Georgia’s Legislature meets for just 40 days each year. One of the most important days of the session is Crossover Day, which is the deadline for a bill to pass one half/chamber of the Legislature in order for it to have enough time to work through the other half’s process. This year, Crossover Day was on Tuesday, March 15th.
So if a bill has not passed either the Georgia House of Representatives or the Georgia Senate by Crossover Day, it is unlikely to make it all the way to becoming law.
That doesn’t mean the POLICY in the bill can’t become law, though. State lawmakers can take the language from a bill that didn’t pass, rewrite it as an “amendment,” and try to attach it to a bill that passed by Crossover Day. Lawmakers could also strip all the language from a bill that passed and replace it with language from a bill that didn’t, using the old bill number as a shell to house the other policy.
So even as we celebrate that some of these bad bills didn’t make it past Crossover Day, we must stay vigilant and keep an eye on the Gold Dome. It’s not over until the session is officially over and lawmakers hang up their name tags for the year.
From Legislative Chair Mark Woodall and Sierra Club Lobbyist Neill Herring, here’s a rundown of what passed, what didn’t, and where things stand post-Crossover Day.
Sierra Club priorities for the last few weeks of the session
During the remaining two weeks of the session, most of the focus by the Sierra Club and the Georgia Water Coalition will be on opposing House Bill 1150, the “Bad Neighbor” bill, which would make it harder for farmers and other Georgia property owners to protect themselves from nuisances (such as large scale farming operations that pollute) moving in next door.
HB 1150 passed the Georgia House by Crossover Day and a hearing on the bill has already been held in the Georgia Senate. The Sierra Club opposes this bill and is mobilizing to stop it.
Here’s a fact sheet about the bill from the Georgia Water Coalition. After learning about the dangers of this bill, click here to send a message to your state senator asking them to oppose this harmful bill.
Sierra Club and the Georgia Water Coalition will be also working to pass House Bill 647, which provides for improved groundwater monitoring at coal ash sites. HB 647 passed the Georgia House last year (the Georgia Legislature works in two-year cycles, so a bill that passed last year can still be considered this year), but it sits untouched in the Senate Natural Resources Committee. The Sierra Club supports this bill and urges Sierrans to call their state senators and ask that the committee take up and pass the coal ash monitoring bill to protect the next generation of Georgians.
Learn more about the dangers of coal ash here.
Unfortunately, HB 1147, a bill allowing inhumane and pointlessly cruel year-round hunting and trapping of baby possums and raccoons, passed the Senate last Thursday and awaits a House vote.
Energy disappointments, and a framework for the future
There were more good energy bills than have ever been seen at any legislative session, including four bills that would allow more customers with rooftop solar to sell excess electricity back to Georgia Power. (Georgia Power currently caps the number of customers that can participate in this program at 5,000). Unfortunately, all of these helpful bills, even those designed to promote development of electric vehicle recharging opportunities statewide, did not pass by Crossover Day.
The remaining energy bills include a couple of study committees and one coal ash bill, HB 647.
Good bills are often multiple-year projects. It took at least three years to pass the last major solar industry reform bill back in 2015.
Hopefully, the Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) process, in which Georgia Power outlines how it plans to generate the electricity it will sell to its customers for the next 20 years, will address these issues. The IRP process is already underway. Click here to learn more about it and get involved.
Successful fights against environmental rollbacks
Fortunately, a few dangerous rollbacks did not survive Crossover Day, including House Bills 748 and 1301. HB 748 would have made it much easier for developers to claim ownership of coastal marshland currently protected by the state, while HB 1301 would have prevented local governments from regulating noisy gasoline-powered leaf blowers. It can be very difficult to resist such environmental rollbacks from well-funded interests, so it’s important that we celebrate these victories! If you know your State House Representative voted against these bills, we encourage you to reach out and thank them for their vote.
The fight for voting rights continues
Many of the critical issues that our communities face—combating the climate crisis, ensuring quality, affordable health care, creating good paying jobs, and achieving racial justice, to name just a few—cannot be fully addressed until we fix our broken democracy. Right now, Georgia is a battleground for voting rights, and many restrictions on access to voting are passed through the State Legislature. The last bill taken up by the Georgia House on Crossover Day was yet another attack on Georgia’s elections, House Bill 1464, which passed at about 11 pm. And an attack on the exercise of free speech rights, Senate Bill 171, is in the Georgia House and waiting for a vote.
For more information about Sierra Club priority legislation and where it stands, check out our legislation tracker here.