 Good afternoon everybody welcome to our panel discussion on page state politics which is a virtual panel discussion hosted by the department of political science and the school of education behavioral sciences and cosponsored by the MGA political science student organization as well as the alpha of mu zeta chapter of pi sigma alpha which is the national honorary society for students of political science. And so today what we're going to do is talk a bit about events in the state and local politics. And before we do that though I did want to very briefly give those of you that are unfamiliar with a little bit of information about our department. So we offer several programs both on campus and online. So we offer the bachelor of science degree in political science as well as bachelor of science in interdisciplinary studies as well as minors in political science, African African diaspora studies environmental policy studies global studies pre law and starting in the fall of 2004 local government administration. We also are a participant in the certificate in European Union studies offered by the university system of Georgia and we are also a participant as well in our school of education behavioral sciences program that is the doctor of science in public safety. Let's see so I want to introduce our panelists for today. First we have a Dr. Julie Lester who is a professor of political science and has been here in middle Georgia states in 2007. Her PhD is in American Studies from Purdue University in Indiana. We also have Dr. John Hall who's an associate professor of political science. He has been here in middle Georgia states since 2015 and his doctorate is in public policy administration from Auburn University in Auburn in Indiana or Auburn, Alabama, not Indiana. I don't even know if there is an Auburn now Indiana. And then last but not least I'll be your moderator today. I am Christopher Lawrence. I'm a professor and chair of the department and my PhD is in political science and I've been here at MGA since 2012. So we're going to start with a few topics that have been selected by our panelists and then but we also want your questions as well. So if you do have questions, please post those in the chat window. A couple ground rules while audience members are certainly welcome to ask multiple questions. We do want to prioritize answering one question per person. And then so if you have more than one question, you know, please, we'll certainly take it. But sorry, I lost my train of thought there, but I was like somebody came into my office. But what was I saying? Oh, yes. So so while we're prioritizing answering one more than one, if you have more than one question feel free to ask it, but we do want to prioritize making sure everybody gets an opportunity to ask at least one question. Also, please be courteous and civil to each other in the chat window. And Dr. Lester is having some technical difficulties. And so we're going to I guess probably what we'll do is go ahead and start with our first question in just a moment for. We'll have a doctor hall answer it and then go from there. But let's see. So so things we're going to talk about this evening include or this afternoon include the budget, some legislation on various topics as well, including education, elections, gambling, environmental issues. Environmental policy and issues, some social issues, so called Frankenbills, if you will, and then taxes as well. We're also, of course, we're also going to take questions from the chat as well. So let me go ahead and minimize our share window here. And that's not ensuring. There we go. That one share. The wrong button. So so I guess for Dr. Hall, first question. So tomorrow is what's called sign of die. So just very briefly, could you explain while Dr. Lester gets back online, perhaps what sign of die is and how it relates to the General Assembly's calendar? Absolutely. Great question. The sign or die is a reference at the Georgia legislative level of the last day of the session. For those of you who don't know for all the students here. Thank you all for coming out by the way. Thank you for the faculty members that are here. The Georgia legislative session lasts for 40 days, and we just reached day 40. So sign or die is the end. If your legislation has not been passed through both chambers to the House and Senate, then it is dead effectively. Now we do have something similar to that at the congressional level for our American government students. But since Congress is in session almost year round, it's not a part time Congress the way most state legislatures are. Sign or die is literally that it literally translates into adjourning without a day, meaning we are adjourning and there is nothing coming up next. It basically means the end of the session hasn't passed yet hasn't at least made it into a position where the governor can sign or veto. It is dead. Okay, great. And it looks like Dr. Lester is back with us. So hopefully we got those technical difficulties out of the way and are back on track. So unless Dr. Lester has anything to add to that, I think we'll just go ahead toward next question. I did want to add something really quick. The Georgia State Legislature of the Georgia General Assembly were a biennial sessions. So this is actually the second year of the current session. So last year, some as we'll get into today's last year, some bills that didn't make it through sinidae actually reemerged and did make it through and one that I'm pretty sure going to talk about that was on the news a lot lately. And also to say that traditionally ended at midnight, but in the last few sessions it hasn't ended at midnight. So it actually may go on till Friday morning depending how much they need to do tomorrow. And if you're really into this type of stuff, a tradition that they have is they rip up a bunch of papers at the end of it and throw it. So on Friday, if you want to see this go to the Atlanta Journal Constitutions newspaper and they usually post it on their website, the big picture, then ripping everything up. So it's kind of one of those interesting little traditions they do. Yep. Thanks. Good points all. So I guess we'll start with our first substantive question, which is one of the critical tasks of the General Assembly every year is to establish a budget for the upcoming fiscal year. So what are the highlights of the upcoming budget for fiscal year 2025? So the budget that we'll start July 1st. And then also if any, any highlights of the amended budget that was passed earlier in the earlier in the session. Sorry, I have marbles in my mouth today. I didn't know who wanted to jump on that. I can hit some of the basics here for us regarding the budget. When you look at the General Assembly's budget that's coming through, it's going to, it looks like it'll wind up being roughly $36 billion. There is additional revenue. There is some additional spending, several billion dollars extra. There will be additional spending on cost of living increases, for example, for state workers. That's something that's important to all of us here who are in fact state workers. There's also about a quarter of a billion dollars and additional money to deal with student enrollment growth. We have a couple of hundred million dollars to handle basic infrastructure like buying additional school buses. There are a number of specific line items that the current budget is looking at increasing. There are almost $400 million increase for base salary for K through 12 teachers. In addition to the money that we discussed about a half a billion for adjusting for K through 12 enrollment increases. Georgia is a state on the rise and that is something that the legislative body has had to take into consideration. There are also additional increases in funding for healthcare, for different programs for infrastructure. We could keep going on that all night long, but I'll stop right there just in case I'm losing anyone and hand it over to Julie. Thank you. No, I think you did a good job. Something interesting to think about the budgetary process. How that actually works is that the governor puts together and his staffers put together a proposed budget and what they want. Basically like you're putting together your Christmas wish list. But we know separation of powers and how government works is that the legislature actually has to pass it. And so sometimes what the governor wants is in the budget and sometimes it isn't. So it's important to think about this. Something interesting about the governor's proposal was that this year, the fiscal year 2025, which will begin July 1, increased per person spending above Georgia's pre-pandemic level for the first time. So since 2020, this is the first time a proposed budget has actually increased per person, per Georgia resident spending. And when you're looking at the budget as a whole and the proposal that the governor put forth, over 50% of that money actually will go to education. When you think of K through 12, pre-K and higher education. So education takes out traditionally the largest chunk of the budget, then healthcare is traditionally the second largest chunk of the budget in Georgia. And as Dr. Hall was talking about, there's been a rush in the last few days to get the budget passed because actually technically the only thing that Georgia State Legislature has to do during the legislative session is pass a budget. So tomorrow we will get the actual budget passed. If you've been following this, you'll note that the Senate made some changes to the version of the budget that was passed in the House. The House has to introduce the budget. And so they're kind of fleshing out those differences in related to who's going to get pay raises, who isn't going to get pay raises, how we're going to fund education. And for example, the Senate added money in their budget for literacy coaches and they took money out for free and reduced price lunches for kids in K through 12. The Senate removed some money that would help fund judge pay raises, but they added money for school safety. And in this school safety is $5 million is actually to pay teachers in this again K through 12 a $10,000 stipend to carry guns. You're like, why did the Senate do that? Well, the stipend to carry guns was part of an initiative that Bert Jones wanted a member of the