Welcome To The 2018 Legislative Session

Monday starts the 2018 legislative session.  It’s a monumental session for multiple reasons, but the biggest one is that it’s Governor Nathan Deal’s final legislative session.  That means political posturing by Republicans in both chambers who look to aim for higher office as Governor Deal’s departure from the house in West Paces creates vacancies in the offices of Lieutenant Governor and Secretary of State.

This bookend year for Governor Deal is drastically different than the bookend year of his predecessor: former Governor, and now Secretary of Agriculture, Sonny Perdue.  In 2008, Georgia was suffering from the economic downturn with high unemployment, banks being taken over by the FDIC, and a dwindling rainy day fund.  Fast forward to 2018, and we are experiencing major economic growth as Georgia invested to become a destination for movie and television show productions as well as a magnet for the IT industry.

Georgia was able to weather the economic storm without raising income or property taxes while also maintaining our AAA bond rating.  We now have a good-sized rainy day fund to help smooth out the impact of the next economic downturn.  Governor Deal has done an exceptional job leading our state.  I believe he and our legislature has worked together to prioritize what’s important: working together to return our state to prosperity and keep it there.  I believe that’s why you see Georgia as a top contender for Amazon’s new headquarters dubbed “HQ2”.

Now comes the year in which Georgians choose a successor to continue to lead the work.  What should we see this year?  Expect to see RFRA make a return for yet another year as well as a clean adoption bill.  The bill was DOA as the Senate attached some controversial language to Rep. Bert Reeves’ adoption bill last year.  Another elephant in the room is Amazon and the incentives that may be used to sweeten the pot to lure the tech and retail giant to Georgia.

I have one legislative wish that I’m hoping for:  I hope that the legislature will take a hard look at how to expand broadband availability to both rural and not-so-rural Georgia.  My full-time profession is IT, so it was important that we have fast, reliable Internet access available for the house that we chose when we moved last year.  We looked at two houses in the town of Braselton.  The one we bought has AT&T Fiber access, the other that we looked at about a mile away only has Windstream available.

Both were in the same town, but are located in two different counties: our house is in Hall County and the other is in Barrow County.  There may be local reasons as to why only Windstream is available to the other neighborhood whereas we have reasonable options in the Hall County part of Braselton.  As the counties on the edges of the metro Atlanta grow, the need for fast, reliable Internet access will be as great as are the needs of rural Georgia.

An idea I’ve heard floated about is the possibility of Georgia’s Electric Membership Cooperatives being used to help fill in the gaps for rural broadband coverage.  That’s a similar initiative that Chattanooga’s EPB took in the latter part of the 2000s.  They laid a fiber optic network initially to be used for their Smart Grid, but got the idea to allow their customers to use the network and eventually began to provide both Internet access and cable over fiber optics for folks around the Chattanooga and north Georgia area.  A similar initiative could be done with Georgia’s EMCs.

Georgia Republicans have a lot to be proud of over Governor Deal’s two terms.  Our legislators just need to, as Coach Kirby Smart says, keep the main thing the main thing.  I believe that main thing is making Georgia friendly to both business and her citizens.  If our legislature (and our Republican candidates) continue to make the prosperity of Georgians the main thing and not get distracted by folks trying to mimic President Trump’s antics, then we should be able to confidently stand up during the General Election, point to our accomplishments and say “we’ve kept your trust over the past eight years, but we aren’t finished yet.”

Georgia is in much better shape than 10 years ago, but the work can’t stop with Governor Deal.  I hope our Republican legislature sets the stage for our Republican gubernatorial nominee to say “this is what we have done to keep Georgia prosperous, and this is what we will do to keep Georgia prosperous.”  Gotta keep choppin’ that wood, Georgia Republicans.

Good luck, legislators.  We are counting on and watching you.