A. Thank you, Mr.

Matt Hatchett recognized for a motion.

Chairman Hatchett.

Thank you, Mr.

Speaker.

I move that this House disagree in and insist on its position on.

And appoint a conference committee for HB 974.

A little music in the battle over the budget as the House rejects the Senate's version.

In the last days of the session, with just two days left to wrap up their business there in full marathon mode before the session concludes this week.

Good evening and welcome to Lawmakers.

I'm Donna Lowry in Atlanta on day 39 of the 40 day legislative session.

The big question tonight is how many bills can our legislators pass in just two days?

The Senate opened today with nearly 90 pieces of legislation on the agenda.

And whatever isn't wrapped up today will carry over to Thursday for the final day.

Signee die.

Tonight, we'll be diving into some of the key bills that have passed, those that are slated for votes and a few that didn't quite make it this year.

And later on, we'll hear from Georgia's historic Senate Pro Tem Jan Jones.

First, let's check in with Capitol correspondent Sarah Kallis, who has the latest updates.

Hi, Donna.

As you can see, it has been a busy day at the Capitol as both chambers are passing as many bills as possible before the session.

Sunsets on Thursday.

The house kicked off the day by rejecting the Senate version of the budget and insisting on their own substitute.

The speaker then appointed chairman Matt Hatchett speaker pro tem Jan Jones and Majority Leader Chuck Efstration to hold a joint conference committee to hash out the differences.

All right.

We're depending on you guys stand up for the house.

Then it was on to the rules calendar representatives considered SB 587, which creates an animal cruelty offender database.

Additionally, this bill in section three creates a database for individuals who abuse animals.

They're on this database.

They cannot then go and get another animal to abuse.

It passed unanimously Senate Bill 406 or the Georgia Property Owner's Bill of rights, also received bipartisan support.

This bill basically creates accountability and transparency.

It creates an administrative process for homeowners to file their complaints, to be heard by neutral hearing officer by the Secretary of State's office.

The bill also increases the minimum delinquent HOA payment required for the HOA to foreclose on a property.

It passed 150 5-10 after a lunch break.

The House approved SB 552.

The true patriotism and universal student Access, or TP USA act.

The bill guarantees equal treatment of school political clubs.

If a school is going to establish a limited open forum, that is, if they are going to allow other groups to come in and use school facilities for meetings that they have to.

They can't discriminate based on the content of the the, the subject or the or the viewpoint of the group.

The federal Equal Access Act already provides this, but this tries to flesh that out in Georgia with a little greater detail.

Democrats objected to the bill and raised concerns about the legacy of the late conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who.

The bill was inspired by.

This bill is an homage to a particular organization, Turning Point USA, with a particular viewpoint.

That homage is contained within two short lines of the text of this bill.

Now, that text doesn't serve any purpose in this bill other than honoring Turning Point USA.

The bill passed 95-68 along party lines.

The House's rejection of the Senate's budget proposal caused consternation on the Senate floor.

On Friday, before they left.

When they left this chamber, left this building.

Do you know what they chanted as they sent back the perfect document you had prepared?

They chanted, send it back!

Send it back.

And I ask that three appointees be appointed, that Mr.

President, you would choose our best and brightest.

Not our oldest and feeble.

Those who are prepared to either come back behind their shield or on it.

The Senate agreed to form their joint committee and meet with the houses.

After that, they went to work on the 85 pieces of legislation on their calendar.

First up, HB 11 93.

It would fund literacy coaches for every school in the state with a kindergarten through third grade to improve reading skills and comprehension, as well as provide literacy and dyslexia screenings.

The bill has been a top priority for House Speaker Jon Burns this session.

Before the vote.

A lengthy amendment was added, changing sections of the bill on behalf of House requests.

We state that coaches, literacy coaches in each school shouldn't be doing other things.

They should spend no less than 70% of the school day in the classroom.

They should have no other activities like coaching and mentoring.

They should literally they.

While they may be doing coaching and mentoring as it relates to literacy, that we don't want them to have other administrative duties.

