some poison pill provisions. But a key state Senator says the original might have had unintended consequences.
So should lawmakers meet more than 40 days per year? You won’t hardly find anyone who will answer “yes” to that.
Between the two, that’s about $7.5 million that the state didn’t spend on environmental cleanup this fiscal year, but that it arguably should have.
The nice thing about a fiscal note is that all sides consider it at least a good-faith estimate, free of industry or partisan spin. But Georgia legislators often don’t have a nonpartisan official estimate of what their votes will mean for the state’s finances.
If this bill passes, expect comprehensive needle-exchange programs to take root beyond Atlanta.
Some of the things that still have a chance? A near-total ban on abortions, a hate crime law, a state takeover of the airport, medical cannabis cultivation and more.
“This law is a ban on retaliatory evictions of tenants,” said state Rep. Sharon Cooper, R-Marietta. “This is about slum landlords.”
“Thirty million dollars to $60 million dollars can remove a whole lot of barriers for a whole lot of people in our state,” said state Rep. Kevin Tanner, R-Dawsonville.
One might ask if high-THC marijuana for sale on the street might be grown in the middle of a field of hemp.
“We’ve had the world’s busiest and most efficient airport for many years running, and this notion that the state can somehow run it better is presumptuous,” said Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms
Most everyone agrees that the voting process in Georgia needs changes, but voting machines have divided folks under the Gold Dome.
“The reason our cities are the places you want to live is because of design standards,” Lilburn Mayor Johnny Crist said opposing the bill. He said aesthetics are part of what make a city interesting and attractive to new residents.
“I never dreamed that in 2019 this would be a problem. But it is,” said state Rep. Debbie Buckner.
Gov. Brian Kemp’s plan could cover a lot of people defined in some broad way, or it might be just a few, maybe with some specific, high-cost conditions.
DeKalb County’s got a situation: it wants to get rid of the massive Confederate monument that it owns in downtown Decatur. But nobody wants it.
The worry is building among Georgia policymakers that the differences between metro and country are too big, to the detriment of folks in rural Georgia. It’s among lots of states thinking about how to make up the difference.
The idea of ratifying ERA is getting some serious bipartisan support in the Georgia Legislature — about 36 years after the deadline to change the Constitution to guarantee equal rights for people regardless of sex.