Senate as the Lieutenant Governor. So they're kind of was pushing his agenda through the budget. So again, you're seeing the politics at play. You have the Lieutenant Governor who was also engaged with the Senate trying to get his agenda passed through there as well. So we'll see tomorrow what the budget is actually looks like for the next fiscal year, because again, that's the one thing that they have to do before signing die. Thank you, Julie. Great point there identifying what we spend money on Chris. I didn't know if you had that pulled up the email to you the budget. It's a little pie chart that. Yeah, I can read that. It's interesting to note that we spend as a state over 70% of the entire budget as as Dr. Lester was pointing out on either education or health care pre K through 12th grade represents about 38% higher education 15 and health care is remaining 21. Everything else that the Georgia government does is represented in a little over 25% of what is left of the budget. There you go. It's on there. So this is a huge chunk of what Georgia does. It's why budgets are so fascinating. Budgets don't lie. They tell you what you do, what you're interested in and the state of Georgia is overwhelmingly involved in primary, secondary and post-secondary education and health care. Everything else that the government that the government of Georgia does is represented in those tiny little slivers. Yeah, that's a that's a great point by Dr. Hall there. So let me say I need to bring up my. Questions again. So so we talked a little bit about education already in terms of some of the budget increases. Beyond that has the legislature done anything significant or doesn't seem like it's doing anything significant. Affecting either K through 12 for higher education during this session. I don't know if Dr. Lester if you want to start on that one. Okay, there's been some discussions and some movement toward workforce development initiatives. And there were some study committees on occupations over the summer and last year as well. Something that's gotten a lot of attention was actually and I think we'll talk about it probably a little later. But I think we'll get to a social issue here is about our libraries in the state of Georgia and our K through 12 libraries and. Requiring them to let parents know about the materials that their children are checking out from libraries. So basically parental notification and also to there's been some movement on changing how sex education works in the state of Georgia. Basically it's not potentially if it goes through it wouldn't be allowed until sixth grade and instead of families, parents, guardians having to opt out of the education. They would actually have to opt in and then of course the parents and guardians would have access to see the materials that school districts are using when it comes to these types of conversation. So that's that's stuff that's going on in K through 12 in in education. Great point there, Julie. Again, as we mentioned, the state has some basic recognitions of the growth of the state, the growth of our primary and secondary student bodies. Again, there's about almost a quarter of a billion dollars that this current budget is putting up accounting for student enrollment growth across the entire state. Again, we have infrastructure development and increasing again the number of school buses. There are safety grants upgrading security on public school campuses. I think that was roughly over 100 million dollars. And we also have over 50 million dollars that is going to the universal system of Georgia that will help to alleviate cuts that were made in the past. So with this budget while still maintaining an extraordinarily robust surplus in the Georgia coffers, there are some spending increases at all levels primary secondary and post secondary. And I actually forgot the biggest bill that has my apologize school vouchers. Just reading an article about earlier today. So this was what an example when I mentioned earlier about the biennial session and how sometimes bills don't make it through the first year, but they come back alive the second year and pass through. And this bill is an example of that. Obviously there were some changes from last year, but basically this is a priority of the Republican administration to create $6500 vouchers that students again this is K through 12 in public schools that are considered struggling. The students could use that money to attend private schools or to help cover homeschool expenses. Now of course there's some standards attached definitions of what is struggling and it goes back to Georgia code and Georgia law for some of those definitions. But that was probably I would say in education probably the biggest news maker as far as state policy goes in this legislative session because people who have been advocating for this type of voucher system have been doing it for many, many years and they finally got the right formula for success this time around. And that's a great point that we may address a little later. It's interesting to note that when we talk about school vouchers $6500 to parents to send their kids to private schools. That is overwhelmingly advantageous if you want to do that, but it also represents $6500 that is removed from public education funding to public schools. So depending on how you look at school vouchers, it can be a way to escape failing public schools, but others look at it as something of an abandonment of public education in general. So it's an extraordinarily controversial topic that Georgia has jumped into in a very, very strong way with this new legislation. Great. So let's see a couple things. First, just a reminder to those of you that are participating that we do have some scripted questions here, but we're also happy to have your chat questions as well. So please do post in the chat if you do have any questions or if you have any follow up questions or if you need clarification or would like to talk more about something that the panel is talking about. We have lots of things to talk about and so we may give some things a little bit short shrift. But we do want to talk about what you want to talk about and so if there's something that comes up that you want to talk more about, feel free to mention that in the chat. Or if there's something that doesn't seem to be on our agenda that you want to talk about, we're happy to talk about those things as well within reason. So another area where the election or the legislature spent a lot of time and energy over the last few years has been on election security and related issues, particularly since the 2020 election, all the drama and contestation that that resulted in. This year is the legislature considering any bills that would take any further actions in this area. John, do you want to take that one? Yes, just to bring us all up to speed when you look at Georgia's legislation regarding voting rights as we have learned in all of our American government courses. If you were to answer the following question in the most simple way, who's in charge of elections in Georgia? The answer is Georgia. This is constitutionally prescribed. States are given power over the time, place and manner of elections overwhelmingly unless they get outside of constitutional barriers. The state of Georgia is in charge of elections in the state of Georgia. And a couple of years ago, Georgia passed some relatively controversial legislation that impacted Georgia voting laws and recently the legislation coming out of Atlanta is looking to change it even further. To remind ourselves of some of the older election laws that were passed, the state of Georgia changed, for example, drop boxes. I don't know how many people that are listening have had the opportunity to vote at or above the age of 18, but particularly during COVID in 2020, the drop boxes became an extraordinarily convenient way for Georgia voters to vote while avoiding contact with a large number of people. The old legislation that was passed after 2020 actually changed the number of drop boxes that each county has allowed. They significantly reduced the number of drop boxes compared to the old system. They also changed making it either more difficult to vote or more secure depending on your political affiliation. They changed how absentee ballots were processed. In the past, simply checking signatures was enough, but now under the new legislation, you have to provide driver's license numbers and other forms of voter ID. Again, depending on how you look at it, it made it harder to vote or it made it a little bit safer to vote. Again, just depending on which direction you go. Now, in terms of the current legislation, there have been a couple of changes suggested. So as of right now, the number of voting machines that will be available per precinct has been reduced. That's something that's passed the House and the Senate. We are also looking at adding watermarks to secure ballot security. That's also passed the House and the Senate. We're also looking at legislation that will prohibit ranked choice voting while several areas in the state of Georgia are looking to experiment with ranked choice voting. We've talked about that in class. Identification, verification requirements, changes have also passed at the House, not the Senate. So many of the changes to Georgia voting laws are within the area of making it safer to vote or making it harder to vote. I think from the last legislation, we're all familiar with new rules that limit your ability to, for example, take water to someone standing in line and give them food or water. On the one hand, that's a human reaction to someone who's standing out in the hot Georgia sun. On the other is looked at as possibly trying to affect or impact someone's vote. So it really just depends on your political affiliation or how you look at voter election laws. But one way of summarizing past and current voter registration and voter law changes is that it's not necessarily making it easier to vote. I'll leave it at that. Juliette, and if you wanted to add anything. I thought that was a good overview. And like I said, it's all kind of harkening back to what happened in 2020. And if you recall, the infamous phone call to the Secretary of State, Brad Raffensburg and the stand that he took against even Kemp has in previous