Currently, Superior Court Clerks keep, as personal compensation, the $25 fee charged for processing U.S. passport applications.  This bill requires the Clerks to turn over these fees to the county governing authority.  Note that counties would remain free to provide this revenue back to the Clerk's office in whole or in part. 

This legislation clarifies the existing statute regarding wiretapping and trace devices to specify that warrants issued to district attorneys or the Attorney General to use trace devices or intercept communications shall have statewide application and shall be permitted in any location of the state.

This legislation requires alarm companies to attempt to verify alarm calls by calling or texting the property owner up to two times before sending the alarm signal to public safety for response.  The alarm companies would not be required to verify the alarm calls for fire alarms, panic alarms, robbery in progress alarms or alarms where the alarm company can tell from the audio or video that a crime is occurring.

Currently, retirement programs such as those offered by ACCG and GMA may only invest 5 percent of their holdings in real estate investments. This legislation increases the amount of permissible investment to 10 percent.

This bill purports to impose restrictions on the enactment process of any bills proposing any tax exemptions, exclusions, deductions, credits, deferrals, or preferential rates.

The underlying language for this bill was stripped in the Senate Non-Civil Judiciary Committee on Wednesday and was substituted with the language in SB 160. Both bills address one of ACCG's top priorities this session, which is to reduce paperwork and bureaucratic morass in complying with Georgia's illegal immigration reform mandates. 

 

This legislation, one of ACCG's top priorities, seeks to halt the now-common state practice of redirecting fees from their designated purposes to the state's general fund for other uses.  If fees for the Solid Waste Trust Fund, Hazardous Waste Trust Fund, Indigent Defense, Peace Officers and Prosecutors Training Fund and teen driver's education are not appropriated for their intended use, the fees will be reduced or eliminated, proportionate to the amount that is redirected. 

 

While the Senate once again halted this legislation, HB 276 did pass both chambers, applying the above fee-reduction mechanism to the Hazardous and Solid Waste Trust Funds.    

 

Click here for ACCG's HB 127 Press Release

 

Click here for ACCG's sectional summary of HB 127

 

Click here for ACCG's implementation timeline for HB 127        

This legislation allows a judge to participate in a hearing for an arrest or search warrant by video conference, regardless of the judge's location at the time of the conference.

This legislation requires a tax exemption bill to be introduced in the first year of the biennial legislative session and eligible for passage in the second year after the bill has been studied and a fiscal analysis conducted.

This legislation changes the oath that bailiffs must take, which would allow them to give jurors water only to drink.  The oath also requires the bailiffs to swear that they will not allow jurors to have books, papers or electronic communication devices.

This legislation authorizes a county to spend up to 15 percent of the revenues from a future SPLOST on maintenance and repair activities.  The authorized percentage would have to be approved in a SPLOST referendum and could only be used to fund maintenance and repair on capital projects acquired through SPLOST. 

This legislation allows an associate juvenile court judge to be appointed as judge pro tempore of the juvenile court in cases where the juvenile court judge cannot sit. Additionally, it removes the provision where orders of the associate juvenile court can be re-heard by the juvenile court judge when one of the parties appeals.

This legislation addresses one of ACCG's top priorities this session. To reduce paperwork and bureaucratic morass in complying with Georgia's illegal immigration reform laws, HB 183 consolidates three local government immigration reporting mandates to one report, due once a year, to one agency; no longer mandates that businesses seeking business licenses, occupation tax certificiates  or other documents required to operate a business submit E-Verify information to local governments annually, but just once; eliminates "contracts" as a public benefit; allows those submitting documents to local governments to prove immigration status to do so by mail; and allows legal U.S. citizens to only have to prove their citizenship by affidavit once, rather than annually, to receive public benefits from the same agency. 

 

For ACCG's Sectional Summary of HB 183, please click here.   

 

For ACCG's one-stop Web shop on all things immigration for Georgia's county governments, please click here.      

This legislation requires the Department of Natural Resources to provide at least a 60-day notice to a county or city before the State closes a park or recreation area, decreases its operating hours or services by 50 percent or more, or permanently changes a primary operational function within the local's jurisdiction.  This is simply to give notice, providing the county some time to decide whether it wants to assume any responsibilities in operating the park or recreation area. 

This legislation establishes a method for adults to prepare a psychiatric advance direction to express their mental health care treatment preferences in advance, as well as to authorize an agent to make mental health care decisions on his or her behalf.  It provides immunity from liability to law enforcement officers who follow an advance directive. This legislation has also been introducted in the Senate - S.B.371.

This legislation is a combination of some of the provisions from the Juvenile Code Rewrite and the recommendations from the Criminal Justice Reform Council in regards to juvenile justice. The bill restructures the juvenile code to improve the process for practitioners and judges. For a section by section summary please click here.

This legislation makes administrative changes to the implementation, collection and distribution of the energy excise tax.

 

Click here for a complete review of the bill.

 

This legislation renews the fees that make up the Hazardous Waste Trust Fund (hazardous waste transporting, disposal, and the state's 75-cent-per-ton solid waste tipping fees, among others) for five years, from July 1, 2013 to July 1, 2018. Since 2004, over 60 percent of these fees have been redirected to the state's general fund, not going toward their statutorily-dedicated purpose of cleaning up hazardous sites, including old county landfills. 

 

The bill applies a fee-reduction mechanism (also found in HB 127) to fix the redirection of HWTF and Solid Waste Trust Fund fees.  If fees for these two trust funds are not appropriated for their designated purposes, then the fees will be proportionately reduced the following year.

 

Addressing the redirection of these fees was one of ACCG's policy priorities this legislative session. 

 

Click here for a chart and summary of the HWTF's redirected fees since 2004.

Click here for a chart and summary of the SWTF's redirected fees since 2004.   

 

Among many other revisions that are not related to county governance, HB 283 eliminates the antiquated requirement that the board of commissioners provide office space in the courthouse to the school superintendent.  ACCG supports this section of the bill.   

This legislation provides for the comprehensive revision of provisions regarding ad valorem taxation, assessment, and appeal. The bill was amended this week in the Senate Finance Committee. Please review the summary of amendments and provide any comments or concerns to ACCG. The mandated salary supplement to the Superior Court Clerk for providing administrative support to the Board of Equalization was removed from the bill.