Rep. Alan Powell’s 2022 Legislative Newsletter – Week Seven

By State Representative Alan Powell, HD 32 

This week, we debated and voted on an array of legislation in the House Chamber, and we reached Legislative Day 20, at the end of the week, which means we are at the halfway point of the session.

House Bill 1092: Georgia Women’s Care (Child Care Alternatives, Resources, and Education) Act, enact:
The legislation would provide greater care for incarcerated pregnant women.

House Bill 1192: Social services; treatment services under Medicaid to Persons with HIV:

• Allows the Georgia Department of Community Health to submit a waiver request to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services of the U.S. Health Department, to provide Medicaid coverage for HIV treatment services. If this waiver request is approved by the federal government, the state would be able to conduct a statewide demonstration project through the state’s Medicaid program, to provide more effective, early treatment of HIV to Georgians through a package of services available, including antiretroviral therapy.
• Allows the state to expand access to lifesaving HIV detection and treatment options, as well as explore a more sustainable funding source to help end the HIV epidemic in our state.

House Bill 1217: Student Technology Protection Act:

• Requires each local board of education and charter school governing body to adopt an acceptable-use policy this year that could better prevent and prohibit any school computer or network from accessing obscene materials, child pornography or material deemed harmful to minors.
• Requires each school system take necessary steps to implement and enforce its new acceptable-use policy, as well as update school technology to better block or filter access to these explicit materials online.

House Bill 500: Allows a second round of funding of $100 million to the Georgia Agribusiness and Rural Jobs Act program for capital investments, increase the program’s application fee from $5,000 to $25,000, establish an annual maintenance fee of $7,500 for all rural funds and update the program’s reporting requirements.

House Bill 896: Updates a homestead exemption for counties that had populations between 23,500 and 23,675 on the 2010 U.S. Census with counties that had populations between 25,400 and 25,500 on the 2020 U.S. Census.

House Bill 1146: Requires vehicles driven by officers enforcing traffic laws to be equipped with flashing blue lights and would allow the Georgia State Patrol to have vehicles without such exterior-mounted roof lights.

House Bill 1148: Prohibits individuals from bringing a cervid carcass, such as a deer carcass, from outside Georgia into the state if any part of the carcass contains a portion of the nervous system, and this bill would provide exceptions for antlers, skulls, skull plates, teeth or jawbones that have soft tissue attached.

House Bill 1215: Allows students to withdraw from their local school and enroll in a charter school with available classroom space without penalty and would require local education boards to adopt a universal, streamlined transfer process, as well as clarify how local revenue allocations would be collected and calculated for charter schools.

House Bill 1233: Revises the effective date of rules and regulations promulgated by the Georgia Board of Natural Resources to January 1, 2022, consolidates various species of black bass, updates requirements for shotguns used for hunting migratory game birds, and create the umbrella term “migratory game birds.”

House Bill 1320: Updates the state’s definition of “Internal Revenue Code” to include the provisions of the Federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, such as changing which bonds qualify as tax-exempt bond financing, extending interest-rate smoothing for defined benefit plans, and expanding certain non-taxable contributions for government water or sewage disposal services.

I continue to have people questioning me about the right to vote for legalized gambling. This would take a Constitutional Amendment and the people would have to vote on it. We do not know, at this point, whether we will see this issue come forward, but there is always a chance, as there have been a number of bills introduced from the
House and Senate.

Many more important bills will be taken up before Crossover Day, March 15, 2022 including the Fiscal Year 2023 budget.

I encourage you to reach out if you have any questions or concerns regarding any legislation still up for consideration or that we have discussed or passed thus far. You can reach my Capitol office at 404-463-3793 or email me directly at [email protected].

As always, thank you for allowing me to serve as your state representative and legislative
voice at the Capitol.