LYNN'S LIST
LYNN’S LIST FOR MARCH 8, 2021
Today is Crossover Day at the Gold dome. Some of the advocacy is time sensitive, so please be on the lookout for this.
Fair and Representative Elections
State
SB241 is the Senate Omnibus bill that rolls several voter suppression bills into one and will receive a vote in the Senate TODAY! According to Georgia Public Broadcasting, SB 241 would severely limit who is eligible to vote by mail, require applications to be made under oath with additional ID requirements and require some ballots to have a witness signature and include a photocopy of ID to be counted. The bill also ends the automatic voter registration while obtaining a driver’s license put in place by Brian Kemp while Secretary of State.
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CALL your Georgia General Assembly Senator (Not Ossoff or Warnock) TODAY with the suggested script: My name is ---- and I am your constituent from ----. SB 241 is a group of bad faith bills predicated on the lie that there was widespread voter fraud. Instead of telling the voters the truth, instead of reaching out to the electorate to try to understand why voters did not support the Republican candidates, legislators came up with a slew of bills to keep voters from voting because they did not vote the way you wanted them to. This is not protecting voter integrity. This is not democratic or patriotic. This is not about being a public servant or representing Georgians. Vote NO on SB 241.
HB531 already passed the House and has been referred to the Senate Ethics committee for consideration. This is the bill that rolls numerous voter suppression bills into one. It includes moving all dropboxes to inside early voting sites only;
prohibiting mobile voting sites; banning acceptance of private grants by local elections offices; requiring inclusion of private information to vote absentee; and reducing early voting times.
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Contact the below listed members of the Republican Senate Ethics committee with the suggested script: My name is ---- and I am from -----. HB531 rams through solutions for problems that do not exist. You know that there was not widespread voter fraud in the 2020 and 2021 elections yet you continue to lie to Georgians. You should be encouraging more Georgians to vote, not creating obstacles to democracy.
Max Burns, Chairman max.burns@senate.ga.gov (404) 656-7586
Dean Burke, Vice Chairman dean.burke@senate.ga.gov (404) 656-0040
Jason Anavitarte jason.anavitarte@senate.ga.gov (404) 656-0085
Mike Dugan mike.dugan@senate.ga.gov (404) 656-7872
Steve Gooch steve.gooch@senate.ga.gov (404) 656-9221
Bo Hatchett bo.hatchett@senate.ga.gov (404) 656-7454
Randy Robertson randy.robertson@senate.ga.gov (404) 463-3931
Brian Strickland brian.strickland@senate.ga.gov (404) 463-6598
Protection of Civil Liberties
State
The Georgia General Assembly has proposed bills to exclude trans young people from sports. According to Georgia Equality, and other organizations, 6.8 MILLION children participate in trans-inclusive sports where they learn discipline, teamwork, and leadership without threatening the integrity of girls sports. States with trans-inclusive sports policy see better participation in girls’ sports than states with trans-exclusive policies. Trans kids already face bullying, stigma, and isolation at school.
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CALL your Georgia Assembly Senator TODAY with the suggested script: My name is ---- and I am your constituent from -----. I am opposed to legislation excluding trans students from participating in interscholastic athletics. We should look for MORE ways to include and support their participation in school sports, not force them to play with the wrong gender. Additionally, in 2011 the NCAA issued guidance for trans athlete inclusion in college level sports. Passing anti-trans legislation could mean loss of revenue to Georgia when the NCAA refuses to hold tournaments in Georgia for violating this guidance.
Georgia is only one of three states (along with Texas and Wisconsin) that processes all 17-year-olds as adults in the criminal justice system, sending them to adult court rather than through the juvenile justice system. In reality, the human brain is not fully developed until age 25. In recent years, several states have raised the maximum age of juvenile court jurisdiction from 17 up to 18 (or older) to reflect the growing body of research which shows that brain development at age 17 is at a fundamentally different stage than that of an adult. The juvenile justice system does a better job than the adult system of holding young people accountable when they commit minor offenses by requiring youth to attend school, make restitution to victims and attend community-based rehabilitative programs that focus on the causes of the problem behavior.
HB 272 is a bill to change the jurisdiction of the juvenile court to include children who are under 18 years of age. Even if Georgia raises the age to 18, youth as young as 13 with certain violent felonies may still be tried as adults. Such crimes include murder, rape, armed robbery committed with a firearm, aggravated child molestation, aggravated sodomy, aggravated sexual battery, and voluntary manslaughter.
Federal
The American Rescue Act passed in the Senate with some revisions and now it returns to the House for a vote. COVID-19 has been hard on women because the U.S. economy is hard on women. One out of four women who became unemployed during the pandemic reported the job loss was due to a lack of childcare, twice the rate of men surveyed. A more recent survey shows the losses have not slowed down: between February and August mothers of children 12 years old and younger lost 2.2 million jobs compared to 870,000 jobs lost among fathers. That is not to mention the gender pay gap that has existed since women entered the workforce. It is imperative that the Rescue Act be passed so that women and families can begin to recover. There are two different scripts depending on your district.
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Contact your Congressman Scott with the suggested script: My name is ---- and I am from ----. Sixty percent of your Republican constituents support the American Rescue Act. It’s time to put partisanship aside and vote the way your constituents want you to. Vote Yes on the American Rescue Act as amended by the Senate.
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Contact Congressman Bishop with the suggested script: My name is --- and I am from ----. Please vote Yes on the American Rescue Act as amended by the Senate.
Protection of the Environment
State
Good News! HB511 passed the House and now crosses over to the Senate.
For years, Georgia has redirected hundreds of millions of dollars collected by the Hazardous Waste and Solid Waste Trust Funds away from the clean community programs they were intended to fund. Meanwhile, illegal tire dumps, failing landfills, and abandoned hazardous sites have languished across the state awaiting their day for a cleanup. Last November, 81.6 % of voters elected to pass the Trust Fund Honesty Amendment in an effort to protect environmental trust funds and to get the cleanups we paid for. This bill also dedicates the Georgia Outdoor Stewardship Trust Fund, State Children's Trust Fund, Wildlife Endowment Trust Fund, Trauma Care Network Trust Fund, Transportation Trust Fund, Georgia Agricultural Trust Fund, Fireworks Trust Fund, and Georgia Transit Trust Fund.
A reminder: Georgia Women is hosting a clean-up day on Saturday March 13, from 10 am to 12 pm as part of Keep Macon-Bibb Beautiful. We hope you can join us.
There are 87 weeks until the 2022 midterm elections. As always, it’s a marathon and not a sprint.
The link to your legislators is here. The list is incomplete until the Atlanta office contact information for our two new Senators is available.
Stay safe and wear your mask.
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