The hot topics we anticipated for this session are the ones we still hear about: mental health, education and gun rights.
MACON, Georgia – The Georgia General Assembly is nearing the 19th day of the legislative session. We’re less than a month away from Crossover Day.
There are already some bills that have become big talkers under the Gold Dome.
The hot topics we anticipated for this session are the ones we still hear about: mental health, education and gun rights.
First, an issue on which both Republicans and Democrats seem to be on equal footing — mental health.
Speaker David Ralston introduced the 75-page Mental Health Parity Bill, which would require health insurers to treat mental illness the same way they treat physical illness.
“It’s not just a question of resources. It’s a lot more complicated than that. We need to get more people into this field to treat mental illness,” said Rep. Robert Dickey. “We’re playing catch-up in our state.”
“We’re not investing the money we should be investing,” Senator David Lucas said.
That bill is expected to be moved out of the Health and Human Services Committee and onto the House floor by next week.
But there is a list of bills that are already causing debate. Some relate to education.
There are several versions of bills dealing with banning critical race theory.
The law most debated is Senate Bill 377.
It would prohibit teaching that a person is inherently oppressive simply because of race or that “the United States of America and the State of Georgia are fundamentally or systemically racist.” The bill states that it would apply to local school systems as well as the Georgia University System and Georgia Technical College System.
“When you teach American history, you teach what happened. Slavery is part of American history. You can’t erase that,” Lucas said.
“You know it doesn’t erase history,” Rep. Matt Hatchett said. “It doesn’t say ‘I won’t teach history’ or ‘I won’t teach that slavery was wrong.’ It means saying that you or I … or one person and another person is better than another person because of something that happened in the past.”
A separate education bill we are monitoring is House Bill 1178, known as the Parents’ Bill of Rights. Republicans are pushing to give parents more control over their children’s education. If passed, it would add transparency provisions to state law and allow parents access to their children’s educational materials.
Another theme that comes to the fore is constitutional carry. If passed, it would allow Georgians to carry a gun without a permit or government documents.
“You should be able to get information about people to find out if they’ve been involved in domestic violence or if they have mental health issues,” Lucas said.
“Our permitting process is working pretty well right now,” Dickey said. “That’s going to be a strong debate that we’re going to have this year,” he added, commenting on the constitutional carry.
