The legislative session is officially over. Governor Brian Kemp has issued his veto messages and signing statement for this past session. Seven bills got the governor’s axe this year. Besides the content of the bills in question, the vetoes shed some light on the legislative process. A number of the bills that passed both chambers in the General Assembly required some companion legislation or funding to actually perform the requirements of the bill. Governor Kemp and his pen did not approve of this strategy.
Perhaps the most politically significant veto was of Senate Bill 238, which aimed to change the Rockdale County Board of Commissioners from a county-wide chairperson and two commissioners to five at-large commissioners, with a chairman selected from the commission members. The bill was in response to a somewhat odd chairman race last year, that featured a former State Senate Republican Janice Van Ness, turning Democrat and then winning. Local Democrats called her a “Trojan horse” who only switched parties because Rockdale has turned from a once-red county to a bright blue over the last twenty years. Former Vice President Kamala Harris won the county 73 percent to 26 percent over the eventual winner President Donald Trump.
Governor Kemp’s veto of the bill noted that the new structure of the commission would change the will of the voters, cutting the newly elected chairman’s tenure short by at least two years. Kemp noted that the significance of the changes required more time and consideration from the Rockdale County government and its local delegation before this November’s election.
Perhaps the best example of the Genera Assembly getting out over their skis on a bill and its lack of funding comes from Senate Bill 46, which would require every “department, agency, division, board, bureau, commission, authority, entity, or instrumentality” other than those in the University System of Georgia to designate a “lead agency service delivery official” who would report to the Georgia Technology Authority, in a new office, the “State of Georgia Government Service Delivery Lead.” Just this short summary connotes dozens, perhaps hundreds of new employees – or perhaps existing employees – that, while aimed eventually at efficiency, would certainly accrue additional costs, none of which were funded by the bill. The governor did not like that plan.
House Bill 846 is the other side of the problem, a bill that would create a homestead exemption from Cherokee County ad valorem taxes dependent on the revenue collected from a retail homestead option sales and use tax. While approving of 846, the General Assembly apparently did not approve of the framework that would make 846 possible. There will be no revenue from the retail homestead option sales and use tax, because those taxes were not passed. So, while not accumulating new costs, the bill was reliant on revenue from somewhere else, but that somewhere else was not created. The sponsor requested the veto and received it.
Other vetoes were for House Bill 532, which would have allowed counties with 20,000 acres or more of unimproved land owned by the Department of Natural Resources to apply for multiple grant programs. Current law only allows for one grant program and the state budget is already appropriating for the full value of lost property tax revenue. Governor Kemp did not see enough of a reason for the duplicative grant payments. House Bill 380 would have dissolved the Lower Chattahoochee Regional Airport, but at the request of the sponsor, the Authority lives on! Finally, House Bill 433 would have allowed the Department of Human Services to access criminal histories for basically anyone involved with DHS, employees, prospective or existing foster parents, or an adult in the home of a foster parent. While well-intentioned, Governor Kemp was not convinced the bill would not be an unnecessary privacy violation, particularly for those with charges that were dropped or never brought. Thus the veto.
