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Pandemic Provokes City vs. State Conflicts
Mariah Parker, an Athens-Clarke County commissioner in Georgia, high-fives a high school student after a series of mock debates and votes inside the chamber at City Hall. The Georgia legislature approved legislation that would preempt the commission’s powers, after the panel moved toward restricting police funding. State preemption of local powers is increasing nationwide.
Joshua L. Jones
Athens Banner-Herald via The Associated Press
Late last year, commissioners in Athens-Clarke County, Georgia, proposed cutting police funding in half over the next decade and redirecting the money to mental health and social services. The bill didn’t pass, but the idea alone so outraged the Georgia legislature that lawmakers decreed it would not happen on their watch.
Bipartisan bill would add protections for dating violence victims in Georgia
By Claudia Kelly-Bazan
Efforts to close gap in Georgia’s domestic violence law
A bipartisan effort to close the gap in Georgia s domestic violence law has been sent to Governor Brian Kemp s desk for his signature of veto.
ATLANTA - A bipartisan bill with the unanimous passage in both the Georgia Senate and House of Representatives would literally save lives according to experts and the state representative who wrote it.
State Rep. Houston Gaines of Athens sponsored House Bill 231, which would add protections for dating violence victims in Georgia.
A bill from Rep. Houston Gaines to ban defund the police efforts will not hinder efforts to rethink public safety in Athens, commissioners say.
Gaines’s bill passed the Georgia legislature and is on its way to the governor’s desk awaiting Gov. Brian Kemp’s signature. This legislation would ban local governments from reducing a police department s budget by more than 5% in a one-year period.
Exceptions to this include police departments with less than 25 officers or if revenue falls more than 5%.
Gaines’s district includes Athens, a city that he specifically cited as causing a need for this legislation. In 2020, Commissioners Mariah Parker and Tim Denson advocated for a plan to reduce the Athens-Clarke County Police Department by 50% over 10 years, known as the 50/10 Plan to Reimagine Public Safety.
Some Georgia Republicans who promoted Fulton County’s mobile voting buses last year voted to restrict them after the party lost the state’s presidential and Senate races.
The Election Integrity Act of 2021, Georgia’s sweeping election reform law, has widely been described as a “voter suppression” effort, largely prompted by baseless allegations of election fraud spread by former President Trump and his allies. President Joe Biden and other Democrats have compared the law to those of the Jim Crow era, and numerous voting rights groups have already sued to strike down key measures they argue will disproportionately impact voters of color. The law bans the use of Fulton County’s mobile voting buses and restricts the use of absentee ballot drop boxes, among many other measures that affect virtually every aspect of the state’s election laws.