The Georgia General Assembly is well into the 2022 legislative session, and we resumed our work at the State Capitol on Tuesday, February 1, 2022. This was our fourth week of session, putting us at more than a quarter of the way through the legislative session.

The governor announced that the state will provide approximately $408 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act funding to help provide faster and more reliable internet to homes and businesses in rural Georgia. These preliminary awards will support 49 broadband infrastructure projects that will impact 70 Georgia counties.

These projects and their funding represent an investment of more than $738 million in Georgia when matching funds are contributed. According to data from the Georgia Broadband Availability Map, 482,374 specific locations in Georgia are currently not served. However, these projects could expand broadband services for 183,615 homes and businesses, including 132,050 locations that do not have broadband at all. Georgia has been a major leader in broadband development for several years, and these funds go hand-in-hand with our efforts to provide a major boost to rural communities that are without adequate, high-speed internet. You can learn more about the governor’s announcement here.

My colleagues and I took up House Bill 385 to help address the recent teacher shortage in Georgia. This legislation would allow retired certified pre-K and K-12 teachers who have obtained 30 years of creditable service to return to the classroom full-time while receiving their full retirement benefits. This legislation offers an immediate solution to the state’s overall growing need for teachers and would also ensure that our students are able to continue to receive quality classroom instruction from experienced educators.

We also unanimously passed legislation to help ensure that Georgians have the power over decisions regarding their mental health care. House Bill 752, or the Psychiatric Advance Directive Act, would allow competent adults to legally establish their expectations and preferences for future mental health treatment and medication. It would allow individuals to appoint someone as a “mental health care agent” to act on their behalf if they are incapable of making mental health decisions.

The individual will have a psychiatric advance directive that will document:

Providers and treatment facilities would be required to comply with the directive to the fullest extent possible. Through HB 752, our state laws would help bring greater parity to mental health so that individuals who struggle with mental illness will be treated as equally as someone with a physical illness. This legislation is the result of over a decade’s worth of work, and I am proud of the bipartisan efforts that led to the passage of the Psychiatric Advance Directive Act in the House Chamber this week.

In an effort to lower prescription drug prices for Georgians, we passed House Bill 867, or the Truth in Prescription Pricing for Patients Act. This bill would specifically address how pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), which are third-party administrators of prescription drug programs for health insurance plans, calculate the price for prescriptions that individuals and their health coverage plans pay in a way that is more transparent to consumers.

Under HB 867, PBMs would be required to:

This bill would not apply to state administered health plans, including the State Health Benefit Plan, Medicaid, and PeachCare for Kids. House Bill 867 would ensure that PBMs conduct their business fairly and transparently in our state, and ultimately, lower the out-of-pocket costs Georgians pay for prescription drugs.

My colleagues and I passed bipartisan legislation to help prevent wrongful convictions in criminal trials. House Bill 478 would change the standard for admissible court evidence and testimony in criminal cases to match the standard used in civil cases. Since the early 1990s, Georgia’s federal court system has used this same standard for expert testimony, but our state’s criminal courts have not. This new standard would provide a list of factors that a judge may consider to help determine the admissibility of scientific evidence or witness testimony. Without this standard, wrongful convictions have occurred in criminal cases due to unreliable scientific evidence. In the last 30 years, faulty scientific evidence admitted under the current standard has contributed to at least 25 out of nearly 40 documented wrongful convictions in Georgia. Fortunately, HB 478 would raise this standard and act as a gatekeeper to protect the integrity of the scientific evidence and expert witness testimony allowed in our criminal courts.

As Co-Chair of the House Rural Development Council I was excited as members of the council provided an update about our work while we were in the House Chamber last week. More than five years ago, Speaker David Ralston launched an initiative that specifically focused on the needs of our rural communities, and since then, this council has consistently produced effective, sound policies that have already benefited our rural regions. Last December, the council released its legislative recommendations for the 2022 legislative session, which include supporting agriculture, economic development, education, health care and mental health needs across rural Georgia. This week, the council announced that 11 House bills that are based on its recommendations have been introduced and assigned to seven different House committees. The council members also mentioned that eight other House bills are in the pipeline and will be introduced later this session. I look forward to providing further updates about these rural development initiatives as they make their way through the legislative process. You can learn more about the House Rural Development Council and its 2022 legislative recommendations here.

The bills that were passed in the House last week have all been sent to our counterparts in the State Senate for consideration, and my colleagues and I will vote on more legislation when we resume our business on Monday, Feb. 7. As we continue to make our way through the legislative session, I encourage you to contact me with your questions about the bills that have passed so far or any other policies that interest you.