years not been a huge advocate for Trump. Of course, he's going to support him in the general election, but he's taken a little bit different stand than maybe some other governors. But like I said, this is just think it's good to think about the history. If we're going to look at the laws, like what's driving these types of things. And also to, I think it's interesting also that you mentioned the ranked choice voting because there's been a real grassroots movement in Georgia as well as other states to try to adopt that because people get tired of runoff elections. And so this is a way to eliminate those runoff elections through ranked choice voting. But as Dr. Hall said, it didn't really get the traction that its supporters wanted in the state of Georgia. And there were actually a couple pieces of legislation tied to that that just didn't make it anywhere. Yeah, that's where worth pointing out. You know, a couple other things that I just wanted to briefly note. So the bills on reducing of our acquired voting machines for precinct and ballot security, both those did pass both chambers. So it seems likely they'll become law. The others, they might still make it. But that's kind of up in the air at the moment. The one thing I would add about ranked choice voting, a couple things, I guess. So it wouldn't be completely new to Georgia. So overseas voters already get ranked twist ballots when they do their absentee ballots because of the time between the election and the runoff. But most absentee voters and most voters in Georgia aren't really familiar that where you would again kind of rank your candidates and then not have to do a runoff. And there were some proposals early on, although I think it didn't really go anywhere to get rid of runoffs completely. There was some discussion about doing that, going to doing what most states do and just have a simple plurality votes. Whoever first passed the post, whoever gets most votes wins. But neither of those seem to have forgotten any traction nor has the idea of expanding ranked choice voting either. It seems to run into a bit of hostility from I guess the lieutenant governor in particular seemed to be particularly opposed to that for reasons that are not entirely clear and have not been detailed very much in the press, to be honest with you. So I'm not sure why he's so objecting to it, but nonetheless, we'll go ahead and move on. And by the way, again, if you have any further questions about clarification money and stuff, feel free to let us know. So a lot of voters in some interest groups lately have been raising some concerns about some plans for mining in southeast Georgia or south Georgia, I guess, southwest Georgia, southeast Georgia, somewhere in the south of Georgia near Florida in the area that's somewhat proximate to near relatively speaking to the Okefenokee swamp within five miles of I believe is where the current proposal is. And so what, if anything, is the legislature planning to do to address these concerns? Dr. Lester, I know is a big environmental expert and so I'll let her kind of lead off on this one. Okay. So this is the bill that the little bill that everybody is hoping it can, but realistically, it probably won't. So what's the threat to help you all better understand Okefenokee swamp in south central southeast Georgia depends how you look at geography. Twin Pines wants to mine titanium dioxide from the sands very near the swamp. In the 1990s, there was actually, it was DuPont back then, they wanted to mine in the area too. And it actually got national attention and the locals in the state were actually able to stop it from happening. But let's fast forward to the last five to seven years. There's been some changes on the national level that would open it up, make it easier to mine. So of course corporations, you know, they've got to make money and they're seeing this opportunity here to to mine this product. So they want to to conduct these activities. So there was legislation last year didn't go anywhere this year. It got revived. And again, if you're reading the newspaper, it's like the little bill that they're really, really hoping because there's a lot of like community support, support amongst the citizens of Georgia. But the vibe is that it probably actually will not pass as far as the the restrictions that will protect the Okefenokee. I hope that I'm wrong. I'll show my bias a little bit here. But I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't. But it's important to recognize that this is a battle that's been going on for for quite some time. And this is also an interesting example to show you how lobbyists can influence policymaking, good or bad, depending how you feel on the issue. There's been a lot of lobbyists, twin pines, their lobbyists have made a lot of contributions to candidates and for office and state office. There's some that have personal relationships, friends, family, those types of things. And I'm not saying that the environmental groups don't do the same things. Of course, environmental groups make donations. They have friends, family and those types of things as well. But this is one that's gotten a lot of attention as far as the connections and who's kind of behind the scenes and pushing for the mining and pushing to kill the legislation on the state level versus who's supporting it. So, like I said, it's kind of made it back. And if, like I said, go the Atlanta Journal of Constitution, political cartoons actually tied to this issue. But we'll see what happens tomorrow if it even gets a vote tomorrow. That's a great point, Julie, about the impact of interest groups, which again, in our classes, we're getting too soon. This had extraordinary bipartisan support in the House. Actually, I think over half of the House has co-sponsored the bill. And when polled, almost 70% of Georgians are in favor of perpetually protecting the Oki Van Oki. So it will be interesting to see with this extraordinary support, bipartisan support and popular support from Georgia voters what will actually happen. Great. And just in case you're not aware what titanium dioxide is, it is a substance that's used a lot for whitening of things. So like white paint, like teeth whitening, things like that, it's used for a lot of things. So if you see something that's white and reflective, it's probably titanium dioxide. So like, you know, it's used, I think in like some types of sunscreen and all sorts of things. So if you've ever seen somebody with white stuff on their nose, they're wearing titanium dioxide probably. In case you're not familiar with it. And yeah, and Home Depot and the company that owns Sherwin Williams paints them, they brought into the spray as well because you can use it in paint products. So also that's kind of bringing some Georgia corporations into the conversation. Right. And there have been discussions of potential boycotts and things like that or threats against companies if they use stuff from the spine and things like that. So yeah, I mean, I think it's definitely been a controversial issue and one that even if this particular bill passes probably won't go away because it is looking at like a moratorium for just a few years rather than a long time. So it's certainly not an issue that's going to disappear. Another issue, one that may be near and dear to the hearts of some people in the audience. Gambling, gambling on sports in particular has taken off in many states since expansion was legalized as a result of a Supreme Court ruling about six years ago in a case called Murphy versus NCAA. In 2018, the legislature has also been debating expanding gambling beyond the lottery for several years, many years now. In fact, I would imagine, you know, going back to even why I moved here. I know they were talking about casino gambling and things like that. Sports gambling a little less, but sports gambling has been back on the radar since the Murphy decision. So what is status, if any, plans to expand sports gambling, casino gambling here in the state? I know Dr. Hall has been doing a little bit of research on that, so I'll let him speak on that. Yeah, absolutely. I'll start with the court's opinion. When Congress in 1992 passed their anti-sports gambling law, it was not immediately challenged successfully because they passed it in 1992. I mean, I was still back in high school, but in the 21st century, 2011, the state of New Jersey challenged it. They wanted and they asked the people of New Jersey to vote for a constitutional amendment to the New Jersey Constitution to allow for sports gambling. This would go directly against the federal law that had prevented states from taking part in sports gambling. So this goes to the federal Supreme Court and the court addressed this and basically struck down the federal law that had prohibited sports gambling. Specifically, it dealt with an area of constitutional law that is referred to as the commandeering doctrine or anti-commandeering doctrine. When you think of the word commandeering, imagine the federal government through federal law forcing state governments to enact federal legislation or to do the job of the federal government. The court has long since said that that represents an unconstitutional commandeering by the federal government of state legislatures and they do not allow for that. There are exceptions, but when it came to the ban on sports betting at the state level, the court found that Congress had gone a bridge too far and they had violated the commandeering doctrine and they recognized that states would have the constitutional right to pass sports gambling. Now I believe that today there are like 38 states. I was kind of surprised by this. Around 38 states do have legal sports gambling. Georgia is looking to become the 39th. And this again, like the Okefenokee legislation, this has bipartisan support. I don't mean to keep jumping on bipartisan support, but in the 21st century bipartisan support is something that's worthy of looking at. Democrats and Republicans in the state of Georgia both support the state of Georgia having access to sports gambling sanctioned by the state. And the major difference involves those who think it should be attached to the power that the state already has with the lottery and gambling and those who think it should be a constitutional amendment to the state of