The bill had one significant rule change from past educational doctrine.

First graders can now be held back if they don't meet the new reading standards.

The amendment, the committee substitute and the original House bill provide different ways for parents to be informed that their children may be held back.

But what we do stop here is any type of social promotion to make sure that a child is ready to proceed out of first grade, and that they are reading on grade level or understanding the science of reading, or understanding our reading programs before we just socially promote them to a higher grade.

The bill was unanimously passed, and HB 11 16 would limit the growth of property taxes for most homeowners.

A 3% cap on yearly property tax assessments would go into effect in 2028, and counties and municipalities would no longer have the option of opting out of the plan that was passed in 2024.

If all counties implement this.

Two thirds of the city's will completely eliminate their property taxes for all classes.

That's two thirds of cities and virtually every city and county will reduce their property taxes on city and county taxes by more than half.

But in this bill, we give them another option.

They can pass a local homeowner option sales tax instead.

Under this method, the sales tax revenue would go to homeowners first.

Democrats objected, saying it just passes the tax burden from homeowners to consumers and will strangle local governments.

Starts with people who pay for basic essentials, and that money flows as a subsidy to people who own houses.

So if you're a senior who already benefits from substantial property tax relief.

If you're a renter who does not own property because you haven't turned 40 yet, so you're not able to afford your first home because it's 2026, then you will be subsidizing under House Bill 11 16, property owners who likely have six or seven figures in wealth already.

The bill passed along party lines 31-19 Also today, the House rejected a proposal that criminalizes the loss, removal or destruction of monuments, including Confederate monuments.

They also approved a bill that limits out-of-state campaign contributions to 50%.

That's my Capitol report.

Donna.

Thank you.

Sara.

Legislative activities at the Capitol are continuing well into the evening.

Earlier today, I had the chance to speak with several lawmakers.

One of them was Republican Representative Sandy Donatucci from Buford.

We focused on her proposal for maternity leave for state employees.

This is very important for our state employees as well as our teachers.

It gives the maternal birth mother three additional weeks.

It's taken immediately after birth so that they have time to heal.

They have time to spend time with their their new baby.

And we hope by doing this that we get to bring them back into the classroom.

So their their teachers as well as parents, mothers.

And we want to make sure that we get them back.

It's called math matters.

HB 1030.

Yes.

So I'm very excited about that.

We've actually passed from the House to the Senate, back to the House and on to the governor's desk.

So this is a bill that allows our students fourth and fifth grade.

We're going to give them an hour's worth of math.

And this is being done over in Alabama.

Alabama is the only state in the country whose children are testing at pre-COVID levels for math.

So it's a very important situation for our fourth and fifth graders.

Another part of the bill is that sixth through tenth grade, the students, based on their scoring end of class or end of grade, will automatically be put into advanced math.

So we're making sure that nobody is left behind.

If there are distinguished learner.

And then if there are proficient learner, then there's some options that can be discussed with the local schools.

Next, my interview with Democratic Representative Gabriel Sanchez of Smyrna, one of his bills is the Students Speak Act.

Here's what that's all about.

So this bill, what it does is it adds a student representative and further clarifies the teacher representative in the State Board of Education.

These are non-voting ex officio members of the state Board of Education, but they are still there to be able to advise on policy, because those are people who are going to be directly impacted.

Some school districts already have that.

Yes, yes.

And we want to make sure this bill clarifies that any local school district is allowed to do that, and they can set the rules for that as well.

Okay.

Let's go to HB 11 88.

Encourage transparency when it comes to rent pricing.

Yes.

House Bill 11 88 and I want to mention both of those bills have bipartisan support because I think we all agree on, first off, education and then on this bill housing, right?

There's a lot of different issues when it comes to our housing crisis.

This one is a particular one that hits close to home as well, because I'm a renter and I've had to deal with this myself.

It bans hidden fees from being implemented.

So in my case, our apartment installed this internet that no one wanted and no one ever heard of before.

To all of our apartment complexes.

And it doesn't work at all.

No one likes it, but because they installed it and it's being it's on, we have to pay for it even if we don't use it.

