In a legislative session marked by debates over housing affordability and free speech, the ongoing viability for key bills was determined during Crossover Day on Feb. 29 — the deadline for bills in one chamber to go to the other at the State Capitol before the session ends on March 28.
Bills must pass out of the chamber in which they were introduced by the 28th day of the 40-day legislative session to have a chance of becoming law. Atlanta Civic Circle has been tracking several high-profile bills, such as deepfake regulation and habitable rental housing. Here is an update on what’s happening to those bills and others that would affect affordable housing and speech rights for Georgians – including public libraries.
Housing bills
Nearly every piece of legislation around housing affordability sputtered out this session, thanks in large part to a landlord-friendly legislature that’s long resisted housing reform efforts. (It didn’t help that these bills — mostly backed by Democrats — faced a Republican-dominated General Assembly during an election year.)
Senate Bill 125, for instance, would have struck down Georgia’s decades-old ban on rent regulation measures — commonly referred to as “rent control.” But it failed to earn a vote in the Senate by the Feb. 29 deadline. Neither did SB 278, which would have allowed local governments to create registries of rental properties and inspect multifamily rental units when there were signs of code violations, nor SB 29, a proposal to reign in abuses of power by homeowners associations by, among other things, allowing for mediation at no charge to the homeowner to resolve assessment disputes.
But House Bill 404, the so-called Safe at Home Act, still has a shot at securing Gov. Brian Kemp’s signature. If ratified, it would establish a baseline of habitability standards for Georgia rental residences and limit the amount landlords could charge for security deposits to two months’ worth of rent.
Housing advocates have complained HB 404 doesn’t go far enough to guarantee livable conditions, since the legislation doesn’t explicitly define “habitability.” Still, most support the bill, considering it a small first step in the right direction.
Democracy bills
A bill from the Houseto regulate deepfakes has survived Crossover Day. House Bill 986 would make it a felony to broadcast or publish deceptive information within 90 days of an election that aims to influence a candidate’s chance of being elected, create confusion about election administration, or influence the result.
The bill passed the House on a 148-22 vote that was fairly evenly split between Republicans and Democrats and went to the Senate for consideration on Feb. 26. Related legislation, Senate Bill 392, which would make it a felony to create a deepfake with the intent of influencing an election, got stuck in the Senate Judiciary Committee without crossing over.
Free speech advocates can both cheer and jeer the results of the first phase of this legislative session.
The bad news for civil liberties advocates: SB 63, which expands charges that require cash bail, passed both the state Senate and House and awaits the governor’s signature. The bill adds 30 new misdemeanor charges – such as trespassing, unlawful gathering, and failing to appear in court for a traffic ticket – to those requiring a cash bond for release from jail after an arrest.
Critics say the bill is a direct response to the protest movement against the controversial Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, also known as “Cop City,” and the Georgia ACLU has said it will sue if Kemp signs it into law.
On the other hand, a bill that would have expanded the state RICO statute by adding various misdemeanors to a list of acts considered racketeering (SB 359, the “Protecting Georgians Act”) didn’t make it to a vote in the Senate.
Most of the bills targeting speech in Georgia schools — librarians and library materials in particular — failed to cross over from the Senate to the House. That includes SB 88, which aimed to restrict classroom discussion of sexuality and gender. Also stymied: SB 394, which called for a new “restricted” category for educational material with “sexually explicit” content, and SB 154, which would have allowed the criminal prosecution of school librarians for distributing material deemed “harmful to minors,” as currently defined in Georgia law.
The school library bill that did pass the Senate on Crossover Day is SB 390, which severs ties between the American Library Association (ALA) and Georgia’s public library system. The Republican-controlled state Senate followed Republican lawmakers in other states in the backlash to a 2022 tweet from the newly elected ALA president, Emily Drabinski, that read: “I just cannot believe that a Marxist lesbian who believes that collective power is possible to build and can be wielded for a better world is the president-elect of @ALALibrary.”
The legislation would prevent the state’s university, city, county and regional libraries from spending public or donated private funds on any ALA materials or services, including membership dues. It would also prohibit recognizing ALA certification for state-employed librarians. The bill would also dissolve the State Board for the Certification of Librarians and transfer certification to an existing Georgia Council of Public Libraries. The House took up SB 390 on March 4.