Georgia's constitution. At the end of the day, the advocates of a constitutional amendment appear to have won out and they have put on a requirement that it be a constitutional amendment. Now this might slow the legislation down requiring that sports gambling be placed as an amendment to the Georgia constitution could slow it down, but it does have a great deal of bipartisan support. So while I cannot predict with any certainty whether this will happen and whether or not Georgia will join the rest of the Republic or most of the Republic in having sports gambling, it does look like something that has legs. This could raise additional billions of dollars, much of which the state wants to use in the same way we use the lottery to place it toward education, particularly pre-K education and further budgeting the Hope Scholarship. So we will see if this actually goes through, but it is an exciting new change for the state of Georgia that many across the state are in favor of bipartisan support in the legislature. But as we've seen, that is not guarantee that it would be passed. And again, it does look like it will require a constitutional amendment. I'll leave it to Julia or Chris to fill in any gaps there on sports gambling. Don't gamble, by the way. I just wanted to actually share something from an article if it's okay because who says politics is boring? It's not. I love this quote. So they were talking about some revisions that were made to the legislation, proposing the legislation in committee yesterday that the House is proposing. And so here's the quote. They said putting a friendly hand on a colleague's shoulder, state representative Marcus Widower told lawmakers illegal betting is already taking place in Georgia. Quote, Chairman Dale Washburn could be placing a bet on his phone right now and none of us would know it, Widower told the committee. I guess it's the nerd in me. I just thought that was a funny quote, but he's right. There's people that are already doing it. So kind of some of the argument that we see on betting is the same argument you see on other social type issues is that people are going to do it. They're going to find a way to do it. So let's make it legal. Let's regulate it. Let's bring that revenue in for hope. Let's bring that revenue in for pre-K. And if you don't know, Dale Washburn's from the making area. That's a great point there. And you brought up a great point. There's a great deal of research that goes into this. The estimates that I saw are upwards of $5 billion a year that Georgians are already spending on sports gambling. We have the internet. The secret's out. Everyone's aware of the internet. So if there's $5 billion of sports betting already happening in Georgia, that's a primary argument in favor of it. This is a similar argument that I remember from Alabama, where in terms of gambling, everything is illegal in Alabama. In terms of gambling, many make the argument that if the money is being spent already, why not take advantage? And that is one of the driving forces, one of the most important examples of the logic behind sports gambling legalization in Georgia. It's already happening and there are hundreds of millions of dollars that Georgia could be receiving in revenue that could go to pre-K, that could go to the Hope Scholarship, that we are not taking advantage of. So that's one of the general arguments that helps to gain this bipartisan support in Atlanta. But we'll see. Yeah, that's a good point. The only thing I would just add to this is that when people think about gambling a lot of the time or gaming as the gambling industry would like you to call it, the one thing I would add is that a lot of people, they think of a particular type of gambling, a particular setting for gambling, and that's not always what it is. A good example of this is when we talk about the lottery, for example. Most people think, OK, well, I'm just going to go down to the convenience store and get my scratch off ticket or get a lottery ticket. Well, what they don't realize sometimes is, well, that's also something you can do on your phone. I mean, if you're in Georgia, there is a Georgia lottery app that you can download from the, I'm not advertising here, the App Store. And you can buy your lottery tickets there. They have instant games on your phone now. And the same thing is sort of, I mean, there's a little bit of the worry, I guess, is about gambling addiction, right? Is that people are going to, if you give people really, really easy access to gambling, that's not a good thing for some people. Most people will gamble responsibly and not lose their life savings and things like that, but there are that fraction of people out there that will. What are sometimes called the whales. This one or two percent of gamblers are driving 80, 90 percent of the profits that these gambling companies make. And while some of them can afford it, because there are a lot of rich people out there, they can afford to gamble a hundred thousand dollar hand blackjack and things like that, right? Or bet a million dollars on the Super Bowl or something like that. Not all the whales are that, right? And so I mean, there are, of course, there are historically, Georgia's fairly conservative state there, religious and moral concerns that they come to fore as well. So particularly if it comes to trying to amend the constitution to state constitution to do this, that could be a barrier to the bill passing, right? And I think that's part of the reason perhaps why some people are insisting on having a constitutional amendment is to make it less likely that it will pass. So that said, it does seem like the momentum is towards this and I guess trying to figure out ways to mitigate the potential problems. And also as both Dr. Hall and Dr. Lusher point out, people are already doing it, right? I knew people well before 2018, they were routinely making bets on sports. Back then it was offshore booking, going through the Caymans and stuff like this, the Bahamas and they had their apps and before the Supreme Court decision, really gambling on sports was only legal, I think, two states. Delaware and Nevada, right? And so it took a while for it to really take off even beyond those two states. But anyway, reminder again, chat is open for questions. You know, I've been a very quiet crowd. Not that it's only a bad thing, but we do have plenty to talk about. But again, if you have questions, we're happy to follow up on it. Let's see. So health care, big issue in Georgia, particularly in rural Georgia. A lot of people have been concerned about rural hospitals closing. A lot of people have been concerned about rural hospitals not having business and that sort of thing. You know, sometimes that's, you know, they relocated to greener passers within the county. You know, those of you in Peach County will know that the hospital in Peach County used to be in Fort Valley and now it's basically more Robbins. So better not have a heart attack in Fort Valley, I guess. I mean, it is close enough maybe, but I wouldn't want to, you know, I wouldn't want to risk it. So obviously health care is, you know, an issue for people in rural counties and under, you know, south side of Atlanta. I know the big hospital there closed a couple of years ago and people are deeply concerned about that. The legislature is looking at solutions to this problem. But how are they doing anything to tackle the issues of rural health care and also just health care access for people that are not able to afford it? Great question. I think it's, well, John was talking. So well, John talk. One of the most important elements of health care reform, it starts and stops with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act passed by the Obama administration. Whether you're in favor or against, one thing is true. The court upheld its constitutionality, but it also said that mandating that states increase their Medicaid roles was an unconstitutional violation of state government power. So since then, all states have the opportunity to voluntarily opt in to the Medicaid expansion. So far, I believe as of now there are 38 states in the District of Columbia that have opted in to the Medicaid expansion of the Affordable Care Act. Georgia is one of the states that has not. Regardless of your thoughts for, against or what your personal opinions may be on expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, one thing is true and that is that numbers don't lie. There are billions of dollars from the federal government sitting there that Georgia does not have access to because we have not yet joined the Medicaid expansion program. I'm not advocating that we do or don't. These are just the facts of the issue. There was a proposal to finally fully expand Georgia's Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act and it failed. So as far as that's concerned, that is over for yet another legislative session. There have been several other legislative actions to improve or to address healthcare reform. The first one and we might talk about this a little bit later is within the boundaries of health related legislation to Senate bills that are politically extraordinarily polarizing. And that is Georgia's stance on gender-referring care. That is something that has already been passed and that the governor has already signed and that is a ban on gender-referring care for Georgians under the age of 18. Not necessarily legislation that is directly related to impacting rural healthcare, but it definitely affects transgendered Georgians across the entire state. So that's something that will definitely garner more national news. There are several other pieces of legislation. Again, the biggest issue item was the inability to expand Medicaid. There are a lot of different directions I can go here. I want to stop and make sure I'm not leaving anything out. Dr. Lester or Chris, do y'all want to join in? I kind of wanted to join in a little bit about the certificate of need. Maybe I think that might be something to mention. This is an issue that came up in the last legislative session. And again, going back to the Senate and Bert Jones' relationship with them as being Lieutenant Governor. This was important for him as Lieutenant Governor to get this legislation passed. You can look into the history of Bert Jones and his