So I currently pay for two different internet services because the other one doesn't work well.

So I use the one that I want.

So it's an extra fee that's unnecessary.

And I want to make sure we can ban those kind of hidden fees.

And also if there's a mandatory fee required by law, it has to be marketed along with the rental price so that people know what they're paying upfront.

Let's talk about HB 864 and corporate ownership of Georgia Homes Act.

Yes, this is another housing piece, bill.

You know, this is the number 1 issue I've heard at the doors, right?

Is the cost of housing overall.

Right.

And everyone talks about how we need more supply.

One of the main reasons we have lost supply of housing is because we have these huge investment firms and huge corporations coming up, coming into Georgia and buying up all the single family housing.

In fact, the Atlanta housing market has the highest rate of corporate ownership in America and has one of the most inflated housing markets.

And our people have seen it.

They've seen their prices increase exponentially in a significantly, at least in the last several years.

My rent, when I was started renting out eight years ago, I was paying 850 a month.

Now I'm paying 1,550 a month.

Right.

And in just a matter of less than a decade.

So it's not this is not sustainable.

We have to have to stabilize our prices, and we have to make sure that we open up the housing supply by stopping these corporations from owning this single family housing and let families own housing, not these huge corporations.

HB 14 80, the Georgia Medicare for All Act.

Yes.

So this is something I ran on and something that I want to keep my promise on is universal healthcare for every single Georgian.

Right?

It's I think we're the only developed country in the world not to guarantee health care to our citizens.

We are the wealthiest country in the world.

We can certainly afford it.

So we can start right here in Georgia with the Georgia Medicare for All Act, which would guarantee healthcare free at the point of service for every single Georgian and includes everything Medicare already includes, as well as dental vision, home care, gender affirming care, and reproductive health care as well.

We're at the end of things.

How are all four of your bills doing?

Yeah, so we got a hearing on one of my bills last year, and we got bipartisan support on several of them.

We're working on at the last moments, trying to get hearings on these last two bills.

Unfortunately, none of them were able to get final passage, but we're going to continue to work on them until next year and continue to advocate and fight for these.

And the good news is that even if my bills didn't pass, other versions of my bill have passed forward, right?

Including my minimum wage bill included getting rid of the subminimum wage on disabled folks.

So that was passed into law.

And of course, the housing bill on corporate ownership.

There's actually been bipartisan support on that measure.

And some Republican bills have moved forward around that.

And so I think that this is a conversation we're going to continue have and we're going to continue to push forward.

Next with State Representative Rob Leverett of Elberton, I began our conversation by asking him about his bill that would give help to owners of sick animals.

So none of that that took a bill we passed last year that allowed veterinarians to do telemedicine, tele triage and tele advice.

But they had put a geographic limitation on it that would prohibit poison control, veterinary poison control centers from operating, or that was the worry or the fear, and also would arguably have limited the ability of a vet to give advice about a poisoned animal over the phone.

And so we stripped that language out of the code.

Apparently, it wasn't supposed to be there to start with.

So now when you're when your pet gets into something he or she is not supposed to get into and you need some veterinary help, you can get it more readily and more accessibly.

And this is really going to help in areas where you don't have a veterinarian close.

It will, because that is, we have a shortage of veterinarians in the state.

And so this will be real helpful.

Not if it's just if it's a pet, but as well, if it was an animal that you rely on for your livelihood that gets into something it's not supposed to, it happens less, less often there.

But and I had a little personal experience because my dog Charlie, I actually put him up on the screen in the house when I presented the bill, because he ate a metal pie pan one time, not a small metal pie pan like a large metal pie pan.

And yeah, and he's fine.

We got it taken care of.

So it wasn't exactly the same as poison control, but it was kind of a ingesting something he wasn't supposed to.

So I had some personal experience I could bring to bear when I talked about the bill.

I think Charlie thinks he's super dog or something like that.

Well, he's famous now.

He's he's he's been up on the screen in the in the floor of the House.

Let's talk about HB 998.

What's that about?

