MARIETTA — On Wednesday, state lawmakers marked the end of the 2023 legislative session in the customary ways — last-minute deals, a flurry of votes and the throwing of papers into the air around midnight.
A day after Sine Die at the Gold Dome, two of Cobb’s legislators — state Rep. Teri Anulewicz, D-Smyrna, and state Sen. Ed Setzler, R-west Cobb — sat down with the MDJ to discuss what did and didn’t pass this year.
Passport fees
A proposal from state Sen. Kay Kirkpatrick, R-east Cobb would have limited county court clerks from retaining personal income from processing passports. It passed the Senate but never received a full vote in the House.
Kirkpatrick authored the bill in the wake of media reports that Cobb Superior Court Clerk Connie Taylor, who receives a salary of $170,000, had received some $425,000 in additional income from passport fees. Subsequent reports spotlighted the income of other metro Atlanta clerks.
(Taylor’s personal income was only made public following open records requests from media. She is facing a Georgia Bureau of Investigation probe over allegations she ordered a subordinate to destroy records of her income.)
“That honestly did not necessarily surprise me,” Anulewicz said of the bill getting tied up. “I adore Kay. And I have a tremendous amount of respect for her. But the reality is that there was one clerk that there was an issue with, but there are 158 others.”
Anulewicz said in many rural counties with smaller budgets, the passport fee income is viewed as “almost part of the compensation package.”
It’s important, she added, to attract qualified people to seek the court clerk job.
Setzler said the court clerks have a lot of “emotional attachment” to that money, but he believes it’s an unjustifiable source of personal income.
Anulewicz added that it’s unusual for legislation…
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