The Georgia General Assembly is in its final official hours for 2023, with legislators prepared to gavel out “Sine Die” on March 29th. While this will end their 40 official business days in Atlanta for the year, it’s important to understand the real schedule of the legislature.
State Senators and Representatives are elected every two years, and the legislation they file is active for the duration of their term. The only constitutional requirement for the legislature is to pass a balanced budget every year. Any other legislation is either completed or left on the table based on the desires of leadership and/or majority votes.
Legislative work doesn’t begin on the first Monday after the second Sunday in January, nor does it end on the 40th business day thereafter. While their positions are considered “part time”, the work is year-round. Bigger and more complex issues are often hammered out during the rest of the year, sometimes in official study committees, other times with legislators quietly building support with their peers and/or building public support for their initiatives.
Normally this column would be a rundown of major bills still pending for this legislative session. The lag between the filing deadline and publication date would make much of the speculation of what might pass obsolete, so that will be saved for a later recap of significant legislation on Governor Kemp’s desk. Instead, today we’ll look at three major questions that legislators and voters will grapple with from April until next January.
The first question is an official one, via a joint press release from Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones and Speaker Jon Burns. The two announced earlier this month that they, along with Governor Brian Kemp, will use the time between meetings of the General Assembly to “review all Georgia tax credits, including the film tax credit” to ensure that each credit provides “a significant return on investment for Georgia taxpayers.”
Not…
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