So 998 was the bill that if you are in a rural area and have basic phone service.

This was crucial to the continued affordability and accessibility of phone service, basic phone service out in rural areas.

So there was a universal access fund and universal access program that PSC managed and maintained.

It was from about 30 something years ago that the General Assembly passed this program to provide that certain small, phone providers who provide basic service based upon a reasonable request.

It's like the care of last resort in rural areas.

It was set to end.

The whole program was going to end in about four years.

And so a lot of the smaller providers were having trouble with their financing, and there was just a concern they wouldn't be able to maintain those lines because, you know, you don't have you have a lot fewer people per mile.

You're not really getting as much revenue off of them.

So we we extended it another ten years, put some guardrails around it and provided the PSC will provide the General Assembly a biennial report on the fund.

A big thank you to Representatives Donna Tucci, Sanchez and Leverett for their time on this very busy day.

And coming up, we'll hear from Speaker Pro Tem Jan Jones.

Stay with us.

Georgia Farm Bureau a grassroots organization dedicated to preserving Georgia agriculture.

Farm Bureau advocates for all Georgia farmers at the state Capitol during the session and year round.

Georgia Farm Bureau the voice of Georgia farmers.

Hi, I'm Bert Wesley Huffman, joining you from the set of Lawmakers, now in its 56th season, covering the Georgia legislative session.

You know, community and collaboration are foundational to our work, and we're honored to bring those concepts together around the issues and stories that matter to you.

Your engagement powers our ability to create trusted programming that encourages curiosity and conversation with Georgia in focus.

It's all here for you, so please support it now with your generous gift at GPB.

Give.

It's not a country thing or a city thing, but it is a. Get the crew together thing.

It's not a soul music thing or a folk music thing, but it is a. Finding your new favorite local band thing.

It's not a yellow jacket thing or a bulldog thing, but it is a football.

Friday's thing that brings every fan to their feet.

Tune in to GPB.

It's a Georgia thing.

We came across this intriguing story.

Things are starting to get going.

Are you prepared?

It is a golden opportunity.

It's not over.

It will be all that you've dreamed of.

Welcome back to Lawmakers.

I'm Donna Lowry.

Georgia's political history is rich with achievements, primarily from men.

Tonight, we're honored to feature a remarkable woman who has broken barriers.

Speaker Pro tem Jan Jones with an impressive 16 years in her position, she is not only the longest serving speaker pro tem in Georgia history, but also the first woman to hold this role.

As she wraps up her distinguished career, we invite you to watch her heartfelt farewell speech.

Thank you, members, and thank you, Mr.

Speaker, for those overly kind words.

I just wanted to share a few things as I prepare to leave the chamber.

Sign here.

Thank you.

Those are beautiful grandchildren.

By the way, did I mention that?

That's helpful.

Thank you.

Members.

I apologize.

No, that does help.

That helps., I grew up in nobody from nowhere and certainly not someone who's future might be expected to serve in the Georgia House of Representatives.

I never ran for an elected position.

Growing up, not club president, not even line leader.

My people were not in politics.

They worked for a living, moving from state to state.

As the daughter of an enlisted Air Force soldier and a mother who worked part time teaching piano and always took us to church.

I was always the new kid in town, the new kid in school, both sets of my grandparents were small, hardscrabble farmers with very large families to feed from Lawrence County.

And so my message to young people when I speak is always that if someone as unlikely as me can serve in the Georgia General Assembly, they can as well, or aspire to other things that maybe they haven't even imagined.

And I'm thankful for my common upbringing.

When you grow up with little special treatment, you learn to pull your own self up because no one is probably coming to do it for you.

My life experiences influenced and shaped my intensity, which some of you are probably aware of as a state representative to try to create opportunities for all young people, particularly the nobodies from nowhere.

The most meaningful thing we can do as state legislators is to support children with a brighter future through education and higher education opportunities.

When I was sworn in in 2003, I was as ignorant about being a legislator as one could possibly be.

It soon became clear to others as well.

With my first bill, I sat down to discuss it with a longtime senator who also represented my area, and he listened and he told me it was a good bill for me.