family. But what a certificate of need is basically a permit. That's the best way probably to explain for healthcare facilities. And so what happens is you're demonstrating a need for healthcare in these areas. And as we know with COVID and the health care system in the United States in general, of course, COVID put an extra strain on it. A lot of healthcare facilities in rural Georgia closed. And for the lack of a better phrase, we always use that phrase deserts like food deserts. There's healthcare deserts in, especially in rural Georgia and rural South Georgia, especially. And so the argument for loosening up these requirements for the certificate of need is that we're going to be able to open medical facilities in these areas that may have once been served. But for whatever reason, the hospital, the medical facilities had to close down. But we can reopen them maybe quicker because there's not going to be as much red tape in opening. So there's still a demonstrated need. And the hospital, an example that's being used is a hospital in Cuttburg, Georgia, which is in the far Southwest part of the state. And so, again, this has been an issue for years. They had a study committee, a study committee made recommendations. And we'll see what ends up being the final call on this piece of legislation. But that's a way to kind of bring healthcare access back to areas, especially of rural Georgia that maybe are too far away to access Atlanta or Macon or Warner Robbins or those types of things. So that's gotten a lot of the attention beyond Medicaid expansion. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, the whole certificate of need issue, like I said, that kind of relates to what I was talking about with, you know, Peach County and the medical center there and that sort of thing where, you know, although they didn't locate outside the county, right? You know, you could argue and maybe there's still a need in Fort Valley for emergency care that, although it's just up the road, nonetheless, you know, every minute, as they say, when you're having a heart attack or something every second counts, right? And so, and even in place like, you know, Macon, you know, you have, yes, we have several hospitals here and a lot of good medical facilities, but again, you know, those can be overstrained by emergencies and things like that. On the flip side, though, you know, then, you know, hospitals do, even if they're nonprofits or not for-profits, still have to, you know, bring in revenue to cover their expenses. And so there's a concern that, you know, if you have too much expansion, that could either cherry pick patients from hospitals that are on the brink and make things worse. Or sometimes, you know, there's a fear that new hospitals or facility, what are called ambulatory surgery facilities and things like that, might what we call cherry pick patients, essentially, you know, take the profitable patients away, leave hospitals with the charity patients, the patients that cannot afford their bills and that sort of thing. And, you know, that's one of the problems that, or one of the issues that led to the closure of the hospital on the south side of Atlanta was that, you know, they just simply weren't getting enough patients that could pay their bills. And so the company that owned the hospital just basically said, we can't make money here. We can't, you know, and nobody else wanted to take it over. Nobody else was willing to take on that responsibility. And so going back to the question about Medicaid expansion, right, one of the arguments for that is, well, then, you know, if we were able to expand Medicaid, presumably a lot of people that can't pay their medical bills now would now be, at least somebody would be paying them, right? The government would be paying them the insurers that are contracted by the government would be paying them. And, you know, at the end of the day, the charity care that these hospitals are doing, I mean, we're already paying them anyway, right? At the end of the day, you know, now it's just people that have insurance that are paying it indirectly. People that have Medicare are paying it indirectly. People that have other sorts of medical care insurance are paying it indirectly. It's why, you know, why the cash price for medical care is so high is partially because they have to cover the people that don't have insurance or that sort of thing and won't pay. And so there aren't a lot of, I won't pretend there are any easy answers to this issue, although certainly from a short-term state perspective, I guess the easy answer would just be take the money, which, you know, I think a lot of people would say, yeah, but there are some downsides there, right? That you're kind of putting yourself in a position where once you've expanded it, you can't really take it back, right? You know, if the federal government were to decide down the road that it can't afford these programs anymore or wants to cut back the reimbursement for expanded Medicaid to the level that it is for traditional Medicaid, which is only like 50%, you know, states already are kind of on the hook for medical expenses, as Dr. Hall pointed out earlier, right? It's the second biggest part of our budget already. You know, if we expand Medicaid and then some of the federal government turns around and says, psych, we're not giving you 40% of the money we promised, that would not be good for our state budget, right? Particularly given that the states, almost all the states have to have a balanced budget, right? They'd have to either raise taxes a lot or cut spending, and that would probably cut spending on things like education and the other big ticket items. There simply aren't, you know, I mean, there aren't a lot of places to cut or find more money in a state budget, right? You know, we already run a pretty lean ship here in Georgia. So, on the other side, the political argument would be, well, it would be hard for the federal government to cut back just simply because so many states are depending on this money and there'd be political pressure not to, and you can have those arguments back and forth, you know. But it is worth noting and, you know, like I said, that's kind of the point that somebody else on the chat is, you know, that basically that, you know, hospitals, if they were getting Medicaid money, it would be, you know, they would, you know, perhaps be in better shape. And that's certainly been the argument from people like there's the Georgia Budget Policy Center, GPPI, I think, is there an acronym, you know, that's kind of their point. They are a progressive or left-wing organization or liberal organization, what do you want to call them, that has been advocating for, you know, expansion of Medicaid. And that would certainly be their argument and certainly a lot of Democrats and the Legislature would make that argument. But that argument has not been persuasive to the governor who has his own Medicaid expansion plan that's had some limited success. I think it would be the charitable way to put it. And yeah, so again, I feel like I'm a little bit on a soapbox here even though I'm kind of making an argument. I don't, you know, I'm kind of on the fence on it. I can see both sides of the argument. But at the same time, financially at least it seems like a no-brainer to take the money. But that's, you know, but I can certainly see the other side of that argument. So shifting gears a lot, although to something that Dr. Hall has mentioned already. In the last few days, there's been extensive coverage of so-called, several so-called Frankenstein bills. So after, well, technically Frankenstein's monster, I guess, you know, that's the old college cliches, right? It's not Frankenstein. The monster is Frankenstein's monster. That's not Frankenstein was the doctor. But Frankenstein bills is kind of the name that stuck, I guess, even though a lot of the legislature went to college. And these seem to be being promoted or being used to promote certain priorities of the GOP minority, particularly on social issues. For those either not familiar, Lieutenant Governor Jones is one of the likely candidates to succeed Governor Kemp as governor. Because Governor Kemp is term limited, cannot run for election in the next election in 2028. And so Lieutenant Governor Jones seems to be one of the people that's positioned themselves to run for governor along with some other folks that we don't really need to get into. But I'm sure everybody in the legislature would like to be governor as well. And so taking some positions on some social issues is not a bad way to win yourself for a Republican primary these days. So first, why are we calling them Frankenstein bills? And second, what are some examples, what would they do, wherever they come from, what are they doing, that sort of thing. I think I'm repeating myself. Great question, Chris. Regarding the Frankenstein bills, and this again is something we cover in class when we go over the legislative branch. When we look at certain legislation that could be advantageous and popular with a large group of people. If you were to add something to that, that might not be popular with half of the electorate or more than half the electorate. That can get you an amalgamation of legislation that is made up of a lot of strange different parts that might resemble something like Frankenstein. For example, if I were to ask any Georgia voters, what do you think about the opioid, the opioid epidemic? And do we need legislation that can provide for opioid overdose prevention? I think the average voter in Georgia, whether they be Democrat or Republican would be overwhelmingly in favor of that. And the House has passed legislation that will provide for opioid overdose prevention. However, added to that legislation is a ban on puberty blocking medications and other health care reform efforts for transgender youth. That is a perfect example of Frankenstein laws, Frankenstein bills where you have a piece of legislation that's designed to do one thing, but you add something to it that doesn't necessarily have a lot to do with it. Regardless of anyone's opinions on minors having access to gender-affirming care or gender-affirming medicine, opioid overdoses and gender-affirming care really don't have a great deal to do with one another, so that's a great