Georgia lawmakers voted on dozens of bills Thursday – known as Crossover Day – as a key legislative deadline came and went.
They dubbed the white shrimp as the state’s official crustacean and moved forward a GOP bill creating an “America first” license plate but only after a Democrat tried to change it to a “Donald Trump first” plate.
“I think what I’m really trying to get at here is just the heart and the spirit of the legislation,” said Sen. Josh McLaurin, a Sandy Springs Democrat.
But the day of marathon voting also featured its share of tense debates as lawmakers raced to get their bills out of at least one chamber by the close of Crossover Day, when a bill must pass out of at least one chamber for a smooth path to the governor’s desk.
The House passed a bill that would force local law enforcement to work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement after the murder of an Augusta University nursing student made immigration a political flashpoint.
And the Senate passed a controversial religious freedom bill that some say is a license to discriminate and pushed through a bill pulling Georgia out from the American Library Association.
And several closely watched bills also failed to get a vote at all. For example, a proposal to impose a three-year moratorium on new permit applications for dragline mining never got a vote in the House even after being fast-tracked through the committee process. The bill was floated as public pressure ramps up on lawmakers to block a mining proposal near the Okefenokee Wildlife National Refuge.
Senate moves to revive consumers’ utility council
A measure that would bring back a consumers’ utility council that was eliminated in 2008 during the Great Recession sailed through the Senate Thursday.
The bill, sponsored by Rome Republican Sen. Chuck Hufstetler, would create the Office of Consumers’ Utility Council with an independent director under the…
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