I took it as a positive sign, and I asked him if he'd carry it in the Senate, and he responded, absolutely not.

I said, it was a good bill for you.

Not a good bill.

And unsurprisingly, I never got a hearing in the House.

I learned, after many missteps, not to let perfect be the enemy of the good and to forget about who would killed a proposition of mine earlier, because I'd likely need them the next year or the next day.

And many of you know I'd much rather kill a bad bill than pass a good one, because it's very hard to unwind bad policy that's in law.

I learned to include in my deliberations the empty chair representing the quiet people.

We don't hear from and who don't have a paid lobbyist advocating for them in the hall.

My seatmate for eight years suggested I incorporate a little humor into my comments today, and I have demurred because family and friends know my politically incorrect humor is best reserved in private.

Yes, I can and have said that, but not from the well, along with other old timers, we've watched how the house has changed to meet the times over the past 20 years.

No more smoking in the ante room as the pages filed by no more 40 pages of local earmarks in the budget for band uniforms and baseball fields.

No more scribbled amendments on the fly put up on the screen and designed to nullify one another.

And I'll be cheering you from afar as you create new state policies and chamber traditions that will better reflect our people's needs.

I'm truly appreciative for every single staffer in the Capitol that keeps this place running.

I can't have a red light that will come on soon, so I don't have time to name them all, but do.

We did a good job of that earlier.

They are the glue in our offices, crafting our legislation, making the chamber operate, and my staff has made me look better than I deserve.

And I want to thank Sheena and Emily for their care and support.

And Tyler, who recently moved on to greener pastures.

I want to thank the many House members both here and no longer in the chamber, that enriched, stretched, informed, pushed and shared life with me.

Over these 24 years.

We've spent many hours together in meetings, committees, dinners, lunches, and the chamber.

And we do discuss and we fight.

And we mostly reconcile to try to make the state work for all our people.

I'm truly grateful to each one of you, including the advocates in the hall and the squatters in my office.

I value your friendship more than you know, and I believe in you.

And I know you will continue to improve the lot for all of Georgia.

I want to thank the constituents that elected me for 12 terms to represent them and their interests.

They are the point, and I've tried to do right by them.

I owe this entire body my gratitude for electing me to serve as speaker pro tem for 16 years.

It's it's been a privilege to serve you in that role, something I could not have imagined growing up.

Speaker Burns, I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to work with you, and I have every confidence in your leadership and ability to look at the broader picture and the entire state when evaluating a legislation and priorities.

You truly are a good man, Mr.

Speaker.

I want to thank my husband, Kaitlyn.

My children, tram, Peyton, Shelby and Griffin, and now their spouses, Hannah, Youssef, Jacob and Maddie.

For your patience in sharing me with 60,000 constituents in the House of Representatives.

Any regrets that I ever have is a legislator or only for the times I didn't join you or our little grandchildren?

Agnes, Felix, Anika and Meena, or missed an event, a spring break, one year, even a prom on crossover night, or all the other significant and mundane moments that life in elected office can get in the way of.

Thank you for standing by me.

So I'll leave you with a visual description as you return in future sessions.

Consider in your mind's eye the sense of urgency experienced by the third monkey fighting his way up the ramp to Noah's Ark.

And feeling the raindrops starting to fall.

Fight like the third monkey as you work on legislation and the budget.

To make life better for our fellow Georgians.

And with that, Mr.

Speaker, and my fellow representatives, thank you for listening.

God bless you.

And I yield the.

Well.

We wish.

Speaker Pro tem Jan Jones all the best.

Well, that wraps up tonight's edition of Lawmakers.

But don't miss our final show of the season on Thursday.

It's sunny di.

We have a special 1 hour program featuring live interviews with lawmakers and a conversation with Governor Brian Kemp, plus two of our favorite analysts will join us for their insights on what's happened throughout the legislative session, and we will have a tribute to some of the people here.

There are a lot of people who work on the show, and at the end of the show, you'll want to stay tuned to see all of their faces.

Wishing you a wonderful evening.