example. Julie, I can open it up to everyone else for any other examples. No, I think that's the Frankenstein bills, Frankenbills, whatever you want to call it. Because in Georgia, what we do, going back peddling a little bit about the legislative session, so about halfway in, a little more than halfway in, we have what's called crossover day. So traditionally, that's the day if you think your bill is going to have any chance of making it somewhere, it's got to survive crossover day. Now there are some, which means crossing from one chamber to the other. So a bill that was introduced in the House crossover day into the Senate, or introduced in the Senate crossover into the House by this deadline, I believe it was February 29th this year. So now sometimes bills that don't survive crossover day do get life at the end of the session. Actually, I like the Oki Pinocchi mining bill, got life at the end of the session, but very, very rarely does that happen. So here I am, let's pretend I'm a state legislator and I had an agenda. I wanted a bill passed to do X thing. It didn't survive crossover day, but I've got enough people on my side and they're supporting my issue. So what are we going to do? For the lack of a better word, we're going to hijack another piece of legislation in committee and we're going to add all of these things, whether they're a ban on purity blocking medications or this bill that was supposed to be dealing with ensuring that high school athletes had access to mental health care and suicide prevention. Now that's a franken bill where there's bans on transgender youth in sports, bathroom bans. So that's what happens with these franken bills. People that do have agendas, whatever the agenda that may be, but these are just the issues in this session that we're saying, and they attach them to other bills, they substitute it in committee is what it's called. And so you may be doing research and you're looking and you're saying, oh, HB 1104. Yeah, that's great. It's about mental health care for student athletes. Well, that's how it was introduced in committee. That's how it initially was. But if I go look at HB 1104 when it was first introduced and to what HB 1104 looks like now, it's a completely different piece of legislation. And that's because of this process of changing bills. It's called substitution. And so if you're actually doing research on this, make sure that you always look on the page. Read the current version. That's what it says. This is current version because a lot of times things get changed even at the very last minute. There are substitutions and changes, but that's kind of what franken bills are. And that's a way that some of these social issues have been pushed through in a way that, again, no matter how you feel about the issue that a lot of times the general public might not know about because they're not following politics as closely. So they may not know these substitutions are going on. Yeah, that's a good point. In fact, the legislative process is here in Georgia at a lot of states uses this process quite a lot. Where a bill is one of two things. Either it's a very innocuous sort of bill that gets hijacked and turned into something else, sometimes without the author's knowledge or consent even. But also there are kind of dummy bills that are used kind of the same way where the legislature will introduce bills and then they will get amended later on into something else. It's done a lot in the budget process. Done a lot for taxes and things like that, where you have a bill that sends them. The reason for this is essentially, there are a couple of reasons. First is, as you may be aware, at the federal level and in Georgia in most states, there are rules about where bills have to originate to be able to do certain things. So for example, revenue bills, bills on taxes have to originate in the House of Representatives in Georgia, as well as at the federal level. And so if you are a senator and you want to introduce a bill that's going to raise taxes or lower taxes, you can't do that. And so you have to hijack somebody else's bill that passed the House to do that if you want to have a tax bill, for example. And so that's one possibility. The other reason is to get into the subject matter of a particular committee. So if you're a powerful committee chair, you want to make sure that you can propose legislation on a particular topic. You need a bill that's been referred to your committee to be able to do that. And so, again, the opportunity for these franken bills is very much dependent on this process. You know, I was reading... Your beauty, Chris. Oh, sorry. One of the bills I saw in the process accident in my space bar was, you know, somebody was going to introduce or raise judicial salaries, but the bill actually started out as a bill on a completely unrelated topic. I can't remember what it was. And the title still reflects that, right? And I looked at the title of this bill. Clearly, they're linking to the wrong bill here and the title made absolutely no sense. But when you click through, like Dr. Lester said to the current version of the bill, it's like, oh, now it's about judicial salaries. Now that makes sense. But the original version of the bill had nothing to do with salaries or judges or anything. I can't remember what it was. It was something completely off the wall. And, you know, a good example, one that we had in the list here was, you know, House Bill 301, which was originally a bill about legally passing school buses and the penalty for that. That turned into a sanctuary city's bill. You know, completely unrelated topic. I mean, I guess you could argue maybe because it's raising the fine for something. It's the same thing. And this is the example of one of the clever tricks that legislatures have to do to get around legal or constitutional restrictions or rules and the rules that limit, you know, the subject matter to a particular area or that sort of thing. You can get really arcane with this stuff, particularly on the state. Georgia doesn't have as many arcane rules as some other states. And so you can get some really arcane stuff in some other states where, you know, bills are used for all sorts of crazy purposes. Let's see. Again, reminder, we're taking questions in the chat. We have about 25 warm minutes. So taxes, everybody's favorite thing. What's the deal with taxes? What's the legislature doing with tax policy? Sorry, we were doing some signfall jokes earlier. What's the deal with taxes? So what is the legislature doing about tax policy? I know there's been some discussion about trying to, particularly property taxes. A lot of people are concerned about property taxes because for those of you that don't own property or those of you that haven't looked at real estate prices lately, real estate's gotten some darn expensive in the last few years. During COVID, apparently nobody was moving and everybody just wanted to live in their house and it was hard to buy a house and so prices for houses went up and nobody was building new houses. And so if you bought a house before COVID, you rich. But if you're rich on paper, that also means that hey, they're coming for you for some taxes and people aren't happy about getting those taxes. So what's the legislature going to do to stop me from getting taxed out of my house? Dang it. Somebody help me. So thinking about taxes, everybody loves taxes. So if I could see you all and ask for a show of hands, who loves taxes? So as you know, if you are a homeowner or even renters have been affected by this, because obviously you're not paying the county for property taxes, but you know your landlords charge and you form in your rent and that may be why your rent's going up. So there's been some legislation proposed tied to homestead exemption and capping assessments. So getting back to the homestead exemption, that's an exemption that counties have on your property tax bill. They wanted to, they being the legislature, wanted to pass legislation, a bill that was introduced that would increase the homestead exemption from $2,000 to $4,000. Now counties have had some flexibility. Some counties have higher homestead exemptions than $4,000. So those that are supportive of counties and want counties to maintain power, they actually have advocated for an opting out of that increase and giving counties more power to decide because here's what happens when you're thinking about homestead exemptions. If your house value is not assessed as much and you're not paying as much taxes on your property, taxes have to come from other things, whether it's sales taxes or the most popular way to raise. So that's one piece of legislation. So changing the homestead exemption that property owners can get. And I would also encourage you if you are a property owner and you qualify for a homestead exemption and you have not completed the paperwork with your county office, tax office, tax assessor office, do so because last year as part of the Kemp Money giveaway, those people that did own homesteaded property did get a little bit of help and became tax time. So this is just my wanting to put more money into your wallet if you are a home owner. Another piece of legislation tied to property taxes deals with assessment. So again, as you know, property values are assessed. Now some counties are really good about assessing property values in a timely manner. Some counties wait for years. I have lived in my current home for over a decade and I've only been assessed once, reassessed once, the value. And this was pre-COVID. Guess what's happening to me next year? We get a new property value assessment in this market. So, yeah, we're not looking forward to that bill whenever it comes next year. So what this new legislation would do, it would actually cap assessment so your value could not go up by more than 3% each year. So we may be facing on our property a 25% or 30% increase in the assessed value or maybe even more depending on who you talk to. Well, if this piece of legislation was passed in the future, it would be capped at only 3%, which again makes it more affordable for those property owners to be able to handle the increase in taxes each year. But again, thinking about how government funds itself property taxes. So there's kind of looking at both sides of the issue. So those are two of the big things that we've looked at as far as property taxation goes. Taxation income tax. I don't want to move too far off the topic here. There's been talked for years about reducing the income tax rate in the state of Georgia, a phased reduction. Now, some people want to get rid of it completely, but there's phased reduction and that did pass. So we're going to have a small cut in our income tax rate the next year. But again, taxes pay for government services. So we're looking at that. That's going to affect the budget depending what the economy does. That's going to affect the budget. So fewer taxes, less revenue, less services. How connected to each other? That was incredibly thorough, Dr. Lester. I have very, very little to add. I was going to talk about the phased reduction in the state income taxes and that has passed. There's also an attempt at decreasing the state's corporate income tax, which when you look at the, we can talk about taxes. Chris, I think I'd sent you another little flyer that shows the breakdown of revenue when it comes to the money brought in by the state of Georgia. We have personal income taxes. We have corporate income taxes. Personal income taxes represent almost 44% of every penny that the state of Georgia brings in in revenue. Corporate income taxes represent a little over 8%. So personal income taxes are like almost five times larger in terms of revenue brought in than corporate income taxes. We also have sales taxes, which you were discussing. They represent almost a quarter of revenue coming in. And then we have other taxes fees and interest that bring in the other 14%. So when it comes to revenue, as Dr. Lester pointed out, it does represent the services that the state of Georgia will be able to provide. So while no one likes paying taxes in a civilized society, we all recognize that they do exist for a reason. And there are several legislative efforts at reducing several of these taxes, particularly corporate income tax, some personal income tax, and sales taxes. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, and if you just want to compare this to the federal level, I just happened to be talking about Congress class about the taxes and where they come from at the federal level today. Compared to the federal level, the state gets a little bit less of a percentage of its money from income tax. So at the federal level, about half of the federal government's income is from personal income tax and another 9% is corporate income tax. The big difference is the state relies a lot also on sales taxes and the federal government doesn't do sales tax at all. So that's a huge difference. Yeah, we could talk more about federal taxes and things like that, but not really be in the scope of today's discussion. But I do want to address a couple of things very briefly about property tax, just kind of things people may not know. Pretty good if you're not a homeowner or you've not learned about how homeowners work here in Georgia or property tax works in Georgia. Georgia has a very weird property tax compared to other states, I think. Maybe I'm speaking a little out of turn in terms of how it works, but having owned houses in other states and looked at property taxes in other states, Georgia does some weird things. So first thing is the property, the homestead exemption in Georgia is unusually low, I would say compared to a lot of other states. A lot of states, again, it's often like a quarter of the value of your house and things like that. Here in Georgia, $2,000, particularly when it sounds like $2,000, so I'll explain that in a moment, doesn't sound like a lot. And it isn't a lot. It's never been indexed to inflation or anything like that. And so while it might have been fairly generous when it was introduced, it is not anymore, particularly in metro Atlanta and places where property is a lot more valuable than it is in Middle Georgia. The other thing is that household property, different types of property are assessed at different percentages of their true value in Georgia. And so household property, I think, is at 40% of its true value, if I'm not mistaken. And so you may think that you're having, for example, if you had a house that was worth, say, $200,000, you would think that you pay taxes on $200,000. But that's not what you pay taxes on. You actually pay taxes on 40% of that. And so what you really pay taxes on is 40% of the assessed value. And that $2,000 is based on assessed value. So really, if you can't do the math, the $2,000 exemption is really closer to a $5,000 exemption on the value, the true value of your property. There are other types of property that also are assessed at different percentages. So for example, agricultural property is assessed at a pretty low rate. And so the other thing is homestead exemption, if you're not familiar with it. So this is based on your priority. You can get a homestead exemption for your primary home if you live in it for the whole year. So if you buy a house in the middle of the year, you don't get the homestead exemption until the following tax year. And like Dr. Lester pointed out, you do have to apply for that exemption. And there is, I believe there's also a deadline for doing so. And so if you don't apply early enough in the year, you don't get it for the following year either. So I want to say it's the end of this month. I'm not mistaken. It's like, now that may vary by county. So check with your county tax assessor and tax collector who may or may not be the same person and do that if you do own property or know people own property or that sort of thing. And of course, back when cars were, I guess if you have a really old car, I guess it still has property tax. And so this also applies, if you have a boat, things like that, property tax applies to that. So things to be aware of as well. And there are a few counties like Bip County, for example, the Exempta that raised its, where it was able to lower its property taxes by sales tax and things like that. We could talk about SPLOS and things like that. I don't know if anybody wants to talk about that, but we could. Let's see, we have chat. No, just somebody is saying they're signing off. Okay. Let's see. On to local government stuff. Dr. Lawrence. Yes. I'm sorry to interject, but it might be fun for folks and I see you've got a bunch of people on here. Just go on Zillow and look up an equivalent house in New Jersey or Connecticut. And it'll list the estimated property taxes and, you know, a typical house up in Westchester, New York, for example, might be $1,000, which is not out of the question anymore for even, you know, in Middle Georgia. And you might pay $20,000 a year in property taxes alone. So, you know, that's one way to check some of the things you were just talking about, which was excellent, by the way. Yeah, that's a good point. And a lot of states, you know, there are some states like New Jersey, for example, that are very reliant on property taxes. And so, you know, if you know anybody that lives in New Jersey and talk to them about their property taxes, I mean, one, they will yell and scream about it for several minutes. So make sure your phone's far away from your head when you do that. But the other thing is that they are people that are very affected by a federal tax change that took place under the Trump administration a few years ago that limits how much you deduct on your taxes for state and local taxes. And so there's like now a $10,000 cap on your deductions there. And while that doesn't affect very many people here in Georgia, for example, because our state and local taxes are not that high, relatively speaking. You know, people in New Jersey, you know, there was a lot of yelling and screaming from New Jersey, because, you know, local governments in New Jersey are very reliant on property taxes and don't get a lot of money from the state, apparently, and don't levy income taxes and things like that. And so I'm not sure why New Jersey in particular has a tax structure that's like that, but also, and that's, of course, compatible by the fact that property values in New Jersey are very inflated compared to what they are here as well. Partially that just comes down to people earning more money up there and cost of living in general, but there are also just property in general, I guess because of supply and things like that is very expensive as well, as Dr. Beak points out in New England and Northern, the Mid-Atlantic states, and California a few other states as well. Let's see. So on to, I guess we've already talked a little bit, we're talking kind of about local government already in terms of tax policy and the home state exemption, things like that. So I know Dr. Leshwan talked a little bit about some other things that are being considered that might affect local government, intergovernmental relations. So those of you that are not familiar with how Georgia government works, you know, Georgia is divided into a bunch of counties and a bunch of, and most of many of us live in municipalities within those counties as well. And they have their own local governments that are theoretically, or practically as well, subservient to the state government, but also have relations with the state government. And they're affected by things the legislature does just as much as anybody else. So what are some of the things that may be affecting them that you want to talk about? First of all, going back to the taxes, April 1st is the deadline for the homestead exemption paperwork. I went to the Department of Revenue's website and that's what it said. So just fun fact for everybody. As far as thinking about local government, we've actually, some of the issues we've touched on are local government issues like the right choice voting. And there was a bill even to ban it in municipalities. So taking away the power of cities to actually have those types of elections. So as Dr. Lawrence said, there's a lot of counties. There's a lot of municipalities. There's 159 counties in the state of Georgia and there's 537 municipalities. So 530 cities. So that is a lot of government because there's very few that are actually consolidated. So when you get a lot of hands in the pot, it can get complicated whenever it becomes time to make policy. When it comes time to implement policy that's handed down by the state. So probably I would say one of the biggest issues tied to local government in this session is related to service delivery strategy. It's a hot mess. That's the best way to explain it. What service delivery strategies are. It's just what it sounds like. Who is going to have the responsibility for delivering services between a county and a municipality? That's all it is. So services can be a lot of different things, whether it's tax collection, running elections, who's going to run the animal shelter, who's going to run the recreation center. If you live in a, probably I'd say a smaller county and smaller municipalities, the counties may take on those functions, but the larger cities and counties, the municipalities oftentimes take on those responsibilities. So going back to the 1990s, the service delivery strategy act was passed to clarify which government was going to be responsible for what services. And so basically it's a contract that municipalities and counties reach agreement on on the service delivery. And the intent was this flexible framework for local governments to agree on who's going to be delivering services and to minimize any duplication or competition. If you're in a county of 40,000 people and you've got three municipalities, you're probably not going to have three in the largest municipalities, 18,000 people. It probably doesn't make sense to have three different animal shelters. So you'll have one. So what would happen in that county is that the municipalities, the three municipalities would contract with the county to provide animal shelter, animal services, or recreation services. Because it doesn't make sense to have, you know, three mighty, mighty football leagues for each little municipality, because you're only going to get maybe five, five young people from municipality. So you're doing things kind of. So this is good in a way. But what happens, a lot of conflict, because these service delivery strategies need to be renegotiated. And as we've talked about a lot, services require tax dollars. To be delivered. So I don't know of any government that wants to give up tax dollars. Just say, hey, take all my money. So if, for example, a county is providing a service, they want to ensure the cities want to ensure that the county is being responsible with that money that they're providing to the county as part of the service delivery strategy. And this is where debates and fights over how local option sales tax money is going to be spent and so on. So, and the theme of the day seems to be study committees. There was a study committee the last year and they came up with some recommendations about how to improve service delivery strategies, which is important because you think, oh, let's just get rid of them. Well, no, you have to have these contracts and also to you have to have these contracts between cities and counties to qualify for grant money from the state and other types of programs. So recognizing the conflict that happens with service delivery strategy in counties, especially when it comes time to deal with sales tax and other service delivery. There was a case, Winder versus Barrow, the Supreme Court of Georgia heard and recently handed down a decision related to their service delivery strategy. And so kind of thinking about that and that case that was going to be for the state Supreme Court and issues that we saw in multiple counties during the loss negotiations last year. Bill was introduced that actually set some standards about when the negotiations have to begin for the service delivery strategy. So you really negotiate these every few years and also to what types of circumstances may happen that would require a change. So for example, maybe a municipality has a growth spurt of 10,000 people over five years. That's going to change the agreement and what needs to be done. Also to mapping out the service area in the service delivery strategy. So where do the city's responsibilities begin and end? Where does the counties begin and end? Because some cities are not really well mapped out. The boundaries, I live in a city where there's actually a hotel where some of the rooms are in the county and some of the rooms are actually in the city. And if you ever want to hear crazy stories about that, I have some pretty interesting stories about police responding to crime in those locations. So you're mapping out these geographic areas to help you better understand. Also to more transparency because all the parties in negotiation are going to have to provide everyone else with written analysis of all the services that they provide and the proposed funding sources. And they have to enter into that. And then there's also ways for the cities and counties to deal with disagreements that didn't exist before as far as petitioning the courts to handle the disagreements. And also to a finalization of the strategy because sometimes there has to be a hard deadline. There are cities and counties out there that their SDS, that's what they're called, their SDS is not updated. And they're still bickering about it and who's going to do what and who's going to get the money and hey, let's sue each other. Again, I'm living a location where there's a lawsuit that was started in 2018 and a lot of it's tied to service delivery between the city and the largest municipality. That court case is still being litigated. 2018, we're in 2024. So the changes suggested by the study committee were actually supported by both the Georgia Municipal Association, which represents the cities and the Association of County Commissioners of Georgia, which represents the county. So this is again showing where parties on both side of the table are working together to try to figure out a way to minimize conflict and ensure that service delivery is provided in an efficient manner and the manner that's best for the majority of the citizens that they serve. Fantastic summary. I couldn't add anything to it and I just noticed that we are almost out of time. I did point, notice Dr. Beak's suggestion earlier, I was not able to cross-reference multiple states, but that is a very interesting tool. I'm sure we all have Zillow. Actually, if you're 18 or 19, you may not. But if you do, you can really see some differentiation in property taxes at state level on that relatively popular app. But since we are running out of time, I will be quiet. Well, thank you, Dr. Hall and Dr. Lester. Yeah, a couple of things. I just want to very briefly clarify for anybody that may not be familiar. So Dr. Lester uses term lost, so local option sales tax. So in addition to the state sales tax, local municipalities and counties can levy some of the various local option sales taxes as well that have various sometimes rude-sounding acronyms. So if you've ever heard somebody talk about a splost or a T-splost or a lost or there's a bunch of my hosts. The newly proposed flossed? That's the new one. Flossed. So make sure you floss before you go to dinner or go to bed or whatever. So yeah, the lost algorithm or the OSTs, the optional sales taxes, that's one of those acronyms. You'll hear a lot if you get involved in paying attention to local government. And like Dr. Lester said, with so many counties, so many municipalities, right? Again, that choice between having a consolidated government like Macon Bibb does and having a separate levels of government like say Houston County or Peach County or Tiff County or a lot of other counties is an important one, right? And that's one of the things that perhaps motivated consolidation in Macon and also in Columbus. So a few other places where just simply it was simpler to not have these sort of interlevel debates, although there are also downsides to consolidation as well that we could certainly get into if we had a lot more time, which we don't. So but if you are interested in some of the downsides of consolidation, feel free to take Dr. Lester's class on a state local government in the fall. I'm sure she'll talk about consolidation there as a theme. Let's see. So I'd like to thank everybody for coming out today and participating. We will get a recording of this posted at some point. I will not try to bring up the thing because that will just take more time. But I do want to just briefly mention we do have a presence on social media. So MGA poll site on Facebook on YouTube and on Twitter slash X. We are not on Instagram. We are not on tiktok since we're probably going to get banned from tiktok anyway. Now anyway, there is one last thing I did want to or a couple of things also we do have a future event coming up in a couple of weeks. We have a panel from our department at the undergraduate conference on Wednesday, April 10th at 4pm, where several of us will be speaking. And I'm not entirely sure about all the details there, but I'll follow up with some people on that. But I know that originally the plan was to have some people talk about international politics, but that's not what actually the title of the panel is. So I'm going to have to figure out what's going on there. But there will be a panel. There will be a reception afterwards. It will be at the undergraduate conference 4pm on April 10th in the arts complex theater in the School of Arts and Letters Building. Also, I don't want to add on a sad note, but some news did pass the wire a few minutes ago that is worth noting. Those of you that are older that were around in 2000 or remember that Al Gore's running mate was a senator from Connecticut, Joe Lieberman, who then was challenged for reelection and ended up being reelected to the Senate as an independent from Connecticut. He passed away at the age of, I believe, 83 today. So if you see flags at half-master, things like that around over the next few weeks, that's why. Anyway, so those of you maybe from Connecticut may be more familiar with him. So at any event, I just wanted to pass that along as a bit of news. And thank you all for coming out today. For those of you that need credit and things like that, do post in the chat if you are not logged in under your real name. If you're here for some sort of extra credit or something, post that. Other than that, thank you all for joining us, and we'll go ahead and adjourn. And hopefully we'll see all of you in a couple of weeks at our event on the 10th. Thanks, Chris. Thanks, Julie. Thank you all.